ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book begins with critical race theory (CRT), a legal studies field that has greatly influenced my understanding of race and racism. It developed in the 1980s when some legal scholars were dissatisfied with traditional approaches to civil rights scholarship. Discrimination is also a related term to mean oppressive actions carried out against marginalized individuals or groups. CRT scholar Kimberle Crenshaw uses the term intersectionality to describe an approach in which the people recognize the intersections of multiple categories of oppression rather than default to the dominant group. For example, sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva developed the term "racism without 'racists'", the title of his classic text, to describe how racism operates today in a society in which most white people do not identify as racist.
