The Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion hosted a conversation with University of South Carolina Law professor, Kevin Brown, one of the original developers of Critical Race Theory, on Friday, Feb. 10, to celebrate Black History Month.

Critical Race Theory (CRT), as defined by Brown, is “a framework that helps understand how race and racism continue to shape the meaning of racial inequality in our dominant culture, our concepts of equality, laws, and our institutional, governmental, and private practices.”

In recent years, CRT has been “misrepresented” and used to “criticize public education and other diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives,” according to the event’s webpage. In this talk, Professor Brown expressed the wish to correct the misunderstanding of the Theory and help the public take another look at racial relations in America under the framework of CRT.

In the McCarthy era, defined by heightened vigilance against potential communist infiltration, the Theory was believed to be “communist or Marxist” for its advocacy of equity, according to the professor. Brown emphasized that he, along with his fellow scholars of CRT, have staunchly believed in America’s economic system, and their activism aimed only for a “fairer distribution.”

“As a result of not understanding [CRT], our society continues to generate racial disparities, visible in significant socio-economic statistics despite civil rights reforms of the 1950s and 1960s,” Brown said.

Intentional, de jure discrimination in legislation was not what the CRT scholar group worried about.

“Legal changes during the Civil Rights movement were sufficient to deal with it,” Brown said. “It was really the different experiences due to [history] and the normalization of racial disparities saying that Black people are supposed to have less [that is alarming].” 

Professor Brown said the root of the problem lies in America’s individualist culture, which ascribes one’s prosperity to personal merit only. It is a “conceptual blind spot,” he said, as America’s racial history is too “influential” to be ignored.

“Self-determination is important, but all of us are also products of the history of our society,” Brown said.

Addressing how the Civil Rights Era has shaped today’s society, Brown discussed the SCOTUS’s questioning of the constitutionality of affirmative action. He also talked about the problems with ignoring race in the “Colorblind Era.”

“[Policies supporting colorblindness] den[y] the lived experiences of people of color that are shaped by race…and discount the impact of history on the current racial disparities,” Brown said.

Professor Brown finished the talk by briefing the audience on the current positions held by CRT. 

In these position statements, Brown stressed the importance of factoring into consideration the “discriminatory past” and the necessity of raising “a racial consciousness” that can effectuate real changes.

“All of us are being influenced by these dominant ideas, our past — and these are the ideas that we are trying to stop,” Brown said. “But to stop them, you have to be conscious of the unconscious way in which those ideas have their hold on us.”

Editor’s Note: This article was revised after its original publication.