Teaching Black Lives Matter in Schools? A Preliminary Dialogue Between Critical Race Theory and Racial Capitalism
Year: 2022
Type: article
Abstract: In the last few years, Black Lives Matter protestors and their demands have made unprecedented progress across the United States, and beyond. While struggling toward racial and social justice, conservative policymakers decided to wage an ideological battle against the liberation movements, perhaps most notably, in American schools. What has been unexpected is the use of the term Critical Race Theory (CRT), an advanced theoretical toolkit used primarily within institutions of higher education, as the scapegoat for conservative woes. This paper seeks to interpret CRT as a guidebook for this political moment, both as a rejoinder to conservative and neoliberal theories of race and as a part of a broader Black theoretical tradition. We seek to reclaim the opportunity given in this moment of renewed attention on CRT -- not with the need to make CRT palatable to white audiences, but rather to bring CRT in conversation with other Black voices for the purposes of liberation, namely Cedric Robinson’s racial capitalism. This paper works to untether what CRT and racial capitalist theorists would say about the current assault on critical curricula, and how these two theories might overlap and differ. Ultimately, we hope to offer our own questions and directions to pursue rooted in a CRT and racial capitalism framework.
Source: Journal of Critical Race Inquiry
Authors: Hill, Jasmine, Abbie Cohen
Institution: University of California, Los Angeles
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Reduced inequalities
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7217126343