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Critical Race Theory: History, Central Tenets and Context
Original Program Date :
Length: 1.0
Advancing an interdisciplinary approach to critique the law and its role in preserving and maintaining structural inequality, CRT focuses on analyzing several recurrent themes in the law:
(i) interest convergence (the concept that any “progress” on racial issues is purely the product of whether it contributes to the status quo of inequality);
(ii) revisionist history (a critique of how history has been de-contextualized to advance a distorted historical narrative of America’s racial progress);
(iii) colorblindness and post-racialism (a critique of “neutrality” and the role it plays in the maintenance of systemic subordination of people of color); and
(iv) structural determinism (the proposition that racism is structural and adaptable so that societal change is incremental and limited).
Speaker: Professor Cedric Merlin Powell, Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs Professor of Law Distinguished Teaching Professor University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law
PLEASE NOTE: there were technical difficulties resulting in losing the video portion of Professor Powell's presentation and it switches to audio-only.
Cedric Merlin Powell, Professor
Cedric Merlin Powell received his B.A. with Honors in Politics from Oberlin College in 1984 and his J.D. in 1987 from New York University School of Law, where he served as Managing Editor of The N.Y.U. Review of Law and Social Change. Prior work experiences include a judicial clerkship with the Honorable Julia Cooper Mack of the D.C. Court of Appeals from 1987-88, a one-year term as Karpatkin Fellow in the national office of the American Civil Liberties Union in New York from 1988-89, and as a litigation associate with the New York law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, from 1989-93.
He is a member of the Ohio and New York state bars, and is admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States, and the federal courts of the Second and Sixth Circuits, and the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York.
Professor Powell has written over a broad range of topics including affirmative action and Critical Race Theory, the First Amendment and hate speech, and the Fourteenth Amendment and structural inequality. All of his scholarship critiques neutrality as a means of preserving structural inequality, and advances theories of substantive equality which reject colorblindness and post-racialism as normative principles in constitutional analysis.
Professor Powell was awarded the Ferreri & Fogle Fellowship for teaching in 1998, 2000-2001 and again in 2007. He was the recipient of the Ann Oldfather fellowship in 2006, and he won the University Multicultural Teaching Award in 2000. He was recognized by the historic Chestnut Street YMCA as a 2014 Adult Black Achiever. Professor Powell was awarded the 2014 LBA Justice William E. McAnulty, Jr., Trailblazer Award, the first law professor to be so honored.
