the part about controversies and disagreements at the bottom of

the wikipedia entry for critical race theory

if people already have the charles mills article “but what are you really?”, then you could revisit that, although probably that won’t be the reading… (it’s a bit long), it’s just really interesting.

the following is from CRT:an intro

What do critical race theorists believe? Probably not every
member would subscribe to every tenet set out in this book,
but many would agree on the following propositions. First,
that racism is ordinary, not aberrational—“normal science,”
the usual way society does business, the common, everyday
experience of most people of color in this country. Second,
most would agree that our system of white-over-color ascendancy
serves important purposes, both psychic and material.
The first feature, ordinariness, means that racism is difficult
to cure or address. Color-blind, or “formal,” conceptions of
equality, expressed in rules that insist only on treatment that
is the same across the board, can thus remedy only the most
blatant forms of discrimination, such as mortgage redlining
or the refusal to hire a black Ph.D. rather than a white high
school dropout, that do stand out and attract our attention.
The second feature, sometimes called “interest convergence”
or material determinism, adds a further dimension. Because
racism advances the interests of both white elites (materially)
and working-class people (psychically), large segments of society have little incentive to eradicate it. Consider, for example,
Derrick Bell’s shocking proposal (discussed in a later
chapter) that Brown v. Board of Education—considered a
great triumph of civil rights litigation—may have resulted
more from the self-interest of elite whites than a desire to
help blacks.
A third theme of critical race theory, the “social construction”
thesis, holds that race and races are products of social
thought and relations. Not objective, inherent, or fixed, they
correspond to no biological or genetic reality; rather, races
are categories that society invents, manipulates, or retires
when convenient. People with common origins share certain
physical traits, of course, such as skin color, physique, and
hair texture. But these constitute only an extremely small
portion of their genetic endowment, are dwarfed by that
which we have in common, and have little or nothing to do
with distinctly human, higher-order traits, such as personality,
intelligence, and moral behavior. That society frequently
chooses to ignore these scientific facts, creates races, and endows them with pseudo-permanent characteristics is of great interest to critical race theory.
Another, somewhat more recent, development concerns
differential racialization and its many consequences. Critical
writers in law, as well as social science, have drawn attention
to the ways the dominant society racializes different minority
groups at different times, in response to shifting needs
such as the labor market. At one period, for example, society
may have had little use for blacks, but much need for
Mexican or Japanese agricultural workers. At another time,
the Japanese, including citizens of long standing, may have
been in intense disfavor and removed to war relocation
camps, while society cultivated other groups of color for jobs
in war industry or as cannon fodder on the front. Popular
images and stereotypes of various minority groups shift over
time, as well. In one era, a group of color may be depicted as
happy-go-lucky, simpleminded, and content to serve white
folks. A little later, when conditions change, that very same
group may appear in cartoons, movies, and other cultural
scripts as menacing, brutish, and out of control, requiring
close monitoring and repression.
Closely related to differential racialization—the idea that
each race has its own origins and ever evolving history—is
the notion of intersectionality and anti-essentialism. No person has a single, easily stated, unitary identity. A white feminist
may be Jewish, or working-class, or a single mother. An
African American activist may be gay or lesbian. A Latino
may be a Democrat, a Republican, or even a black—perhaps
because that person’s family hails from the Caribbean. An
Asian may be a recently arrived Hmong of rural background
and unfamiliar with mercantile life, or a fourth-generation
Chinese with a father who is a university professor and a
mother who operates a business. Everyone has potentially
conflicting, overlapping identities, loyalties, and allegiances.
A final element concerns the notion of a unique voice of
color. Coexisting in somewhat uneasy tension with anti-essentialism, the voice-of-color thesis holds that because of
their different histories and experiences with oppression,
black, Indian, Asian, and Latino/a writers and thinkers may
be able to communicate to their white counterparts matters
that the whites are unlikely to know. Minority status, in
other words, brings with it a presumed competence to speak
about race and racism. The ““legal storytelling” movement
urges black and brown writers to recount their experiences
with racism and the legal system and to apply their own
unique perspectives to assess law’s master narratives.

things even this cursory reading brings up–
1. what does it mean that the most cutting edge theory on race is coming from a group of lawyers?
2. obviously the solutions for lawyers are not going to be ours, but what responses could anarchists have to these different thoughts on what race means/implies in the us?
3. intersectionality is a term that has taken off amongst identity adherents. the concept was intended to be a challenge to essentialism, but seems not to have been at all. what do people think about that? have you had experiences with this term in particular?

and… a random but very interesting chapter from Seeing Through Race: Idolatry