The Attack on ‘Critical Race Theory’

The Attack on ‘Critical Race Theory’

Kimberlé Crenshaw on the term she helped create, plus David Talbot and Margaret Talbot on the 1960s.

Start Making Sense and Jon Wiener
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Critical Race Theory has been attacked on Fox News nearly 1,300 times. It’s being banned from public schools and colleges in something like 15 Republican-controlled states. But what is “critical race theory”? And why is this happening now? Kimberlé Crenshaw explains; she teaches law at Columbia and UCLA, and she’s probably the most prominent figure associated with critical race theory—she coined the term 30 years ago. She’s also creator of the concept “intersectionality” and the hashtag #SayHerName.

Also: there’s a new book about the sixties—about the heroism, and the disasters, of the movements of that decade. The authors are the brother and sister team David Talbot and Margaret Talbot—David is the founder of Salon, and Margaret writes for The New Yorker.

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Start Making Sense Start Making Sense is The Nation’s podcast, hosted by Jon Wiener and coproduced by the Los Angeles Review of Books. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts for new episodes each Thursday.  


Jon Wiener Jon Wiener is a contributing editor of The Nation and co-author (with Mike Davis) of Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties.


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