Introduction to Critical Race Theory in Educational Research and Praxis

Abstract

Critical race theory (CRT) is an exciting, revolutionary intellectual movement that puts race at the center of critical analysis. Similarly, CRT can be used to “deconstruct” the meaning of “educational achievement.” Contemporary currents in CRT have borrowed most recently from research in postcolonialism, geography and space, ethnicity studies of racial and ethnic identities, critical ethnography, and many other critical movements in the humanities. CRT inherits much from critical legal scholarship and conventional legal principles generated during the civil rights movement, but it also represents a significant departure from these two movements. CRT is a product not only of civil rights thinking but of critical thinking as well. In response, CRT scholars agreed with much of the indeterminacy critique but argued that critical legal studies scholars had ignored the transformative power of rights for a group of disempowered outsiders. This chapter presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the book.