With origins in sociology and literary criticism, it argues that;
{ social problems are influenced and created more by societal structures and cultural assumptions than by individual and psychological factors }
Maintaining that (ideology is the principal obstacle to human liberation) critical theory was established as a school of thought primarily by the Frankfurt School theoreticians...
Horkheimer described a theory as critical insofar as it (seeks to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them)
The core concepts of critical theory are that it should:
-
be directed at the totality of society in its historical specificity
(i.e., how it came to be configured at a specific point in time) -
improve understanding of society by integrating all the
major social sciences, including geography,
economics, sociology, history, political
science, anthropology,
and psychology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory
Critical Race Theory Isn’t a Curriculum. It’s a Practice
The Human Genome Project found that humans share 99.9 percent of the same genetic makeup, despite our different appearances.
Critical race theory recognizes that our ideas of racial difference—which run counter to this scientific evidence—have been socially constructed
It acknowledges how that social construction of race has shaped America and how systems and institutions can do the bulk of replicating racial inequality.
These tenets require a departure from the popular idea that { racism is perpetrated }
solely by individual “bad actors.” If we confine racism to
individual bad actors, we ignore the ways that;
{ systems and institutions can replicate racial inequality }
This framework is particularly relevant to education. Gloria Ladson-Billings, a leading scholar in applying critical race theory to education, explains how { racial inequality can be replicated in education } Curricula that largely exclude the history and lived experiences of Americans of color are the norm. Deficit-oriented instruction often characterizes students of color as failures if a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work for them. Standardized-test scores from assessments detached from what students learn in the classroom are widely used to confirm narratives about the ineducability of children of color.
Critical race theory helps us recognize how many contemporary
{ policies that perpetuate racial inequality
can seem innocuous or even logical. }
School discipline policies that prohibit the wearing of hair in locs might seem neutral, but they disproportionately impact Black students who are most likely to wear locs. Critical race theory helps us recognize that even policies not explicitly predicated on race are not objective;
{ they can actively function to reproduce racial inequality }
Education and Critical Race Theory
CRT portrays dominant legal claims of neutrality, objectivity, color-blindness, and meritocracy as camouflages for the self-interest of powerful entities of society.
Another distinctive theme is CRT’s critique of liberalism.
In the education system, for example, racism is figured in the distribution of material and educational resources and even in teachers’ notions of “ability” and motivation.
In this situation, the adoption of color-blind approaches (which refuse to acknowledge racial reality) and an emphasis on supposed “merit” (as measured by dominant assessments) may appear open and equitable, but the playing field is not level.
Minoritized students are more likely to attend poorly funded schools with less highly qualified teachers and, because of socio-economic inequalities, they are less likely to enjoy additional educational resources at home.
Under such unequal conditions, a color-blind insistence on a single “merit” standard will not only ensure that race inequalities continue but also present them as fair and just...
- often through the routine, mundane activities and assumptions that are unquestioned by most practitioners and policymakers, e.g. through the design of the curriculum,
- the operation of certain forms of assessment, and the selection and training of teachers who overwhelmingly replicate dominant cultural norms and assumptions about race and racial inequality (Ladson-Billings, 2004).
What is Systematic Racism?
Systemic racism includes the policies and practices entrenched in established institutions, which result in the exclusion or promotion of designated groups. It differs from overt discrimination in that no individual intent is necessary (City of Toronto).
It manifests itself in two ways:
- Institutional Racism: Racial discrimination that derives from individuals carrying out the dictates of others who are prejudiced or of a prejudiced society
- Structural Racism: Inequalities rooted in the system-wide operation of a society that excludes substantial numbers of members of particular groups from significant participation in major social institutions (Henry & Tator, 2006, p. 352).
26 Charts That Show How Systemic Racism Is in the US
https://www.businessinsider.com/us-systemic-racism-in-charts…
Institutional Racism
Institutional racism, also known as systemic racism { is a form of racism that is embedded through laws and regulations within society or an organization } It can lead to such issues as discrimination in criminal justice, employment, housing, health care, political power, and education, among other issues.
The term institutional racism was first coined in 1967 by Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton in Black Power: The Politics of Liberation. Carmichael and Hamilton wrote in 1967 that;
- while individual racism is often identifiable because of its overt nature, institutional racism is less perceptible because of its "less overt, far more subtle" nature.
- Institutional racism "originates in the operation of established and respected forces in the society, and thus receives far less public condemnation than [individual racism]".
Institutional racism was defined by Sir William Macpherson in the UK's Lawrence report (1999) as:
"The collective failure of an organization to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour that amount to discrimination through prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness, and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people."
In the past, the term "racism" was often used interchangeably with "prejudice," forming an opinion of another person based on incomplete information. In the last quarter of the 20th Century, racism became associated with systems rather than individuals.
- In 1977, David Wellman in his book Portraits of White Racism defined racism as "a system of advantage based on race," illustrating this definition through countless examples of white people supporting racist institutions while denying that they are prejudiced.
- White people can be nice to people of color while continuing to uphold systemic racism that benefits them, such as lending practices, well-funded schools, and job opportunities.
Institutional racism is where race causes a different level of access to the goods, services, and opportunities of society.
Professor James M. Jones theorised three major types of racism: personally mediated, internalized, and institutionalized.
Personally mediated racism includes the deliberate specific social attitudes to racially prejudiced action (bigoted differential assumptions about abilities, motives, and the intentions of others according to their race), discrimination (the differential actions and behaviours towards others according to their race), stereotyping, commission, and omission (disrespect, suspicion, devaluation, and dehumanization).
Internalized racism is the acceptance, by members of the racially stigmatized people, of negative perceptions about their own abilities and intrinsic worth, characterized by low self-esteem, and low esteem of others like them. This racism can be manifested through embracing "whiteness" (e.g. stratification by skin colour in non-white communities), self-devaluation (e.g., racial slurs, nicknames, rejection of ancestral culture, etc.), and resignation, helplessness, and hopelessness (e.g., dropping out of school, failing to vote, engaging in health-risk practices, etc.).
Persistent negative stereotypes fuel institutional racism, and influence interpersonal relations. Racial stereotyping contributes to patterns of racial residential segregation and redlining, and shapes views about crime, crime policy, and welfare policy, especially if the contextual information is stereotype-consistent.
Institutional racism is distinguished from racial bigotry by the existence of institutional systemic policies, practices and economic and political structures that place minority racial and ethnic groups at a disadvantage in relation to an institution's racial or ethnic majority.
- One example of the difference is public school budgets in the U.S. (including local levies and bonds) and the quality of teachers, which are often correlated with property values: rich neighborhoods are more likely to be more 'white' and to have better teachers and more money for education, even in public schools. Restrictive housing contracts and bank lending policies have also been listed as forms of institutional racism.
- Other examples sometimes described as institutional racism are racial profiling by security guards and police, use of stereotyped racial caricatures, the under- and misrepresentation of certain racial groups in the mass media, and race-based barriers to gainful employment and professional advancement.
- Additionally, differential access to goods, services, and opportunities of society can be included within the term institutional racism, such as unpaved streets and roads, inherited socio-economic disadvantage, and "standardized" tests (each ethnic group prepared for it differently; many are poorly prepared).
Some sociological investigators distinguish between institutional racism and "structural racism" (sometimes called structured racialization).
- The former focuses upon the norms and practices within an institution,
- the latter upon the interactions among institutions, interactions that produce racialized outcomes against non-white people.
An important feature of structural racism is that it cannot be reduced to individual prejudice or to the single function of an institution.
Structural Racialization: A Systems Approach to Understanding the Causes and Consequences of Racial Inequity | Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity
If we look at our (society) as a complex system of organizations, institutions, individuals, processes, and policies we can see how { many factors interact to create and perpetuate } social/economic/political -arrangements that are harmful- to people of color and to our society as a whole.
Housing, education, and health are just a few examples of how material and symbolic advantages and disadvantages are still often distributed along racial lines.
For example, think about our (suburbs) The federal government accelerated migration to the suburbs by subsidizing home mortgages through the National Housing Act of 1934. But through the 1950s, the Federal Housing Administration’s (FHA) underwriting manuals expressly warned that Blacks were considered “adverse influences” on property values. The agency instructed its personnel not to insure mortgages on homes unless they were in “racially homogenous” White neighborhoods. Under these guidelines, the FHA actually refused to lend money to – or underwrite loans for – Whites if they moved to areas where people of color lived. Private lenders adopted similar policies, and this system became part of the “free market.”
The U.S. property appraisal (system) created in the 1930s tied property value and eligibility for government loans to race. Thus, all-White neighborhoods received the government’s highest property value ratings and White people were eligible for government loans. The outcome of these arrangements is that the suburbs became a haven for White families and Black families were excluded. Today, we think of the suburbs as rich in opportunity, while racially segregated central-cities are dangerously lacking in opportunity.
A structural view of racism enables us to see the connections between seemingly independent opportunity structures
Certain “opportunity structures” lead to stability and personal advancement in our society. These opportunity structures include high-performing schools, affordable housing, sustainable employment, safety from crime, environmentally safe neighborhoods, home equity and wealth, access to affordable health care and others.
Together, these structures form a system – a “web of opportunity” – and a person’s location within this web significantly influences that individual’s chances for happiness and success in life.
If a person is confronted with barriers to success in one opportunity structure – high quality K-12 education, for example – it is likely that the person will be confronted with barriers in other opportunity structures. Some researchers and scholars refer to these relationships between structures as “cumulative causation” or “cumulative disadvantage,” as elements within the “system” impact one another.
For instance, a home in the suburbs is typically associated with good, high-performing schools; high-performing schools are associated with increased access to college; increased access to higher education is associated with the ability to buy a home in the suburbs.
So, over time, opportunities accumulate for an individual because of where they live. In light of the demographics of Americans suburbs, the person in this scenario is most likely White.
If we flip this picture, we see that
living in a highly segregated and isolated inner-city neighborhood is associated with poor-performing schools; poor performing schools are associated with high drop-out rates; high drop-out rates are associated with low-paying jobs; and low-paying jobs are associated with living in segregated inner-city neighborhoods.
These disadvantages accumulate over time. In light of the demographics of racial segregation in U.S. Metropolitan areas, the people impacted by this story are most likely Black or Latino.
Eliminating barriers to opportunity takes a systems approach
Consider disparities in health between White and Black Americans. These differences are well documented. African Americans have a lower life expectancy, higher levels of hypertension, obesity, and diabetes, higher rates of premature births, and the list goes on. Approaching solutions to these health disparities without a systems perspective is problematic.
Systems Analysis tells us that the health of any individual at any point in time is a reflection of where that individual resides, not only in the literal sense – suburbs, segregated inner-city, rural areas – but where the individual resides in the complex web of opportunity.
With a systems approach to these problems, we understand that an {individual’s health} is directly linked to his or her diet; that diet is directly linked to an individual’s educational attainment; and that educational attainment is directly linked to where one resides. Researchers call these multiple factors the “social determinants of health.”
So, for example, attempts to eliminate racial disparities in health without eliminating disparities in education and housing cannot be completely successful.
LBJ talks Critical Race Theory
wipe away the scars of centuries by saying:
| and do as you desire, and choose
| the leaders you please.
You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, “you are free to compete with all the others,” and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.
This is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.
For the task is to give 20 million Negroes the same chance as every other American to learn and grow, to work and share in society, to develop their abilities—physical, mental and spiritual, and to pursue their individual happiness.
To this end equal opportunity is essential, but not enough, not enough. Men and women of all races are born with the same range of abilities. But ability is not just the product of birth. Ability is stretched or stunted by the family that you live with, and the neighborhood you live in—by the school you go to and the poverty or the richness of your surroundings. It is the product of a hundred unseen forces playing upon the little infant, the child, and finally the man…
These differences are not racial differences. They are solely and simply the consequence of ancient brutality, past injustice, and present prejudice. They are anguishing to observe. For the Negro they are a constant reminder of oppression. For the white they are a constant reminder of guilt. But they must be faced and they must be dealt with and they must be overcome, if we are ever to reach the time when the only difference between Negroes and whites is the color of their skin.
Nor can we find a complete answer in the experience of other American minorities. They made a valiant and a largely successful effort to emerge from poverty and prejudice.
The Negro, like these others, will have to rely mostly upon his own efforts. But he just can not do it alone. For they did not have the heritage of centuries to overcome, and they did not have a cultural tradition which had been twisted and battered by endless years of hatred and hopelessness, nor were they excluded—these others—because of race or color—a feeling whose dark intensity is matched by no other prejudice in our society.
Nor can these differences be understood as isolated infirmities. They are a seamless web. They cause each other. They result from each other. They reinforce each other.
Much of the Negro community is buried under a blanket of history and circumstance. It is not a lasting solution to lift just one corner of that blanket. We must stand on all sides and we must raise the entire cover if we are to liberate our fellow citizens...
—LBJ 1965
Commencement Address at Howard University: "To Fulfill These Rights" - Teaching American History
unmask the ideology falsely justifying some form
of social or economic oppression—to reveal it as ideology—and, in so doing, to contribute to the task of ending that oppression.
And so, a critical theory aims to provide - a kind of
enlightenment about social and economic life that is itself emancipatory persons come to recognize the oppression
they are suffering as oppression and are thereby
partly freed from it.
Marx's critique of capitalist economic relations is arguably just this kind of critical theory.
As participants in a capitalist market economy, { we fall into thinking of the economy in terms of } private property rights, free exchange, the laws of supply and demand, etc., and, in so doing, we fall { into thinking of capitalist economic relations as justified, as how things should be }
Marx argues that this way of thinking is nothing but ideology: it obscures, even from those persons who suffer them, the pervasive and destructive forms of alienation, powerlessness, and exploitation that, in Marx's view, define capitalist economic relations.
Any prospects for change, reform, or for Marx, revolution requires first that people come to see capitalism for what it is, for they must first see the ways in which they themselves are alienated, powerless and exploited before they can try to free themselves from it.
Later social theorists in what came to be called the Frankfurt School—Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, and Habermas—develop and refine this Marxian project of providing a critical theory of capitalist economic and social relations. In particular, they argue that the forms of oppression distinctive of "late" capitalism are importantly different than the forms Marx found in the early capitalism of the Industrial Revolution, and so a critical theory about them must also be different.
2. What is Critical Theory?
“What is ‘theory’?” asked Horkheimer in the opening of his essay Traditional and Critical Theory [1937]. The discussion about method has been always a constant topic for those critical theorists who have attempted since the beginning to clarify the specificity of what it means to be “critical”.
A primary broad distinction that Horkheimer drew was that of the difference in method between social theories, scientific theories and critical social theories.
While the first two categories had been treated as instances of traditional theories, the latter connoted the methodology the Frankfurt School adopted.
Horkheimer and his followers rejected the notion of objectivity in knowledge by pointing, among other things, to the fact that { the object of knowledge is itself embedded into a historical and social process }
“The facts which our senses present to us are socially preformed in two ways: through the historical character of the object perceived and through the historical character of the perceiving organ” (Horkheimer [1937] in Ingram and Simon-Ingram 1992, p. 242).
Further, with a rather Marxist twist, Horkheimer noticed also that
phenomenological objectivity is a myth because it is dependent upon “technological conditions” and the latter are sensitive to the material conditions of production.
Critical Theory aims thus to abandon ( naïve conceptions of knowledge-impartiality ) Since intellectuals themselves are not disembodied entities observing from a God’s viewpoint,
knowledge can be obtained only from a societal embedded perspective of interdependent individuals.
If traditional theory is evaluated by considering its practical implications, then no practical consequences can be actually inferred. Indeed, the finality of knowledge as a mirror of reality is mainly a theoretically-oriented tool aimed at separating knowledge from action, speculation from social transformative enterprise.
Critical Theory, instead, characterizes itself as a method contrary to the “fetishization” of knowledge, one which considers knowledge as something rather functional to ideology critique and social emancipation.
In the light of such finalities, knowledge becomes social criticism and the latter translates itself into social action, that is, into the transformation of reality.
Critical Theory has been strongly influenced by Hegel’s notion of dialectics for the conciliation of socio-historical oppositions as well as by Marx’s theory of economy and society and the limits of Hegel’s “bourgeois philosophy”. Critical Theory, indeed, has expanded Marxian criticisms of capitalist society by formulating patterns of social emancipatory strategies.
Whereas Hegel found that Rationality had finally come to terms with Reality with the birth of the modern nation state (which in his eyes was the Prussian state),
Marx insisted on the necessity of reading the development of rationality through history in terms of a class struggle. The final stage of this struggle would have seen the political and economic empowerment of the proletariat.
Critical theorists, in their turn, rejected both the metaphysical apparatus of Hegel and the eschatological aspects connected to Marx’s theory. On the contrary, Critical Theory analyses were oriented to the understanding of society and pointed rather to the necessity of establishing open systems based on immanent forms of social criticism.
The starting point was the Marxian view on the relation between a system of production paralleled by a system of beliefs. Ideology, which according to Marx was totally explicable through an underlying system of production, for critical theorists had to be analyzed in its own respect and as a non-economically reducible form of expression of human rationality.
Such a revision of Marxian categories became extremely crucial, then, in the reinterpretation of the notion of dialectics for the analysis of capitalism. Dialectics, as a method of social criticism, was interpreted as following from the contradictory nature of capitalism as a system of exploitation. Indeed, it was on the basis of such inherent contradictions that capitalism was seen to open up to a collective form of ownership of the means of production, namely, socialism.
Frankfurt School and Critical Theory | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Critical Theory in the [narrow sense] has had many different aspects and quite distinct historical phases that cross several generations, from the effective start of the Institute for Social Research in the years 1929–1930, which saw the arrival of the Frankfurt School philosophers and an inaugural lecture by Horkheimer, to the present. Its distinctiveness as a philosophical approach that extends to ethics, political philosophy, and the philosophy of history is most apparent when considered in light of the history of the philosophy of the social sciences.
Critical Theorists have long sought to distinguish their aims, methods, theories, and forms of explanation from standard understandings in both the natural and the social sciences. Instead, they have claimed that
social inquiry ought to combinerather than separate the polesof philosophy and the socialsciences:
explanation and understanding,structure and agency,regularity and normativity.
While Critical Theory is often thought of narrowly as referring to the Frankfurt School that begins with Horkheimer and Adorno and stretches to Marcuse and Habermas,
[broad meaning]
(any philosophical approach) with similar practical aims could be called a “critical theory,” including
feminism, critical race theory,and some forms of post-colonialcriticism
…It follows from Horkheimer’s definition that a critical theory is adequate only if it meets three criteria: it must be explanatory, practical, and normative, all at the same time. That is, it must explain what is wrong with current social reality, identify the actors to change it, and provide both clear norms for criticism and achievable practical goals for social transformation…
Critical Theory (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/critical-theory/
Critical Race Theory
| social and institutional dynamics
| rather than explicit and intentional
| prejudices on the part of individuals
CRT scholars also view race and white supremacy as an intersectional social construction which serves to uphold the interests of white people against those of marginalized communities at large.
In the field of legal studies, CRT emphasizes that merely making laws colorblind on paper may not be enough to make the application of the laws colorblind; ostensibly colorblind laws can be applied in racially discriminatory ways.
A key CRT concept is intersectionality, which emphasizes that race can intersect with other identities (such as gender and class) to produce complex combinations of power and disadvantage.
The theory [is] radical ... in the sense that it questions fundamental assumptions ... And unlike some strands of academic and legal thought, critical race theory has an open and activist agenda, with an emphasis on storytelling and personal experience. It's about righting wrongs, not just questing after knowledge ... Many of their ideas are not radical today in the sense of being outside the mainstream: Critical race theory is widely taught and studied.
—Will Oremus
Common themes
Common themes that are characteristic of work in critical race theory, as documented by such scholars as Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, include:
- Critique of liberalism: Critical race theory scholars question foundational liberal concepts such as Enlightenment rationalism, legal equality, and Constitutional neutrality, and challenge the incrementalist approach of traditional civil-rights discourse. They favor a race-conscious approach to social transformation, critiquing liberal ideas such as affirmative action, color blindness, role modeling, or the merit principle with an approach that relies more on political organizing, in contrast to liberalism's reliance on rights-based remedies.
- Storytelling, counter-storytelling, and "naming one's own reality": The use of narrative (storytelling) to illuminate and explore lived experiences of racial oppression. Bryan Brayboy has emphasized the epistemic importance of storytelling in Indigenous-American communities as superseding that of theory, and has proposed a Tribal Critical Race Theory (TribCrit).
- Revisionist interpretations of American civil rights law and progress: Criticism of civil-rights scholarship and anti-discrimination law, such as Brown v. Board of Education. Derrick Bell, one of CRT's founders, argues that civil-rights advances for black people coincided with the self-interest of white elitists. Likewise, Mary L. Dudziak performed extensive archival research in the U.S. Department of State and Department of Justice and concluded that U.S. government support for civil-rights legislation "was motivated in part by the concern that racial discrimination harmed the United States' foreign relations".
- Intersectional theory: The examination of race, sex, class, national origin, and sexual orientation, and how their combination (i.e., their intersections) plays out in various settings, e.g., how the needs of a Latina female are different from those of a black male and whose needs are the ones promoted.
- Standpoint epistemology: The view that a member of a minority has an authority and ability to speak about racism that members of other racial groups do not have, and that this can expose the racial neutrality of law as false.
- Essentialism vs. anti-essentialism: Delgado and Stefancic write, "Scholars who write about these issues are concerned with the appropriate unit for analysis: Is the black community one, or many, communities? Do middle- and working-class African-Americans have different interests and needs? Do all oppressed peoples have something in common?" This is a look at the ways that oppressed groups may share in their oppression but also have different needs and values that need to be looked at differently. It is a question of how groups can be essentialized or are unable to be essentialized.
- Structural determinism: Exploration of how "the structure of legal thought or culture influences its content", whereby a particular mode of thought or widely shared practice determines significant social outcomes, usually occurring without conscious knowledge. As such, theorists posit that our system cannot redress certain kinds of wrongs.
- Empathetic fallacy: Believing that one can change a narrative by offering an alternative narrative in hopes that the listener's empathy will quickly and reliably take over. Empathy is not enough to change racism as most people are not exposed to many people different from themselves and people mostly seek out information about their own culture and group.
- Non-white cultural nationalism/separatism: The exploration of more radical views that argue for separation and reparations as a form of foreign aid (including black nationalism).
Internalization
Karen Pyke documents the theoretical element of internalized racism or internalized racial oppression, whereby victims of racism begin to believe in the ideology that they are inferior to whites and white culture, who are superior. The internalizing of racism is not due to any weakness, ignorance, inferiority, psychological defect, gullibility, or other shortcomings of the oppressed. Instead, it is how authority and power in all aspects of society contribute to feelings of inequality.
Institutional racism
Camara Phyllis Jones defines institutionalized racism as;
differential access to the goods, services, and opportunities of society by race. Institutionalized racism is normative, sometimes legalized and often manifests as inherited disadvantage. It is structural, having been absorbed into our institutions of custom, practice, and law, so there need not be an identifiable offender. Indeed, institutionalized racism is often evident as inaction in the face of need, manifesting itself both in material conditions and in access to power. With regard to the former, examples include differential access to quality education, sound housing, gainful employment, appropriate medical facilities, and a clean environment.
Understanding Critical Theory
Critical theories aim to dig beneath the surface of social life and uncover the assumptions that keep human beings from a full and true understanding of how the world works.
Critical theory emerged out of the Marxist tradition and was developed by a group of sociologists at the University of Frankfurt in Germany who referred to themselves as The Frankfurt School.
History and Overview
Critical theory as it is known today can be traced to Marx's critiques of the economy and society. It is inspired greatly by Marx's theoretical formulation of the relationship between economic base and ideological superstructure and focuses on how power and domination operate.
Following in Marx's critical footsteps, Hungarian György Lukács and Italian Antonio Gramsci developed theories that explored the cultural and ideological sides of power and domination. Both Lukács and Gramsci focused their critique on the social forces that prevent people from understanding how power affects their lives.
Shortly after Lukács and Gramsci published their ideas, the Institute for Social Research was founded at the University of Frankfurt, and the Frankfurt School of critical theorists took shape. The work of the Frankfurt School members, including Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Erich Fromm, Walter Benjamin, Jürgen Habermas, and Herbert Marcuse, is considered the heart of critical theory.
Like Lukács and Gramsci, these theorists focused on ideology and cultural forces as facilitators of domination and barriers to freedom. The contemporary politics and economic structures of the time greatly influenced their thought and writing, as they lived during the height of national socialism. This included the rise of the Nazi regime, state capitalism, and the spread of mass-produced culture.
The Purpose of Critical Theory
Max Horkheimer defined critical theory in the book Traditional and Critical Theory. In this work, Horkheimer asserted that a critical theory must do two important things: It must account for society within a historical context, and it should seek to offer a robust and holistic critique by incorporating insights from all social sciences.
Further, Horkheimer stated that a theory can only be considered a true critical theory if it is explanatory, practical, and normative. The theory must adequately explain the social problems that exist, offer practical solutions for how to respond to them, and abide by the norms of criticism established by the field.
Horkheimer condemned "traditional" theorists for producing works that fail to question power, domination, and the status quo. He expanded on Gramsci's critique of the role of intellectuals in processes of domination.
Key Texts
Texts associated with the Frankfurt School focused their critique on the centralization of economic, social, and political control that was transpiring around them. Key texts from this period include:
- Critical and Traditional Theory (Horkheimer)
- Dialectic of the Enlightenment (Adorno and Horkheimer)
- Knowledge and Human Interests (Habermas)
- The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Habermas)
- One-Dimensional Man (Marcuse)
- The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (Benjamin)
Critical Theory Today
Over the years, many social scientists and philosophers who rose to prominence after the Frankfurt School have adopted the goals and tenets of critical theory. We can recognize critical theory today in many feminist theories and approaches to conducting social science. It is also found in critical race theory, cultural theory, gender, and queer theory, as well as in media theory and media studies.
https://www.thoughtco.com/critical-theory-3026623
~~ Similar Biases - Disposition (the mental) vs Structure (the situation) ~~
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor-observer_bias
The tendency for explanations of other individuals' behaviors to overemphasize the influence of their personality and underemphasize the influence of their situation (see also Fundamental attribution error), and for explanations of one's own behaviors to do the opposite (that is, to overemphasize the influence of our situation and underemphasize the influence of our own personality)...
The tendency for people to over-emphasize personality-based explanations for behaviors observed in others while under-emphasizing the role and power of situational influences on the same behavior (see also actor-observer bias, group attribution error, positivity effect, and negativity effect)...
http://www.overcominghateportal.org/attribution-fallacies.html
Dispositional Attribution
The explanation of individual behavior as a result caused by internal characteristics that reside within the individual, as opposed to outside (situational) influences that stem from the environment or culture in which that individual is found.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispositional_attribution
Situated Cognition
Perspective of human cognition that asserts learning happens as human beings interact with the living world. The situativity theory of cognition (Greeno, 1998), is a theory of thinking as mainly "on the fly" and "in the moment," rather than off line and mainly in our heads. It is a context and situation-bound theory of cognition...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situated_cognition
Examples;
Many rich people insist that their fast-increasing wealth has nothing to do with the fact that others are poor, and everything to do with merit and just deserts;
1 - In the attributionalist’s view, people are poor because of personal traits — especially their moral failings. In order to relieve poverty, we must make poor people into better human beings, by essentially regulating their behavior.
2 - The opposing “relationalist” view contends that economic positions are largely explained by relationships between groups, and that we all share a responsibility to alleviate poverty because the experiences and behaviors of those who aren’t poor have an effect on the lives of those who are.
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/2/the-marriage-of-povertyandinequality.html
The Culture of Poverty
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_poverty
The Cycle of Poverty
Memetics & The Social Contagion - The Critical Meme
https://immortalista.blogspot.com/p/memetics.html
Critical Theory?
Critiques of critical theory have been around since the philosophes first put caffeinated pen to paper. Often the attack is personal, as when Edmund Burke dismissed the unchivalrous “sophisters, economists, and calculators” of the French Revolution for their indifference when called to defend Marie Antoinette’s honor from the “swinish multitude.”
It is easy to dismiss many of these as little more than ad hominem vitriol; after all, reactionaries need to overreact every now and again. The more refined criticisms usually disdain critical theorists for their attraction to “abstract” or “speculative” theories that bear little resemblance to the real world. When launched by conservatives eager to defend the status quo, these attacks may even have a ring of truth buried within the outrage. Anyone who wants to change reality is—by definition—not a strict realist. But of course any reasonably competent critical theorist could respond that the world is deficient in many respects, and that not seeking to improve it is morally indefensible. As Mary Wollstonecraft put it when responding to Burke: “the ivy is beautiful, but, when it insidiously destroys the trunk from which it receives support, who would not grub it up?”
Another common accusation is that the outcome of the critical attitude is invariably bad. Spending too much time with the Adornos, Lyotards, and Spivaks of the world either makes one a nihilist, illiberal, a progressive extremist, or, worst of all in some quarters, a Democrat.
Some social conservatives associate it with anxieties about cultural decline and the corrosion of moral standards. Some conservative post-liberals, who are really just pre-liberals, see it as the culmination of liberalism’s failure to rein in progressivist excesses. Classical liberals typically lament the lack of commitment to foundational American individualism.
On rare occasions, you get more refined criticisms—commentators like Roger Scruton, John Milbank, or Alan Sokal have launched sustained intellectual analyses of critical theory that manage to strike real blows against it. These tend to take aim at the problematic philosophical roots of critical theory in various forms of subjectivism, nominalism, and historicism to show how these foundations can’t underwrite many of the moral and political applications of critical theory today.
Less discussed are the divides within critical theory. Often treated as an intellectual framework whose adherents all share a uniform ideological bent, it turns out that critical theorists can be quite critical of each other.
Critical Theorists Critiquing Each Other
Since the transition to postmodern critical theory in the 1960s, big “structural” struggles have been out of vogue while the micro-politics of the local and particular—what David Harvey calls “militant particularism”—have been in play. This kind of critical theorizing has provided tremendous inspiration to many movements for inclusion in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere by providing theoretical guidance, through a critique of traditional moral views, on the question of why certain groups have been excluded. But it has also produced real division on the political left, which has fractured into various militant particularisms, each pursuing its own agenda.
There is enough of an elective affinity between these approaches that they politically hang together in a loose way—but not always comfortably. The current debate between trans activists demanding recognition for non-binary individuals, and trans-exclusionary radical feminists, is a case in point. These hostilities are sometimes seen as springing from philosophical differences, but philosophical divisions are tricky things, since often they relate back to fundamental epistemological and moral convictions about the world.
Take Wendy Brown’s innovative critique of identity politics in her classic Wounded Attachments. Brown is obviously sympathetic to the plight of those who have been victimized, and is strident in her demands for political and social change. But she also accepts part of the Nietzschean critique of victimhood, arguing that to be defined by opposition to what you oppress is still to be defined by an oppressor. Rather than venerating victimization and its experiences, she writes, we need to transition to conceiving a new sense of identity that moves past the oppressor/victim relation. Obviously, this perspective is not welcomed with open arms by many critical theorists.
On a much grander scale, many contemporary critical theorists are also wary of the skepticism they detect in much of postmodern theory. In its heyday, Marxism was a grand “meta-narrative” of society and history that provided a sweeping vision of both how the world was and how to change it. Postmodern philosophers like Jean Francois Lyotard challenged the very possibility of conceiving such meta-narratives, which is one of the reasons for transitioning to a militant particularist stance. These days, some of the more big picture differences have come roaring back, driven in no small part by global anxieties about neoliberalization and the resurrection of democratic socialism as a viable movement.
Is critical theory a research program? A methodology? A posture toward power? A belligerence toward anything that marginalizes the disempowered? A cultural ethos? An ideology? What exactly is it?
One difficulty with an explainer on a topic like critical theory is that people mean vastly different things by it. Some academics use it to describe a specific analytical approach and nothing more. On the opposite end, critics see it as a symbol of how academic theory can lead to cultural decadence. Some even see it as the most pernicious instrument in the progressive lineup—the thing that will bring down civilization itself.
I have tried to show that its intellectual origins are in the concept and practice of critique. Set aside certain practitioners you may not like, and alleged “applications” of it you may find morally offensive (such as antiracist sensitivity training), and consider that critical theory may simply be a tool to get us to ask some important questions, questions you would hope someone would ask if you found yourself among society’s marginalized and underprivileged. Questions like: Are society’s institutions structurally set up in a just way? Who is excluded from our politics and should they be? Is it possible that prominent moral traditions serve some people’s interests over others? Are the patterns and features of society implicitly engineered to benefit certain identity categories over others? If so, what’s the best way to rectify that?
Does this make critical theory too … well, critical? Perhaps. But that’s just what critique is— criticality is built into the very notion. It’s not easy to hear that society, or a certain subculture within it, may need to see big changes—but then again, when exactly did this is hard for me to accept become a sound intellectual reason for rejecting an idea?
What Is Critical Theory? - Polyarchy
https://polyarchy.arcdigital.media/p/what-is-critical-theory
Principles of the CRT Practice
While recognizing the evolving and malleable nature of CRT, scholar Khiara Bridges outlines a few key tenets of CRT, including:
- Recognition that race is not biologically real but is socially constructed and socially significant. It recognizes that science (as demonstrated in the Human Genome Project) refutes the idea of biological racial differences. According to scholars Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, race is the product of social thought and is not connected to biological reality.
- Acknowledgement that racism is a normal feature of society and is embedded within systems and institutions, like the legal system, that replicate racial inequality. This dismisses the idea that racist incidents are aberrations but instead are manifestations of structural and systemic racism.
- Rejection of popular understandings about racism, such as arguments that confine racism to a few “bad apples.” CRT recognizes that racism is codified in law, embedded in structures, and woven into public policy. CRT rejects claims of meritocracy or “colorblindness.” CRT recognizes that it is the systemic nature of racism that bears primary responsibility for reproducing racial inequality.
- Recognition of the relevance of people’s everyday lives to scholarship. This includes embracing the lived experiences of people of color, including those preserved through storytelling, and rejecting deficit-informed research that excludes the epistemologies of people of color.
CRT does not define racism in the traditional manner as solely the consequence of discrete irrational bad acts perpetrated by individuals but is usually the unintended (but often foreseeable) consequence of choices. It exposes the ways that racism is often cloaked in terminology regarding “mainstream,” “normal,” or “traditional” values or “neutral” policies, principles, or practices. And, as scholar Tara Yosso asserts, CRT can be an approach used to theorize, examine, and challenge the ways which race and racism implicitly and explicitly impact social structures, practices, and discourses. CRT observes that scholarship that ignores race is not demonstrating “neutrality” but adherence to the existing racial hierarchy. For the civil rights lawyer, this can be a particularly powerful approach for examining race in society. Particularly because CRT has recently come under fire, understanding CRT and some of its primary tenets is vital for the civil rights lawyer who seeks to eradicate racial inequality in this country.
The originators of CRT include Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Cheryl Harris, Richard Delgado, Patricia Williams, Gloria Ladson-Billings, Tara Yosso, among others. CRT transcends a Black/white racial binary and recognizes that racism has impacted the experiences of various people of color, including Latinx, Native Americans, and Asian Americans. As a result, different branches, including LatCrit, TribalCrit, and AsianCRT have emerged from CRT. These different branches seek to examine specific experiences of oppression. CRT challenges white privilege and exposes deficit-informed research that ignores, and often omits, the scholarship of people of color. CRT began in the legal academy in the 1970s and grew in the 1980s and 1990s. It persists as a field of inquiry in the legal field and in other areas of scholarship. Mari Matsudi described CRT as the work of progressive legal scholars seeking to address the role of racism in the law and the work to eliminate it and other configurations of subordination.
CRT grew from Critical Legal Studies (CLS), which argued that the law was not objective or apolitical. CLS was a significant departure from earlier conceptions of the law (and other fields of scholarship) as objective, neutral, principled, and dissociated from social or political considerations. Like proponents of CLS, critical race theorists recognized that the law could be complicit in maintaining an unjust social order. Where critical race theorists departed from CLS was in the recognition of how race and racial inequality were reproduced through the law. Further, CRT scholars did not share the approach of destabilizing social injustice by destabilizing the law. Many CRT scholars had witnessed how the law could be used to help secure and protect civil rights. Therefore, critical race theorists recognized that, while the law could be used to deepen racial inequality, it also held potential as a tool for emancipation and for securing racial equality.
Foundational questions that underlie CRT and the law include: How does the law construct race?; How has the law protected racism and upheld racial hierarchies?; How does the law reproduce racial inequality?; and How can the law be used to dismantle race, racism, and racial inequality?
In the field of education, Daniel Solórzano has identified tenets of CRT that, in addition to the impact of race and racism and the challenge to the dominant ideology of the objectivity of scholarship, include a commitment to social justice; centering the experiential knowledge of people of color; and using multiple approaches from a variety of disciplines to analyze racism within both historical and contemporary contexts, such as women’s studies, sociology, history, law, psychology, film, theater, and other fields.
Some of the most compelling demonstrations of how racism has been replicated through systems is within the education system. Many can recall images of troops escorting nine Black students to integrate Little Rock Central High School. Or Ruby Bridges being escorted into a New Orleans Elementary School by armed guards six years after the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated racially segregated education in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Those moments are just snapshots of the intersection of racism, the law, and the education system. This article provides just a snapshot of CRT, and the following explanation is a glimpse of the application of CRT in education. But the explanation below seeks to capture how CRT applies to the education system, particularly in addressing how racial inequality persists in the post–civil rights era.
A Lesson on Critical Race Theory
