ABSTRACT
Theorizing about race has long occupied a peculiar position within the Western academy. For one, racial knowledge remains scattered across several academic disciplines, often as an unmarked signifier attached to some other concern, e.g., racial identity as a dimension of identity formation or racial inequality as a form of social inequality. Despite the ubiquity of race as a topic across multiple academic disciplines, theory itself has been similarly distributed, such that theorizing race has not been central to the theoretical concerns of Western social theory. This organization of knowledge has created significant blind spots concerning the ongoing problem of systemic racism, in particular, the centrality of systemic racism within colonialism and imperialism, as well as within its own discourses and practices. For another, Western theorizing about race has ignored the significance of resisting systemic racism, instead choosing to explain prevailing racial orders. In contrast, Indigenous peoples, people of African descent, Latinx populations, Asians, and similarly subordinated groups have theorized about reforming, transforming, dismantling, or abolishing systemic racism. Critical analytical work on race, racism, and anti-racism generated outside the parameters of Western social theory, especially when done by scholars of color, shows a strong predilection to change racial hierarchies, not defend them. Yet traditionally, this work rarely makes it into the journals, graduate syllabi, monographs, and thematic conferences that reproduce the canon of Western social theory. While there are many explanations for why this happened, the focus in this chapter is on the trajectory of critical race theory (CRT) within academia. Quite simply, critical race theory is a body of knowledge that uses theoretical tools to criticize the social and political practices of systemic racism. The term “critical race theory” appeared in conjunction with CRT as a specific discourse that was advanced by legal scholars in the academy in the 1990s. Yet the idea of critical race theory as an analysis of and opposition to systemic racism has a much longer history and reach than the specific case of CRT as an academic discourse. Critical race theory is a broader, historically situated way of theorizing and resisting systemic racism that has taken various forms both inside and outside the academy.
