What is Critical Race Theory and why it is relevant to South Africa

Critical Race Theory and Transformation and Decolonisation

The struggle for transformation and decolonisation at South African universities has found contemporary and historical reverberations elsewhere, especially in the United States. Today’s protests in the United States under the banner Blacks Lives Matter and the earlier Occupy Wall Street (and its several spinoffs) have resonated strongly with this generation of South African students both with respect to the racial realities as well as the economic inequalities that continue to haunt both societies. In addition, the symbols as displayed in social media and other forms of popular communication suggest a strong affinity with Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street.

Because the South African university protests reverberated strongly with their American counterparts, and because race and racial transformation are so central to the demands of the protesters, the following questions surface: What relevance might a critical race perspective bring to our understanding of transformation and decolonisation at South African universities (and other institutions) and what is the transformative potential of such a perspective?

Critical race theory (CRT) seems most pertinent since it speaks directly to this historical moment in South Africa and the need to realign and readjust the racial (and economic) order. CRT invites a radical approach to South African social and economic relations that advances the centrality of race as key to that approach, in the same way that Franz Fanon and Steve Biko postulated.

What is CRT?

Embraced by a growing number of legal scholars of colour in the United States beginning in the late 1980s, CRT incorporates “an experientially grounded, oppositionally expressed, and transformatively aspirational concern with race and other socially constructed hierarchies”. Displaying scepticism of liberalism, much of critical race theory is characterised as well by “deep discontent” with “civil rights litigation and activism, faith in the legal system, and hope for progress”.

The genesis of much of critical race theory suggests a hybrid of critical theories and perspectives with race at the core.

Despite diverse methodologies and perspectives of those whose work falls under the umbrella of CRT, the unifying theme of this body of work is a concern with the legacy of racial subordination in the United States and its reflection in law’s edifice. Under the label, Critical Race Feminism, CRT also includes a critique of the underbelly of patriarchy, sexism and homophobia in the United States and globally. CRT has also seen offshoots in Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom.

Although redressing poverty and economic inequality will remain the core of the goals of social justice advocates, it is the continuous tethering of blackness to poverty and economic inequality that mandates a racialized analysis. This is why the tenets of CRT are so apposite in South Africa today.

This half-day course will be taught by Professor Penelope Andrews, Dean and Professor of Law at the University of Cape Town, and Professor Kendall Thomas, Nash Professor of Law and Director of the Center for the Study of Law and Culture at Columbia Law School.

To register, go to www.lawatwork.uct.ac.za/critical-race-theory or contact paula.allen@uct.ac.za.

Professor Kendall Thomas

Kendall Thomas is the Nash Professor of Law and co-founder and director of the Center for the Study of Law and Culture at Columbia Law School. His teaching and research interests include U.S. and comparative constitutional law, human rights, legal philosophy, feminist legal theory, critical race theory, and law and sexuality.  Read more ...