Robert Craig Intersectionality and Critical Race Theory Critical Race Theory (CRT) Origins in US legal theory and activism in 1970s, following the Civil Rights movement. Key figures included Derrick Bell and Richard Delgado. Inspired by the
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Robert Craig Intersectionality and Critical Race Theory<br>
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Critical Race Theory (CRT) Origins in US legal theory and activism in 1970s, following the Civil Rights movement. Key figures included Derrick Bell and Richard Delgado.
Inspired by the intellectual & political activism of the radical ‘Black Power,’ Chicano, and feminist movements – as well as by Dr Martin Luther King Jr.
From the civil rights movement, CRT took its focus on practical applications; and from second-wave feminism it drew insights into the relationships between socially constructed gender roles and society’s power imbalances.<br>
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CRT: Core Ideas Racism is both ordinary and everyday, and therefore very difficult to eliminate.
Social construction thesis: ‘Race’ is a social construct, not a set of biological and genetic facts.
Different racial groups have served different economic and ideological purposes at different times in majority white societies.
‘Intersectionality’ (c. 1989 )…<br>
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Intersectionality First named by the UCLA legal scholar, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, in 1989.
A multifacted re-examination of categories of race, ethnicity, class, gender, national origin, sexual orientation, physical and mental ability/disability, etc.
How do these facets combine to shape specific forms of disadvantage?<br>
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Imagine… “…the various axes of power, i.e., for instance, race, ethnicity, gender, or class, as constituting thoroughfares, that structure the social, economic, or political terrain. It is through these avenues that disempowering dynamics travel. […] [R]acialized women are often positioned in the space where racism or xenophobia, class and gender meet. They are consequently subject to injury by the heavy flow of traffic traveling along all these roads.”
– Crenshaw, “The Intersectionality of Race and Gender Discrimination,” pp. 11-12.<br>
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Toni Morrison “Recitatif” (1983) Morrison (1931–2019) was born in Lorain, Ohio – a small rustbelt town – to working-class parents who had moved from the South. She grew up in financial precarity.
Published (among other works) 11 novels (including Beloved) and one short story.
Won the Pulitzer Prize (1988) and the Nobel Prize for Literature (1993): the first woman of colour to do so.<br>
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Recitatif, recitative Recitatif, recitative
noun
Musical declamation of the kind usual in the narrative and dialogue parts of opera and oratorio, sung in the rhythm of ordinary speech with many words on the same note: singing in recitative.
The tone or rhythm peculiar to any language. Obsolete
Source: Extract from the
Oxford English Dictionary<br>
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Slices of American life A story which stretches from the 1950s to the 1980s, over five separate episodes in the lives of the female protagonists: Twyla – the first-person narrator – and Roberta.
First encounter in a 1950s orphange: these neglected girls – “salt and pepper,” one white and one black – strike up an unlikely friendship.
Snapshots of the tensions and battles in late-century US politics and society.<br>
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“What the hell happened to Maggie?” Morrison invites us, her readers, to ‘guess’ who is who.
Our socialized and media-influenced prejudices are made visible and challenged at every turn.
An illustration of lives lived at the intersections? Read it and decide for yourself…<br>
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References Crenshaw, Kimberlé, “The Intersectionality of Race and Gender Discrimination.” Paper presentation, World Conference Against Racism, Durban, South Africa, August 31–September 8, 2001.
Delgado, Richard, and Jean Stefancic. Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, 4th edn.
New York: New York University Press, 2023.
Grzanka, Patrick R., ed. Intersectionality: Foundations and Frontiers. 2nd edn.
New York & London: Routledge, 2019.
Smith, Zadie. “The Genius of Toni Morrison’s Only Short Story.” New Yorker, January 23, 2022. https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/toni-morrison-recitatif-short-story-zadie-smith.<br>
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Credits & Acknowledgments Robert Craig/University of Bamberg, CC BY 4.0
This contribution is part of the multimedia series #Diversitäten of the ‘Culture and Education’ department of the Bamberg Centre for Teacher Education.
It was created as part of the project ‘DiKuLe: Developing Digital Teaching Cultures’ at the Otto Friedrich University of Bamberg, funded by the Stiftung Innovation in der Hochschullehre.
Project leaders/editors of the contribution series: Adrianna Hlukhovych, Dominik Herrmann, Konstantin Lindner, Sabine Vogt.
