ABSTRACT

This chapter provides a brief discussion of the author's thinking about critical race theory (CRT) in educational scholarship and offer recommendations for scholars interested in building on and moving beyond this theoretical project. It provides history relevant to the development of the initial CRT and education paper co-presented at American Educational Research Association. The recognition of incremental gains attained by traditional civil rights methods provided a rhetorical and analytical mechanism to question assumptions of both liberals and conservatives with respect to the goals and the means of racial reform. Derrick Bell argued that racism is permanent, and its formation and implementation shift and morph in the form of different political and legal arguments and tools. New tools are needed to understand the asset-driven models of social inequality. The chapter presents the effects of intergenerational achievement and wealth are vital constructs that will assist scholars of race in fundamental problem solving and thinking related to engineering positive change in schools.