Legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw is one of the founders of Critical Race Theory and Executive Director of the African American Policy Forum, which developed the #TruthBeTold campaign in the fall of 2020 to respond to attacks on CRT. These short videos from this campaign are a great place to begin to understand CRT and what’s going on today:

• #TruthBeTold: What is Critical Race Theory? (one-minute video)

• #TruthBeTold: The Fight For Our Lives (two-minute video)

Check out the website for the #TruthBeTold Campaign

Read Kimberlé Crenshaw’s op-ed in the Washington Post (July 2, 2021): The panic over critical race theory is an attempt to whitewash U.S. history

Read Kimberlé Crenshaw’s op-ed in the Los Angeles Times (January 17, 2022): King was a critical race theorist before there was a name for it

In this short, accessible video, Critical Race Theorist Gloria Ladson-Billings explains Critical Race Theory (10 minutes)

This video reflects on the founding of the Critical Race Studies program at UCLA Law School more than 20 years ago and is a great way to see an overview of Critical Race Theory as well as meet some of the field’s founders:

• Founding the Critical Race Studies Program at UCLA School of Law

This longer #TruthBeTold video is from December 2020 and does a great job of explaining CRT and its value more thoroughly: #TruthBeTold: The Destructiveness of Trump’s Equity Gag Order and What Biden Must Do Now (1.5 hour video)

UCLA Law School has had a Critical Race Studies program for 20 years. This video features Cheryl Harris, who published “Whiteness as Property” in the Harvard Law Review in 1993, which became one of the most significant texts of CRT. This excellent video features Cheryl Harris and other CRT experts:

• Critical Race Theory Under Attack: The Fight for Antiracist Education (50 minute video)

This episode of Kimberlé Crenshaw’s podcast Intersectionality Matters was recorded during the August 2021 Critical Race Theory Summer School, which included discussions among several founders of CRT:

• The Insurgent Origins of Critical Race Theory

Crenshaw later recorded another episode of Intersectionality Matters focusing on how educators and students are dealing with the backlash to CRT (recorded Nov. 15, 2021)

• Educators Ungagged: Teaching Truth in the Era of Racial Backlash

If you aren’t familiar with Kimberlé Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality, watch her TED Talk here:

• The urgency of intersectionality

The following insightful articles address the attacks on CRT in the summer of 2021:

New York Times columnist Charles Blow:

• Demonizing Critical Race Theory
• How Our Classrooms Became Battlegrounds
• The G.O.P. Is Making ‘Critical Race Theory’ the New ‘Shariah Law’ (Jan. 5, 2022)

Salon writer Chauncey DeVega:

• America’s history wars get serious: Texas GOP wants to dump MLK, whitewash KKK

• To Trumpers, “critical race theory” is as bad as the Taliban — and they’re not kidding

Critical Race Theorist Gary Peller:

• I’ve Been a Critical Race Theorist for 30 Years. Our Opponents Are Just Proving Our Point For Us.

Additional valuable analysis about the attacks on CRT:

• Critical Race Theory Might Actually Save Us

• Culture War in the K-12 Classroom

• Critical race theory battle invades school boards — with help from conservative groups

• Why the panic over “critical race theory” is the perfect right-wing troll

• The War on Critical Race Theory

• Critical race theory’s opponents are sure it’s bad. Whatever it is.

• What the hysteria over critical race theory is really all about

• Covering critical race theory and the push to keep it out of US public schools: 4 tips for journalists

Book bans (2022)

• Book bans in schools are catching fire. Black authors say uproar isn’t about students.

Additional resources:

• The Man Behind Critical Race Theory [an article about legal scholar Derrick Bell]

Compiled by Karen Gaffney, author of Dismantling the Racism Machine: A Manual and Toolbox (Routledge) and creator of the website Divided No Longer

I also wrote an op-ed about the significance of the attacks on CRT:

• One Karen’s Perspective on Our Whitewashed History: The attacks on critical race theory are only the latest chapter in the American fight against equality and justice

Please reach out to me with any feedback, additional sources, and/or questions you have about this page. I will continue to add resources.

Thanks, Karen Gaffney

Email: dividednolonger AT gmail.com