The term “critical race theory” names many things, some beneficial and some perhaps less so. For Christians, sifting through the useful and less useful comes with the territory. We can no more avoid this careful work than we can avoid pursuing justice and equality while loving God and neighbor. The political conversation around CRT, however, has encouraged not care but rather its opposite: sweeping generalizations that either mischaracterize CRT or reject its ends outright. Or both.
Originally, CRT referred to academic scholarship critical of how race corrupts legal theory. It identified ways that racism ends up harming legal institutions, creating real-world consequences for education, housing, health care, and more. This attempt to ferret out racism’s long-term effects followed up on the civil rights movement’s aspirations for a more just and equitable society.
Like cellular biologists fighting cancer, critical race theorists committed themselves to the exacting work of finding and fighting racism wherever it reared its ugly head. They knew that societies are just and equal in concrete ways or not at all, a fact that demands critical attention to racism’s impact on courts, schools, neighborhoods, hospitals, and so on. CRT proved indispensable in the pursuit of justice and equality, helping institutionalize civil rights into the structures and systems of American life.
