The Critical Race Studies in Education Association (CRSEA) is an interdisciplinary consortium of experts who recognize the global implications of race and education for minoritized people. Through scholarship, we identify and expose inequities for the ultimate eradication of white supremacy. As a community, we are committed to (1) countering and combating systemic and structural racism with scholarship and praxis, (2) recognizing the multiple locations of oppression and the myriad manifestations and effects of their intersections and (3) co-constructing liberating knowledge that facilitates collective agency to transform schools and communities.
With this mission, the annual Critical Race Studies in Education (CRSEA) conference and other events bring together scholars, activists, educators, students and community members who use critical race studies as a tool to frame, examine, document, understand and transform racial inequalities in education and in the broader society.
When reflecting on Critical Race Theory, white supremacy, and the racial concept of whiteness, it can be helpful to consider these three pieces of information.
- CRT includes a component of intersectionality that “privilege[s] the concept of race as the point of departure for critique, not the end of it” (Leonardo, 2005, p. xi).
- It is important to make a distinction between whiteness as “a racial discourse” and white people, a term applied to “a socially constructed identity, usually based on skin color” (Leonardo, 2010, p. 31).
- CRT defines white supremacy as “a regime of assumptions and practices that constantly privilege the interests of White people but are so deeply rooted that they appear normal to most people in the culture” (Gillborn, 2011b, p. 32). Anti-racism is a battle to end white supremacy, not dehumanize white people.