top of page

CRT Quotes

COLORBLIND & RELATED QUOTES

OTHER INTERESTING QUOTES

 The justification for colorblindness is "feeble" and raises doubt that "it can produce a more just and legitimate social world." – Kimberle Crenshaw et al., "Seeing Race Again," p. ix

 

"Racial power is constituted and reproduced through colorblind tropes." – Kimberle Crenshaw et al., "Seeing Race Again," p. xi

 

"[D]octrinal rules that framed colorblindness as the constitutional embodiment of race neutrality were nothing but a policy choice of judges." – Kimberle Crenshaw et al., "Seeing Race Again," p. xiii

 

"Prohibiting state agencies from recognizing race makes it impossible to craft effective remedies for racial discrimination." – George Lipsitz, "Seeing Race Again," p. 37

 

"[C]olorblindness [is] designed to preserve, protect and defend the privileges and powers of whiteness." – George Lipsitz, "Seeing Race Again," p. 44

 

"A color-blind interpretation of the Constitution legitimates and thereby maintains the social, economic, and political advantages that whites hold over other Americans." – Neil Gotanda in Crenshaw et al., "Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement," p. 257

 

"Unhappily, most black spokespersons and civil rights organizations remain committed to the ideology of racial equality." – Derrick A. Bell Jr. in Crenshaw et al., "Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement," p. 308

 

"[W]e can never determine beforehand whether a practice will be racist or antiracist solely from its content." – Jayne Chong-Soon Lee in in Crenshaw et al., "Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement," p. 446


"While appearing to be color blind and power evasive, patriarchal whiteness is a system that protects the privileges of whites through diminishing Indigenous entitlements." –Aileen Moreton-Robinson, "The White Possessive," p. 77

"[T]he traditional liberal image of the law as the neutral, impersonal mediator of group conflicts masks its function in producing and insulating white dominance." – Kimberle Crenshaw et al., "Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement," p. 3

 

"[T]he identities celebrated as universal by the standards of humanism and liberalism are almost always actually dominant particulars masquerading as universals." – Kimberle Crenshaw et al., "Seeing Race Again," p. 3

 

"In a society suffused with systematic school segregation, employment discrimination, and voting suppression. . ." – George Lipsitz, "Seeing Race Again," p. 39

 

"The long history of focusing on racism as color hides its identity as a condition. Racism today is less a matter of interpersonal recognition than of societal organization." – George Lipsitz, "Seeing Race Again," p. 42

 

"Critical Race Theory was the embodiment of a race-conscious and justice-oriented intellectual project." – Kimberle Crenshaw, "Seeing Race Again," p. 54

 

"[Critical Legal Studies] has unabashedly challenged the accepted values of classical liberalism by undermining the interpretations of private property, individual rights, equality of opportunity, meritocracy, and governmental power which have sustained and reproduced oppressive hierarchies of wealth and power" – Anthony E. Cook in Crenshaw et al., "Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement," p. 85

 

"[The law is] a series of ideological constructs that operate to support existing social arrangements by convincing people that things are both inevitable and fair." – Kimberle Crenshaw, "Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement," p. 108

 

"Critical scholars derive their vision of legal ideology from the work of Antonio Gramsci, an Italian neo-Marxist theorist." – Kimberle Crenshaw, "Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement," p. 108 

 

"Critical race theorists are insurgents in the efforts to undermine dominant, context-setting assumptions and truths." – John. O. Calmore in Crenshaw et al., "Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement," p. 326

 

"[W]e can never determine beforehand whether a practice will be racist or antiracist solely from its content." – Jayne Chong-Soon Lee in in Crenshaw et al., "Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement," p. 446

bottom of page