On Critical Race Theory

Starred review from June 13, 2022
University of Iowa sociologist Ray debuts with an illuminating primer on critical race theory. He details the field’s genesis in legal studies—specifically the insight that ostensibly race-neutral laws can perpetuate racist outcomes—and its incorporation of other social sciences. A brief overview of racism as “a basic organizing principle in America’s political history” (the three-fifths compromise, Jim Crow) is followed by lucid explanations of key concepts in critical race theory, including the idea that race is not an immutable biological attribute, but a malleable social and political construction used to justify exploitation. Elsewhere, Ray draws on the example of the civil rights movement, which achieved its greatest successes at a time when the Soviet Union was exploiting America’s racial hypocrisy to spread its influence around the world, to argue that racial progress has typically been made when it benefits a critical mass of white people. Ray also contends that “when it comes to political agenda–setting, White identity politics are the most successful identity politics in American history,” because they insist on a normative neutrality that allows other people’s political goals to be classed as “special interests.” Distinguished by its clarity of thought, purpose, and expression, this is a stirring defense of critical race theory as an “intellectual bulwark” against attempts to undermine multiracial democracy.