Critical race theory (CRT) first emerged as a counterlegal scholarship to the positivistand liberal legal discourse of civil rights. This scholarly tradition argues against the slow pace of racial reform in the United States. Critical race theory begins with the notion that racism is normal in American society. It departs from mainstream legal scholarship by sometimes employing storytelling. It critiques liberalism and argues that Whites have been the primary beneficiaries of civil rights legislation.Since schooling in the USA purports to prepare citizens, CRT looks at how citizenship and race might interact. Critical race theory's usefulness in understanding education inequity is in its infancy. It requires a critique of some of the civil rights era's most cherished legal victories and educationalreform movements, such as multiculturalism. The paper concludes with words of caution about the use of CRT in education without a more thorough analysis of the legal literature upon which it is based.

Just what is critical race theory and what's it doing in a nice field like education?

https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(17)30569-X.pdf

Structural racism and health inequities in the USA: evidence and interventions

The term intersectionality references the critical insight that race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation, ability, and age operate not as unitary, mutually exclusive entities, but rather as reciprocally constructing phenomena. Despite this general consensus, definitions of what counts as intersectionality are far from clear. In this article, I analyze intersectionality as a knowledge project whose raison d'etre lies in its attentiveness to power relations and social inequalities. I examine three interdependent sets of concerns: (a) intersectionality as a field of study that is situated within the power relations that it studies; (b) intersectionality as an analytical strategy that provides new angles of vision on social phenomena; and (c) intersectionality as critical praxis that informs social justice projects.

https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-soc-073014-112142

Intersectionality's Definitional Dilemmas

Geographic studies of environmental racism have focused on the spatial relationships between environmental hazards and community demographics in order to determine if inequity exists. Conspicuously absent within this literature, however, is any substantive discussion of racism. This paper seeks to address this shortcoming in two ways. I first investigate how racism is understood and expressed in the literature. I argue that although racism is rarely explicitly discussed, a normative conceptualization of racism informs the research. Not only is this prevailing conception overly narrow and restrictive, it also denies the spatiality of racism. Consequently, my second goal is to demonstrate how various forms of racism contribute to environmental racism. In addition to conventional understandings of racism, I emphasize white privilege, a highly structural and spatial form of racism. Using Los Angeles as a case study, I examine how whites have secured relatively cleaner environments by moving away from older in...

/pdf/rethinking-environmental-racism-white-privilege-and-urban-537hvbg35c.pdf

Rethinking Environmental Racism: White Privilege and Urban Development in Southern California

The purpose of this article is to discuss the psychological and emotional effects of racism on people of Color. Psychological models and research on racism, discrimination, stress, and trauma will be integrated to promote a model to be used to understand, recognize, and assess race-based traumatic stress to aid counseling and psychological assessment, research, and training.

/pdf/racism-and-psychological-and-emotional-injury-recognizing-4cyw8ujidl.pdf

Racism and Psychological and Emotional Injury Recognizing and Assessing Race-Based Traumatic Stress

INTRODUCTION: Racial Formation in the United States Part I: PARADIGMS OF RACE: eTHNICITY, CLASS, AND NATION 1. Ethnicity 2. Class 3. Nation Part II: RACIAL FORMATION 4. The Theory of Racial Formation 5. Racial Politics and the Racial State Part III: RACIAL POLITICS SINCE World War II 6. The Great Transformation 7. Racial Reaction: Containment and Rearticulation 8. Colorblindness, Neoliberalism, and Obama CONCLUSION: The Contrarieties of Race

Racial Formation in the United States

The candidacy of Barack Obama has led some commentators to proclaim that the United States is now a "post-racial" society. But recent survey data suggest another story. In late-June 2008, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that nearly half of all Amer icans thought that race relations were in "bad shape" and that 3 in 10 acknowledge feelings of racial prejudice (Cohen and Agriesta 2008). And the differences between black and white attitudes were stark and profound. In mid-July 2008, a New York Times/CBS News poll found that 4 in 10 blacks believed that no progress in eliminating racial discrimination had been made in recent years while fewer than 2 in 10 whites thought the same (Nagourney and Thee 2008). The present moment constitutes a bundle of contradictions in respect to racism. How is it possible to have persistent forms of racial inequality in a period in which colorblind ness is the hegemonic racial ideology and most whites claim that racism is no longer relevant? Both Feagin and Bonilla-Silva engage these contradictions by specifying the nature of contemporary racism in the U.S. Charac terized as systemic (Feagin) or structural (Bonilla-Silva), racism is seen by both authors as a fundamental social fact, a constitutive and highly resilient organizing principle that has shaped US society both historically and in the present. In their respective accounts racism is both flexible and enduring, both consistent and variable. In Systemic Racism, Feagin addresses racis m's comprehensive presence in US society and continues his qualitative emphasis on the lived reality of racism. The official ver sion of the nation's history goes to great lengths to deny or at least minimize racism's ineluctable presence. Feagin's approach is the direct opposite. He shows how racial injustice and oppression have pervaded Systemic Racism: A Theory of Oppression, by Joe R. Feagin. New York: Routledge, 2006. 368pp. $24.95 paper. ISBN: 9780415952781.

Thinking Through Race and Racism

We were at first surprised by the extensive critique of our 1994 book by Joe Feagin and Sean Elias. Although we do not know Elias, we have great respect and friendship for Joe Feagin and have learn...

Resistance is futile?: a response to Feagin and Elias

Osagie K. Obasogie's Blinded by Sight: Seeing Race through the Eyes of the Blind (2014) makes important contributions to both to the sociology of law and to critical race studies. The book challenges “colorblind” racial ideology by showing empirically that people who are blind from birth nevertheless “see” race, grasping it as a nearly omnipresent feature of social interaction and social organization. These insights, however, do not diminish the importance of the racial body. Beyond refuting colorblindness, Obasogie's book points to a neverending tension, embedded in what we call racial formation, between the social construction of race and the corporeality of race. This tension has been present since the dawn of empire and African slavery. Obasogie's achievement of falsifying colorblindness should not lead us to neglect the importance of the racial body.

https://escholarship.org/content/qt10c4t3p5/qt10c4t3p5.pdf?t=omvazw

Michael Omi

Papers

Racial Formation in the United States

Thinking Through Race and Racism

Resistance is futile?: a response to Feagin and Elias

Blinded by Sight: The Racial Body and the Origins of the Social Construction of Race

Conclusion: Racial Formation Rules: Continuity, Instability, And Change