A vast amount of research documents significant and persistent racial/ethnic disparities in almost every key health metric in the United States, including life expectancy, infant and maternal mortality, cardiovascular disease incidence and mortality, homicide, and COVID-19. Starting Point-Racial Inequality Exists: In CRT, the starting point is the actual existence of racial inequality. Summarized below are four main tenets of CRT and how they are fundamental to understanding and addressing the significant racial inequities in population health in the United States.
![critical race theory tenets explained critical race theory tenets explained](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/David-Gillborn/publication/232852856/figure/fig1/AS:534993004920832@1504563680869/Critical-Race-Theory-a-conceptual-map.png)
There can be no objective or effective teaching, research, or practice addressing population health disparities by race that does not implicitly or explicitly incorporate the tenets of CRT. This is especially important for the field of population health, broadly defined as science and practice related to the geospatial and social distribution of health-related exposures, risks, resources, and outcomes within and across populations. Thus, CRT is a framework for a critical (i.e., deep, historical, complex) analysis of what drives ongoing racial inequality that builds upon long-standing scientific theories and concepts, and is supported by decades of multidisciplinary scholarship.Īny pundit, person, or group criticizing or defending CRT should understand its main tenets. Taken alone or combined as CRT, these tenets are widely used in the humanities and myriad sciences, including the social and population sciences. Rather it is a bundling of tenets or suppositions that have a longer history in scholarship attempting to understand persistent racial disparities in economic, political, and social experiences and outcomes, including outcomes related to health. 2 Importantly, CRT was not created de novo. 1ĬRT was coined and grew within academic legal studies in the 1970s-1980s by scholar-advocates who were interested in exploring how law and other forms of public policy could secure/protect civil rights, yet also serve to reproduce and codify racial hierarchy and discrimination.
![critical race theory tenets explained critical race theory tenets explained](https://chronicle.brightspotcdn.com/89/71/4ca387ee47568e6290931f1615d2/pettitcriticalracetheory-williamson.jpg)
Policy rhetoric also shallowly misrepresents these frameworks and concepts as harmful to children by teaching divisiveness, prejudice, collective guilt, and racial segregation.
![critical race theory tenets explained critical race theory tenets explained](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Felicia-Mensah-2/publication/324274201/figure/tbl1/AS:669542854430722@1536642864341/Overview-of-Critical-Race-Theory-Themes.png)
In most policy discussions, CRT is used as a catchphrase or label for any type of pedagogy or training that attempts to elucidate institutional or systemic discrimination, implicit bias, colonialism, and other terms related to racial inequality. As of early July 2021, legislation prohibiting the discussion of CRT in K-12 public schools has been introduced in Congress and 22 state legislatures, passing into law in 6 states. Critical Race Theory (CRT) has recently become the focus of conservative pundits’ vitriol and Republican lawmakers’ knee-jerk policy action.