Join the screening of the first plenary session from AAPF's 2021 Critical Race Theory Summer School: "Looking Backward to Move Forward: The Insurgent Origins of CRT"
Followed by a talkback and Q&A with Anthony Cook and Kimberlé Crenshaw
Session summary:
This opening session will describe the precise context out of which CRT emerged. After setting out CRT’s past challenges to prevailing legal discourses about race and racism—including the view that racism is the product of intentional and irrational behavior on the part of a few “bad apples”—the session will pivot to present-day controversies around CRT. We will identify the difficulties other disciplines, civil rights campaigns, and community organizing efforts have confronted as they have taken up the challenge to treat racism as a systemic and structural problem. The session will leave participants with a sense of how, across different sectors of society—media, public education, political campaigns, etc.—the prospect of transformational change is short-circuited by formally race neutral rules and practices, ideologies of colorblindness, and the search for individual bad actors. Each panelist will offer concrete strategies and tools to overcome this obstacle.
Session panelists: Anthony Cook, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Gloria Ladson-Billings, Gary Peller, Robert A. Williams Jr, and Daniel Martinez HoSang (Moderator)
Email crt@aapf.org with questions.