Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Critical Race Theory

Let me try to tackle Critical Race Theory (CRT) in a paragraph, which I'm sure will leave many with some or a lot of questions. CRT looks at the world through a race conscious lens. This means that when it comes to identifying and analyzing oppressive structures, whether deliberate or incidental, race is at the forefront of this process. It breaks from traditional Critical Theory and argues that CT has a history of ignoring the importance of race. Pay attention to the word "importance", Why? Because CRT does not reject the theoretical claims of CT, rather, it takes from these and changes the dynamic of Capitalism/Racism and, perhaps, frames it as Racims/Capitalism. What I mean here is that CT looks at oppressive structures as the result of a capitalist ideology. CRT argues that while the capitalist ideology is core, race, historically, has served as a buffer and the strongest reinforcer of capitalist structures. In addition, capitalism has thrived because of racist ideological forces taht dehumanize beyond what traditional ogliarchic (is that a word?) ideology ever has. A personal note, I am not using CRT "instead of" anything else, rather, I use CRT because it centralizes the theme(s) that I am interested in exploring through my dissertation process. From CRT, like other traditions (latina/o critical theory, critical asian studies, critical race feminism, queer theory, etc.), branch off that focus on a particular form of oppression:

Monday, September 29, 2008

Hello everyone,

I don't know how many will be able to read this latest post but, hopefully, some will eventually. I do have ideas as to what my goals for this class are. I also have a schedule to get them done by. My first goal is to present the final draft of my proposal to CHPR (I think) and have final approval. This I hope to get everything in by this week.
Also I hope to begin writing the first chapter of my dissertation. I hope to have the completed draft of my first chapter by the end of October.
Subsequently I hope to have chapter 2 written by the end of November. And yes Chapter 3 before 2009.
As for reading I have selected three books for this quarter. Courageous conversations (including a facilitator's guide), Critical Pedagogy and race, and Everyday anti-racism.

That is about it!