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Critical Race Theory: A Brief History

How a complicated and expansive academic theory developed during the 1980s has become a hot-button political issue 40 years later.

By Jacey Fortin

About a year ago, even as the United States was seized by protests against racism, many Americans had never heard the phrase “ critical race theory. ”

Now, suddenly, the term is everywhere. It makes national and international headlines and is a target for talking heads. Culture wars over critical race theory have turned school boards into battlegrounds, and in higher education, the term has been tangled up in tenure battles . Dozens of United States senators have branded it “activist indoctrination.”

But C.R.T., as it is often abbreviated, is not new. It’s a graduate-level academic framework that encompasses decades of scholarship, which makes it difficult to find a satisfying answer to the basic question:

What, exactly, is critical race theory ?

First things first …

The person widely credited with coining the term is Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, a law professor at the U.C.L.A. School of Law and Columbia Law School.

Asked for a definition, she first raised a question of her own: Why is this coming up now?

“It’s only prompted interest now that the conservative right wing has claimed it as a subversive set of ideas,” she said, adding that news outlets, including The New York Times, were covering critical race theory because it has been “made the problem by a well-resourced, highly mobilized coalition of forces.”

Some of those critics seem to cast racism as a personal characteristic first and foremost — a problem caused mainly by bigots who practice overt discrimination — and to frame discussions about racism as shaming, accusatory or divisive.

But critical race theorists say they are mainly concerned with institutions and systems.

“The problem is not bad people,” said Mari Matsuda, a law professor at the University of Hawaii who was an early developer of critical race theory. “The problem is a system that reproduces bad outcomes. It is both humane and inclusive to say, ‘We have done things that have hurt all of us, and we need to find a way out.’”

OK, so what is it?

Critical race theorists reject the philosophy of “colorblindness.” They acknowledge the stark racial disparities that have persisted in the United States despite decades of civil rights reforms, and they raise structural questions about how racist hierarchies are enforced, even among people with good intentions.

Proponents tend to understand race as a creation of society, not a biological reality. And many say it is important to elevate the voices and stories of people who experience racism.

But critical race theory is not a single worldview; the people who study it may disagree on some of the finer points. As Professor Crenshaw put it, C.R.T. is more a verb than a noun.

“It is a way of seeing, attending to, accounting for, tracing and analyzing the ways that race is produced,” she said, “the ways that racial inequality is facilitated, and the ways that our history has created these inequalities that now can be almost effortlessly reproduced unless we attend to the existence of these inequalities.”

Professor Matsuda described it as a map for change.

“For me,” she said, “critical race theory is a method that takes the lived experience of racism seriously, using history and social reality to explain how racism operates in American law and culture, toward the end of eliminating the harmful effects of racism and bringing about a just and healthy world for all.”

Why is this coming up now?

Like many other academic frameworks, critical race theory has been subject to various counterarguments over the years . Some critics suggested, for example, that the field sacrificed academic rigor in favor of personal narratives. Others wondered whether its emphasis on systemic problems diminished the agency of individual people.

This year, the debates have spilled far beyond the pages of academic papers .

Last year, after protests over the police killing of George Floyd prompted new conversations about structural racism in the United States, President Donald J. Trump issued a memo to federal agencies that warned against critical race theory, labeling it as “divisive,” followed by an executive order barring any training that suggested the United States was fundamentally racist.

His focus on C.R.T. seemed to have originated with an interview he saw on Fox News, when Christopher F. Rufo , a conservative scholar now at the Manhattan Institute , told Tucker Carlson about the “cult indoctrination” of critical race theory.

Use of the term skyrocketed from there, though it is often used to describe a range of activities that don’t really fit the academic definition, like acknowledging historical racism in school lessons or attending diversity trainings at work.

The Biden administration rescinded Mr. Trump’s order, but by then it had already been made into a wedge issue. Republican-dominated state legislatures have tried to implement similar bans with support from conservative groups, many of whom have chosen public schools as a battleground .

“The woke class wants to teach kids to hate each other, rather than teaching them how to read,” Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said to the state’s board of education in June, shortly before it moved to ban critical race theory. He has also called critical race theory “state-sanctioned racism.”

According to Professor Crenshaw, opponents of C.R.T. are using a decades-old tactic: insisting that acknowledging racism is itself racist .

“The rhetoric allows for racial equity laws, demands and movements to be framed as aggression and discrimination against white people,” she said. That, she added, is at odds with what critical race theorists have been saying for four decades.

What happened four decades ago?

In 1980, Derrick Bell left Harvard Law School.

Professor Bell, a pioneering legal scholar who died in 2011 , is often described as the godfather of critical race theory. “He broke open the possibility of bringing Black consciousness to the premiere intellectual battlefields of our profession,” Professor Matsuda said.

His work explored (among other things) what it would mean to understand racism as a permanent feature of American life, and whether it was easier to pass civil rights legislation in the United States because those laws ultimately served the interests of white people .

After Professor Bell left Harvard Law, a group of students there began protesting the faculty’s lack of diversity. In 1983, The New York Times reported , the school had 60 tenured law professors. All but one were men, and only one was Black.

The demonstrators, including Professors Crenshaw and Matsuda, who were then graduate students at Harvard, also chafed at the limitations of their curriculum in critical legal studies, a discipline that questioned the neutrality of the American legal system, and sought to expand it to explore how laws sustained racial hierarchies.

“It was our job to rethink what these institutions were teaching us,” Professor Crenshaw said, “and to assist those institutions in transforming them into truly egalitarian spaces.”

The students saw that stark racial inequality had persisted despite the civil rights legislation of the 1950s and ’ 60s. They sought, and then developed, new tools and principles to understand why. A workshop that Professor Crenshaw organized in 1989 helped to establish these ideas as part of a new academic framework called critical race theory.

What is critical race theory used for today?

OiYan Poon, an associate professor with Colorado State University who studies race, education and intersectionality, said that opponents of critical race theory should try to learn about it from the original sources.

“If they did,” she said, “they would recognize that the founders of C.R.T. critiqued liberal ideologies, and that they called on research scholars to seek out and understand the roots of why racial disparities are so persistent, and to systemically dismantle racism.”

To that end, branches of C.R.T. have evolved that focus on the particular experiences of Indigenous , Latino , Asian American , and Black people and communities. In her own work, Dr. Poon has used C.R.T. to analyze Asian Americans’ opinions about affirmative action .

That expansiveness “signifies the potency and strength of critical race theory as a living theory — one that constantly evolves,” said María C. Ledesma, a professor of educational leadership at San José State University who has used critical race theory in her analyses of campus climate , pedagogy and the experiences of first-generation college students. “People are drawn to it because it resonates with them.”

Some scholars of critical race theory see the framework as a way to help the United States live up to its own ideals, or as a model for thinking about the big, daunting problems that affect everyone on this planet.

“I see it like global warming,” Professor Matsuda said. “We have a serious problem that requires big, structural changes; otherwise, we are dooming future generations to catastrophe. Our inability to think structurally, with a sense of mutual care, is dooming us — whether the problem is racism, or climate disaster, or world peace.”

Critical race theory in science education: moving forward and making critical connections to race through the DAST research

Published: 11 March 2022
Volume 17 , pages 169–176, ( 2022 )

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Shari Earnest Watkins 1

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In this paper, I discuss how Walls employs color-blind ideology, a critical race theory (CRT) tenet to analyze the role of race in the draw-a-scientist (DAST) literature. Walls’ article, A critical race theory analysis of the draw-a-scientist test: Are they really that white? exposes how omitting race in DAST research leads to inaccurate perceptions and perpetuates stereotypes that children’s views and images of scientists are White and male. This commentary focuses on identifying the ways Walls sheds light on color-blind ideology in DAST and offers insights for extending the use of CRT in science education.

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This review essay addresses issues raised in Leon Walls’s paper entitled: A Critical Race Theory Analysis of the Draw-a-Scientist Test: Are They Really that White? ( https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-022-10107-6 )

This manuscript is part of the special issue “Science education and the African Diaspora in the United States”, guest edited by Mary M. Atwater and Jomo W. Mutegi.

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Earnest Watkins, S. Critical race theory in science education: moving forward and making critical connections to race through the DAST research. Cult Stud of Sci Educ 17 , 169–176 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-022-10108-5

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The State of Critical Race Theory in Education

Posted February 23, 2022
By Jill Anderson
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Moral, Civic, and Ethical Education

When Gloria Ladson-Billings set out in the 1990s to adapt critical race theory from law to education, she couldn’t have predicted that it would become the focus of heated school debates today.

Over the past couple years, the scrutiny of critical race theory — a theory she pioneered to help explain racial inequities in education — has become heavily politicized in school communities and by legislators. Along the way, it has also been grossly misunderstood and used as a lump term about many things that are not actually critical race theory, Ladson-Billings says.

“It's like if I hate it, it must be critical race theory,” Ladson-Billings says. “You know, that could be anything from any discussions about diversity or equity. And now it's spread into LGBTQA things. Talk about gender, then that's critical race theory. Social-emotional learning has now gotten lumped into it. And so it is fascinating to me how the term has been literally sucked of all of its meaning and has now become 'anything I don't like.'”

In this week’s Harvard EdCast, Ladson-Billings discusses how she pioneered critical race theory, the current politicization and tension around teaching about race in the classroom, and offers a path forward for educators eager to engage in work that deals with the truth about America’s history.

TRANSCRIPT:

Jill Anderson: I'm Jill Anderson. This is the Harvard EdCast.

Gloria Ladson-Billings never imagined a day when the words critical race theory would make the daily news, be argued over at school board meetings, or targeted by legislators. She pioneered an adaptation of critical race theory from law to education back in the 1990s. She's an educational researcher focused on theory and pedagogy who at the time was looking for a better way to explain racial disparities in education.

Today the theory is widely misunderstood and being used as an umbrella term for anything tied to race and education. I wondered what Gloria sees as a path forward from here. First, I wanted to know what she was thinking in this moment of increased tension and politicization around critical race theory and education.

Well, if I go back and look at the strategy that's been employed to attack critical race theory, it actually is pretty brilliant from a strategic point of view. The first time that I think that general public really hears this is in September of '20 when then president and candidate Donald Trump, who incidentally is behind in the polls, says that we're not going to have it because it's going to destroy democracy. It's going to tear the country apart. I'm not going to fund any training that even mentions critical race theory.

And what's interesting, he says, "And anti-racism." Now he's now paired two things together that were not really paired together in the literature and in practice. But if you dig a little deeper, you will find on the Twitter feed of Christopher Rufo, who is from the Manhattan Institute, two really I think powerful tweets. One in which he says, "We're going to render this brand toxic." Essentially what we're going to do is make you think, whenever you hear anything negative, you will think critical race theory. And it will destroy all of the, quote, cultural insanities. I think that's his term that Americans despise. There's a lot to be unpacked there, which Americans? Who is he talking about? What are these cultural insanities? And then there's another tweet in which he says, "We have effectively frozen the brand." So anytime you think of anything crazy, you think critical race theory. So he's done this very effective job of rendering the term, in some ways without meaning. It's like if I hate it, it must be critical race theory.

You know, that could be anything from any discussions about diversity or equity. And now it's spread into LGBTQA things. Talk about gender, then that's critical race theory. Social emotional learning has now got lumped into it. And so it is fascinating to me how the term has been literally sucked of all of its meaning and has now become anything I don't like.

Jill Anderson: Can you break it down? What is critical race theory? What isn't it?

Gloria Ladson-Billings: Let me be pretty elemental here. Critical race theory is a theoretical tool that began in legal studies, in law schools, in an attempt to explain racial inequity. It serves the same function in education. How do you explain the inequity of achievement, the racial inequity of achievement in our schools?

Now let's be clear. The nation has always had an explanation for inequity. Since 1619, it's always had a explanation. And indeed from 1619 to the mid 20th century, that explanation was biogenetic. Those people are just not smart enough. Those people are just not worthy enough. Those people are not moral enough.

In fact across the country, we had on college and university campuses, programs and departments in eugenics. If you went to the World's Fair or the World Expositions back in the turn of the 20th century, you could see exhibits with, quote, groups of people from the best group who was always white and typically blonde and blue eyed, to the worst group, which is typically a group of Africans, generally pygmies. So the idea is you can rank people. So we've always had an explanation for why we thought inequity exists.

Somewhere around the mid 20th century, 1950s, you'll get a switch that says, well, no, it's really not genetic it's that some groups haven't had an equal opportunity. That was a powerful explanation. So one of the things that you begin to see around mid 1950s is legislation and court decisions, Brown versus Board of Education. You start to see the Voters Rights Act. You see the Civil Rights Act. You see affirmative action going into the 1960s. And yeah, I think that's a pretty good, powerful explanatory model.

Except they all get rolled back. 1954, Brown v. Board of Education . How many of our kids are still in segregated schools in 2022? So that didn't hold. Affirmative action. The court's about to hear that, right? Because of actually the case that's coming out of Harvard. Voters rights. How many of our states have rolled back voters rights? You can't give a person a bottle of water who was waiting in line in Georgia. We're shrinking the window for when people can vote.

So all of the things that were a part of the equality of opportunity explanation have rolled away. Critical race theory's explanation for racial inequality is that it is baked into the way we have organized the society. It is not aberrant. It's not one of those things that we all clutch our pearls and say, "Oh my God, I can't believe that happened." It happens on a regular basis all the time. And so that's really one of the tenets that people are uncomfortable hearing. That it's not abnormal behavior in our society for people to react in racist ways.

Jill Anderson: My understanding is that critical race theory is not something that is taught in schools. This is an older, like graduate school level, understanding and learning in education, not something for K–12 kids, not something my kid's going to learn in elementary school.

Gloria Ladson-Billings: You're exactly right. It is not. First of all, kids in K12 don't need theory. They need some very practical hands-on experiences. So no, it's not taught in K12 schools. I never even taught it as a professor at the University of Wisconsin. I didn't even teach it to my undergraduates. They had no use for it. My undergraduates were going to be teachers. So what would they do with it? I only taught it in graduate courses. And I have students who will tell you, "I talked with Professor Ladson-billings about using critical race theory for my research," and she looked at what I was doing and said, "It doesn't apply. Don't use it."

So I haven't been this sort of proselytizer. I've said to students, if what you're looking at needs an explanation for the inequality, you have a lot of theories that you can choose from. You can choose from feminist theory. That often looks at inequality across gender. You could look at Marx's theory. That looks at inequality across class. There are lots of theories to explain inequality. Critical race theory is trying to explain it across race and its intersections.

Jill Anderson: We're seeing this lump definition falling under critical race theory, where it could be anything. It could be anti-racism, diversity and equity, multicultural education, anti-racism, cultural [inaudible 00:09:15]. All of it's being lumped together. It's not all the same thing.

Gloria Ladson-Billings: Well, and in some ways it's proving the point of the critical race theorists, right? That it's kind normal. It's going to keep coming up because that's the way you see the world. I mean, here's an interesting lumping together that I think people have just bought whole cloth. That somehow Nikole Hannah-Jones' 1619 is critical race theory. No, it's not.

No. It. Is. Not. It is a journalist's attempt to pull together strands of a date that we tend to gloss over and say, here are all the things were happening and how the things that happened at this time influenced who we became. It's really interesting that people have jumped on that. And there is another book that came out, and it also came out of a newspaper special from the Hartford Courant years ago called Complicity. That book is set in New England and it talks about how the North essentially kept slavery going.

And when it was published by the Hartford Courant, Connecticut, and particularly Hartford said, we want a copy of this in every one of our middle and high schools to look out at what our role has been. Because the way we typically tell you our history is to say, the noble and good North and then the backward and racist South. Well, no, the entire country was engaged in the slave trade. And it benefited folks across the nation.

That particular special issue, which got turned into a book hasn't raised an eyebrow. But here comes Nikole Hannah-Jones. And initially, of course, she won a Pulitzer for it and people were celebrating her. But it's gotten lumped into this discussion that essentially says you cannot have a conversation about race.

What I find the most egregious about this situation is we are taking books out of classrooms, which is very anti-democratic. It is not, quote, the American way. And so you're saying that kids can't read the story of Ruby Bridges. It's okay for Ruby Bridges at six years old to have to have been escorted by federal marshals and have racial epithets spewed at her. It's just not okay for a six year old today to know that happened to her. I mean, one of the rationales for not talking about race, I don't even say critical race theory, but not talking about race in the classroom is we don't want white children to feel bad.

My response is, well great, but what were you guys in the 1950s and sixties when I was in school. Because I had to sit there in a mostly white classroom in Philadelphia and read Huckleberry Finn , with Mark Twain with a very liberal use of the n-word. And most of my classmates just snickering. I'd take it. I'd read it. It didn't make me feel good. I had to read Robinson Crusoe . I had to read Margaret Mitchell's Gone With The Wind . I had to read Heart Of Darkness .

All of these books which we have canonized, are books of their time. And they often make us feel a particular kind way about who we are in this society. But all of a sudden one group is protected. We can't let white children feel bad about what they read.

Jill Anderson: I was reading your most recent book, Critical Race Theory in Education, a Scholars Journey , and I was struck by when you started to do this work and this research, and adapt it from law back in the early 1990s. You talked about presenting this for the first time, or one of the first times. And there was obviously a group excited by it, a group annoyed by it. I look at what's happening now and I see parents and educators. Some are excited by a movement to teach children more openly and honestly about race. And then there's going to be those who are annoyed by it. You've been navigating these two sides your whole life, your whole career. So what do you tell educators who are eager, and open, and want to do this work, but they're afraid of the opposition?

Gloria Ladson-Billings: Well, I think there's a difference between essentially forcing one's ideas and agenda on students, and having kids develop the criticality that they will need to participate in democracy. And whenever we have pitched battles, we've been talking about race, but we've had the same kind of conversation around the environment, right? That you cannot be in coal country telling people that coal is bad, because people are making their living off of that coal. So we've been down this road before.

What I suggest to teachers is, number one, they have to have good relationships with the parents and community that they are serving, and they need to be transparent. I've taught US History for eighth graders and 11th graders before going into academe, and we've had to deal with hard questions. But there's a degree to which the community has always trusted that I had their students' best interests at heart, that I want them to be successful, that I want them to be able to make good decisions as citizens.

That's the bigger mission, I think, of education. That we are not just preparing people to go into the workplace. We are preparing people to go into voting booths, and to participate in healthy debate. The problem I'm having with critical race theory is I'm having a debate with people who don't know what we're debating. You know, I told one interview, I said, "It's like debating a toddler over bedtime. That's not a good debate." You can't win that debate. The toddler doesn't understand the concept. It's just that I don't want to do it.

I will say following the news coverage that I don't believe that all of these people out there are parents. I believe that there is a large number of operatives whose job it is to gin up sentiment against any forward movement and progress around racial equality, and equity, and diversity.

You know, to me, what should be incensing people was what they saw in Charlottesville, with those people, with those Tiki torches. What should be incensing people is what they saw January 6th. People lost their lives in both of those incidents. Nobody's lost their lives in a critical race theory discussion. You know?

I'm someone who believes that debate is healthy. And in fact debate is the only thing that you can have in a true democracy. The minute you start shutting off debate, the minute you say that's not even discussable, then you're moving towards totalitarianism. You know? That's what happened in the former Soviet Union and probably now in Russia. That's what has happened in regimes that say, no other idea is permitted, is discussable. And that's not a road that I think we should be walking here.

Jill Anderson: I feel like we're getting lost in the terminology, which we've talked about. And for school leaders, I wonder if the conversation needs to start with local districts in their communities debunking, or demystifying, or telling the truth about what critical race theory is, that kids aren't learning it in the schools. That that's not what it's about. Does it not even matter at this point because people are always going to be resistant to the things that you just even mentioned?

Gloria Ladson-Billings: I'm a bit of a sports junkie, so I'll use a sports metaphor here. I'm just someone who would rather play offense than defense. I think if you get into this debate, you are on the defensive from the start. For me, I want to be on the offense. I want to say, as a school district, here are our core values. Here's what we stand for. Many, many years ago when I began my academic career, I started it at Santa Clara University, which is a private Catholic Jesuit university. And students would sometimes bristle at the discussions we would have about race and ethnicity, and diversity and equality.

And I'd always pull out the university's mission statement. And I'd say, "You see these words right here around social justice? That's where I am with this work. I don't know what they're doing at the business school on social justice, but I can tell you that the university has essentially made a commitment it to this particular issue. Now we can debate whether or not you agree with me, but I haven't pulled this out of thin air."

So if I'm a school superintendent, I want to say, "Here are core values that we have." I'm reminded of many years ago. I was supervising a student teacher. It was a second grade. And she had a little boy in a classroom and they were doing something for Martin Luther King. It might have been just coloring in a picture of him with some iconic statement. And this one little boy put a big X on it. And she said, "Why did you do that?" And his response was, "We don't believe in Martin Luther King in my house." So she said, "Wow, okay, well, why not?" And he really couldn't articulate. She says, "Well, tell me, who's your friend in this classroom?" And one of the first names out of his mouth was a little Black boy.

And she said, "Do you know that he's a lot like Martin Luther King? You know, he's a little boy. He's Black." She was worried about where this was headed and didn't know what to do as a student teacher, because she's not officially licensed to teach at this point. And I shared with her our strategy. I said, "Why don't you talk with your cooperating teacher about what happens and see what she says. If she doesn't seem to want to do anything, casually mention, don't go marching to the principal's office. But when you have a chance to interact with the principal, you might say something I had the strangest encounter the other day and then share it." Well, she did that.

The principal called the parents in and said, "Your child is not in trouble, but here's what you need to know about who we are and what we stand for."

Jill Anderson: Wow.

Gloria Ladson-Billings: You know? And so again, it wasn't like let's have a big school board meeting. Let's string up somebody for saying something. It wasn't tearing this child down. But it was reiterating, here are our core values. I think schools can stand on this. They can say, "This is what we stand for. This is who we are." They don't ever have to mention the word critical race theory.

The retrenchment we are seeing in some states, I think it was a textbook that they were going to use in Texas that essentially described enslaved people as workers. That's just wrong. That's absolutely wrong. And I can tell you that if we don't teach our children the truth, what happens when they show up in classes at the college level and they are exposed to the truth, they are incensed. They are angry and they cannot understand, why are we telling these lies?

We don't have to make up lies about the American story. It is a story of both triumph and defeat. It is a story of both valor and, some cases, shame. Slavery actually happened. We trafficked with human beings, and there's a consequence to that. But it doesn't mean we didn't get past it. It doesn't mean we didn't fight a war over it, and decide that's not who we want to be.

Jill Anderson: What's the path forward? What can we do to make sure that students are supported and learning about their own history so that they are prepared to go out into a diverse global society?

Gloria Ladson-Billings: I'm perhaps an unrepentant optimist, because I think that these young people are not fooled by this. You know, when they started, quote, passing bans and saying, "We can't have this and we won't have this," I said, "Nobody who's doing this understands anything about child and adolescent development." Because how do you get kids to do something? You tell them they can't do.

So I have had more outreach from young people asking me, tell me about this. What is this? These young people are burning up Google looking for what is this they're trying to keep from us? So I have a lot of faith in our youth that they are not going to allow us to censor that. Everything you tell them, they can't read, those are the books they go look for. You know, I have not seen a spate in reading like this in a very long time.

So I think it's interesting that people don't even understand something as basic as child development and adolescent development. But I do think that the engagement of young people, which we literally saw in the midst of the pandemic and the post George Floyd, the incredible access to information that young people have will save us. You know, it's almost like people feel like this is their last bastion and they're not going to let people take whatever privilege they see themselves having away from them. It's not sustainable. Young people will not stand for it.

Jill Anderson: Well, I love that. And it's such a great note to end on because it feels good to think that there is a path forward, because right now things are looking very scary. Thank you so much.

Gloria Ladson-Billings: Well, you're quite welcome. And I will tell you, again sports metaphor, I'm an, again, unrepentant 76ers fan. I realize you're in Massachusetts with those Celtics. But trust me, the 76ers. Okay? One of my favorite former 76ers is Allen Iverson and he has a wonderful line, I believe when he was inducted into the Hall of Fame. He said, "My haters have made me great."

Well, I will tell you that I had conceived of that book on critical race theory well before Donald Trump made his statement in September of 2020. And I thought, "Okay, here's another book which will sell a modest number of copies to academics." The book is flying off the shelves. Y'all keep talking about it. You're just making me great.

Jill Anderson: Maybe it will start the revolution that we need.

Gloria Ladson-Billings: Well, thank you so much.

Jill Anderson: Thank you. Gloria Ladson-billings is a professor emerita at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She is the author of many books, including the recent Critical Race Theory in Education, a Scholar's Journey . I'm Jill Anderson. This is the Harvard EdCast produced by the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Thanks for listening.

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Literary Research: Critical Race Theory

What is critical race theory.

"Critical race theory (CRT) is a multidisciplinary academic construct that assembles strong arguments about the connection among race, law, and white supremacy. CRT originated during the 1970s and stemmed from the frustration many legal scholars felt about the failure of civil rights legislation to resolve the key issues of the Jim Crow era, adequately and appropriately." (African American Culture: An Encyclopedia of People, Traditions, and Customs)

Brief Overviews:

Critical Race Theory (The Concise Oxford Companion to American Literature)
Critical Race Theory (The New Oxford Companion to Law)
Critical Race Theory (The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Philosophy)
Critical Race Theory (Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History)

Notable Scholars:

Kimberle Crenshaw

Crenshaw, Kimberlé Williams. Seeing Race Again : Countering Colorblindness Across the Disciplines . 1st ed., University of California Press, 2019.
Crenshaw, Kimberle Williams. “Twenty Years of Critical Race Theory: Looking Back to Move Forward.” Connecticut Law Review, vol. 43, no. 5, 2011, p. 1253–.

Richard Delgado

Delgado, Richard, and Jean Stefancic. Critical Race Theory : an Introduction. Third edition., New York University Press, 2017.
Delgado, Richard. Justice at War  : Civil Liberties and Civil Rights During Times of Crisis . New York University Press, 2003.

Patricia Williams

Williams, Patricia J. The Alchemy of Race and Rights . Harvard University Press, 1991.
Williams, Patricia J. Seeing a Color-Blind Future :the Paradox of Race. 1st American ed., Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998.

Adrien Katherine Wing

Wing, Adrien Katherine, editor. Global Critical Race Feminism  : an International Reader . New York University Press, 2000.
Wing, Adrien Katherine. Critical Race Feminism  : a Reader . 2nd ed. / foreword to 2nd ed. by Richard Delgado ; foreword to 1st ed. by Derrick Bell., New York University Press, 2003.

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Narratives about critical race theory and Americans’ beliefs about public schools

Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, ariell bertrand , ariell bertrand research assistant - michigan state university @ariellrbertrand melissa arnold lyon , and melissa arnold lyon assistant professor, rockefeller college of public affairs and policy - university at albany @mimiarnoldlyon rebecca jacobsen rebecca jacobsen professor - college of education, michigan state university.

April 18, 2024

More exposure to anti-CRT narratives is associated with more support for CRT bans among members of all political parties, but especially for Republicans.
Exposure to anti-CRT narratives is also associated with less trust in teachers and schools.
CRT bans, paired with new restrictions on how teachers can discuss gender and sexuality, could further undermine trust in public schools.

Just like a good book can make you laugh or cry, a powerful policy narrative can stir the emotions of the public, sometimes sparking controversy along the way. In the summer of 2021, education leaders found themselves on the receiving end of this phenomenon. Across the country, angry parents and community members turned normally mundane school board meetings into chaos after hearing stories of a supposed new threat in schools: critical race theory (CRT).

To education leaders, this was shocking. CRT is a legal and academic theory that scholars have used for nearly 40 years to examine how institutions and legal systems continue to perpetuate racial inequality today. However, conservative activists and politicians had a different story to tell about CRT. Christopher Rufo, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, is viewed as introducing the CRT narrative to the public. Rufo warned that CRT would teach children to “hate each other and hate their country” and that they are “defined by their race, not as individuals.” This produced heated debates about whether CRT should be taught in school—even as the CRT that conservatives described bore little resemblance to the theory used in academic research.

But was that outrage confined to a small-but-vocal group of people, or was the impact more far reaching than that? Could a story—a partisan reframing of a decades-old academic theory—have the power to shape policy opinions, and ultimately, policies?

Anti-CRT narratives and public support for a CRT ban

To examine some of these questions, we identified 11 policy narratives that Republican legislatures and governors used to justify CRT bans during the first wave of bans in 2021. Examples of these narratives are that “CRT indoctrinates children,” “CRT teaches children to be racist,” and “CRT teaches children to feel bad.” We then surveyed 1,500 Michigan adults through the Institute for Public Policy and Social Science Research (IPPSR) State of the State Survey, asking how often they heard these narratives. The survey was completed during September and October 2021, just as the Michigan legislature was debating two bills that would have banned CRT in the classroom.

In our study, we found that these narratives were widespread. On average, respondents reported hearing half of these narratives (with 22% hearing all 11 of them). And hearing these narratives was positively related to support for a CRT ban; the more narratives people heard, the more they expressed support for the legislative ban. Specifically, for every additional narrative that an individual reported hearing, they were six percentage points more likely to support a ban on CRT in schools.

Whether exposure to the narratives caused these differences in attitudes is hard to say. Perhaps people who were predisposed to support an anti-CRT ban (given their strong partisan affiliations) were also more likely be exposed to more anti-CRT narratives (given differences in media consumption habits). Notably, though, we find that all respondent groups’ likelihood of supporting a CRT ban increased with exposure to more anti-CRT narratives.

Figure 1 shows how, across political groups, more exposure to anti-CRT narratives (x-axis) is associated with more support for CRT bans (y-axis). It also shows some differences across parties. If respondents reported hearing none of the CRT narratives, the probability of supporting a CRT ban was not terribly different between strong Democrats (10%) and strong Republicans (24%). However, as respondents reported hearing more narratives, large partisan divides appeared. A strong Democrat who reported hearing all the narratives had a 44% probability of supporting a CRT ban. A strong Republican who heard all the narratives had an 88% probability of supporting a CRT ban.

Anti-CRT narratives and trust in schools

While we might expect a policy narrative to shape opinions of closely related policies, especially on an issue as unfamiliar to the public as CRT, exposure to emotionally charged policy narratives might also shape how we view our schools and teachers more generally. The public has traditionally held high levels of trust in their local schools even while rating the nation’s schools unfavorably. We examined the relationship between exposure to anti-CRT narratives and the public’s perceptions of schools, schooling, and teachers.

For every additional ban-CRT narrative that people reported hearing, they were about two to three percentage points less likely to report trusting their local teachers and schools to discuss race and racism with their students. The relationships weren’t just limited to teaching about race and racism. For example, every additional narrative heard was associated with a four-percentage-point decrease in trust in teachers to supplement their curriculum with additional materials.

As mentioned above, the causal relationships between these factors are unclear. However, our findings are consistent with the possibility that emotionally charged policy narratives could undermine long-held beliefs about schools.

What does this mean for public education?

Although debates about CRT in the classroom may not be as prevalent today as they were in 2021, many school districts are still navigating the fallout from those debates. The proliferation of these narratives has led to at least 18 states and at least 150 school districts adopting CRT bans—bans that limit what schools can teach about race and racism and what resources kids can access about those topics in schools. These new laws have facilitated a wave of efforts to ban books that focus on race and racism while also placing additional stress on teachers at a time when teacher job satisfaction has dipped to historically low levels .

Notably, too, the anti-CRT narratives were quickly followed by narratives attacking how gender and sexuality is discussed in schools. In addition to CRT bans, new regulations at the district and state level are restricting how teachers can discuss gender and sexuality . Together, they have the potential to further undermine trust between the public and local schools. Declining trust poses a serious threat to the education system if, for example, it materializes in less support for public education funding.

However, as much as narratives can undermine long-held beliefs about schools, counternarratives may be able to rebuild and strengthen trust in public schools. Already, we have seen countermobilization at the local level, resisting book bans and flipping back board seats previously held by Moms for Liberty -supported candidates. Public education advocates have an opportunity to instill a reinvigorated sense of pride in U.S. public schools. To do so, advocates would do well to remember the impact that powerful narratives can have in shaping public opinion.

Conceptualizing Race in Research

The use of race as a variable in research continues to spark debate about whether it should be used, as well as the implications it has for research on health differences. Given this continued controversy, we examined how investigators interpret the concept of “race” and whether their views of race are reflected in their published work.

Thirty-three semistructured interviews were conducted with investigators from 3 southeastern universities to discuss recruitment of participants, the use of race as a variable in research and analyses, and their assessment of the National Institutes of Health mandate on the inclusion of women and minorities. The interview data were analyzed using the principles of constant comparative method, theme identification and pattern investigation. Up to 2 publications for each respondent were also used to assess the use of race in their research.

Results reflect a spectrum of views on the definition of race, from biological to social. Findings also suggest that investigators think critically about the use and implications of using race in their research, although this is not consistently reflected in their published work.

In our view, authors, journal editors and peer reviewers have an important role in moving this debate forward, and advocate that they engage more directly in shaping the process. When reporting results by race, investigators should provide a statement on the theory or conceptual framework underlying the hypothesized racial differences in health examined in the study. They should be also cautious in invoking either biological or social constructions of race, thus demonstrating an appreciation of the nuances and implications of using this variable.

Research on disparities in health is in transition from largely descriptive investigations of the existence of racial differences to analysis of potential etiologies of these variations. 1 , 2 However, identifying the causal pathways that link race to health outcomes has been complicated by debate over whether race should be used as a variable in such research, and if it is used, whether it is a biological construct, a social construct or something in between. 3 – 13

These debates have been fueled by the need for researchers to respond to mandated inclusion of racial and ethnic minorities in federally funded research, changes in Office of Management and Budget (OMB) categories of race and ethnicity, and closer examination of the use of race as a variable by editors of scientific journals. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) policy on the inclusion of women and minorities in clinical research requires investigators funded by the federal government to document the participation of these groups or to make a sound scientific argument for their exclusion. 14 , 15 Similarly, federally funded research must comply with OMB Directive 15 revised standards on racial and ethnic classification ( Federal Register , 1997), which separate race from ethnicity (specifically, Hispanic origin). These requirements for reporting racial and ethnic categories apply to research with human subjects whether or not an investigator is focusing on racial or ethnic differences in health.

One consequence of these co-occurring events is that it has become easier to make race-based comparisons. The scientific inquiry into and resultant literature examining associations of race and health outcomes have increased significantly in recent years. 2 However, the authors of this literature seldom address why “race” is a key independent variable for analysis, and if it is being used as a proxy for social class, cultural background, biological difference or some combination. 3 , 4 , 16 , 17 These concerns have prompted the editorial boards of scientific journals to question the common practice of reporting analyses by race without further justification (e.g., Journal of the American Medical Association , Nature Genetics , Archives of Internal Medicine , American Psychologist and British Medical Journal ).

At present, investigators who examine and report racial differences in health must make decisions about the relevance and application of race in their work, raising questions about how data on race should be collected, how federal requirements should guide recruitment strategies, and what derivative implications for research design and analysis arise. Given continued controversy surrounding the use of race as a variable and the implications for research on health differences by race, we examined how investigators interpret the concept of “race” and whether their views of race are reflected in their published work.

Subject Identification and Recruitment

We sampled investigators conducting funded clinical research involving adult human subjects in the year 2000 from 3 southeastern universities: 1 historically black university (HBCU) and 2 research intensive universities (1 private and 1 public). We identified investigators by using institutional review board lists of all active studies during that year, from each institution, searching the university websites and the Computer Retrieval of Information on Scientific Projects (CRISP) database, a searchable database of NIH-funded biomedical research projects, maintained by the NIH Office of Extramural Research. Using the title of the study and publicly available descriptions (e.g., abstracts), the principal investigator (PI) list was stratified by institution, whether the investigator had a history of NIH funding and whether their work focused on minority health or race-related health disparities. The investigator sample was generated using random selection within these 12 strata. We considered institutional culture, NIH-mandated inclusion of minorities and the personal choice of a career focus on the health of minority populations as well as these variables, as potentially directly or indirectly impacting an investigators’ concepts of race. Because the number of investigators at the HBCU conducting clinical research initially identified was small, we also used snowball sampling at that site (i.e., we asked each respondent to identify other potentially study-eligible investigators at their institution) and attempted to interview all investigators at that university who met our inclusion criteria.

Investigators were first contacted by a letter containing a brief description of the project and an invitation to participate in the interview. Using a prepared recruitment script, investigators were then contacted by telephone to further explain the nature of the study and verify eligibility. Up to 4 telephone and e-mail attempts were made to contact investigators. After no response to 4 contact attempts, the respondent was considered a refusal and replaced with another investigator randomly chosen from the sample for that institution.

Data Collection

Investigator interviews.

Data were collected by in-depth telephone interviews. Using a semistructured guide, the interviewer asked open-ended questions, followed up participants’ responses, pursued themes as they arose, and sought clarification or elaboration as needed. Interviews were conducted between November 2001 and January 2003. All interviews were conducted by the first author (GCS) and were 30–50 minutes in length. The interview guide covered the following areas: the participant’s research topics, recent experience with participant recruitment, influences on recruitment of minority subjects, use of race as a variable in research and analyses, and assessing any influence of the NIH mandate on the conduct of the research. In the interview guide for this study, we specifically and consistently used the term “race” rather than “race/ethnicity” or “ethnicity.” Since the latter terms have been heavily debated and endorsed by some in the scientific literature, we avoided introducing a concept or idea that might lead to socially desirable responses from the interview participants. We did not ask investigators whether they saw race as a biologic or social construct. Interviews were audiotaped and transcribed for analysis. Two members of the research team reviewed each interview transcript to verify the accuracy of the transcription and to remove all identifiers. If necessary, a third listener, the interviewer, reviewed the transcript to resolve conflicts or areas of confusion in the transcription.

Investigator publications

Publication of research represents the basic data for the scientific and conceptual life of race, and the impact of recent journal guidelines regarding race as a variable was of interest. As a result, we examined up to 2 publications for each respondent, limiting the sample to those that were retrievable through Pub Med/MedLine. Analysis of their use of race in these publications was also a means to both expand upon and triangulate interview findings. The goal was to match ≥1 published article with the study described by the PI in the interview. If there were no published articles matching the study description provided by the PI, we searched for an article that included the following MeSH terms or keywords: racial stocks (for example: “race,” “African American,” “black,” etc). In addition, when possible, ≥1 article where the PI was the first, last or second author was included. Only articles published since 1998 were included and when >1 article met all the inclusion criteria, the most recent article was selected. No published letters or commentaries were included in this analysis, but review articles were included. We used a data abstraction form to record the following information: whether race was mentioned at any point in the manuscript and where (title, introduction, methods, tables or results, discussion); whether race was defined or explained in the manuscript and whether that description fit a social construct and/or biological construct or could not be determined. We also noted the journal in which the paper was published and whether that journal had published guidelines on reporting race (either in the instructions for authors or published statement) at the time of this study.

Interview transcripts were analyzed using the principles of grounded theory 18 and the content analysis techniques of theme identification. 19 , 20 Glaser’s method of constant comparative analysis requires the data to be reviewed in light of an initial conceptual formulation and coded repeatedly. Codes about the meaning and measurement of race were initially based on distinctions made in the scientific literature (i.e., social or biological constructs) and expanded inductively using an iterative process. At regular meetings, the research team reviewed all new transcripts for emerging themes, extant codes were revisited, and the coding scheme refined. Written definitions for each code were developed and revised based on input from all research team members. Examples and directions of when and when not to use the codes were detailed in the code book. Sample size was not formally calculated. Instead, participants were enrolled until no new concepts arose during analysis of successive interviews, a concept called theoretical saturation.

After finalizing the coding strategy, 3 research team members (GCS, CB and JD) then coded all transcripts in teams of 2 coders. In addition, 2 senior members of the research team (GEH and SEE) coded randomly selected transcripts the codes reconciled. In this form of analytical triangulation, important insights can emerge from the different ways different analysts look at the same set of data and also provide a means to ensure internal validity. 21 We used ATLAS.ti software to facilitate organization, management and analysis of the qualitative dataset. Coded items were then compared within and between interviews. Participants’ comments were sorted by content areas. We selected quotes illustrative of each domain and those that were exemplars of various perspectives within that area.

Publications of investigator–subjects were coded by 2 coders. The research team deductively developed a set of codes derived from content areas noted in the interviews. The code book included definitions, examples and rules of application. The publications were coded for whether race or racial categories were mentioned in the title, introduction, methods, results, tables or discussion section. If mentioned, the passage was coded, documenting whether a definition or explanation was provided. We compared investigator comments on race in their interviews with their use of race in their published work. Manuscript coders were blind to the codes assigned during the analysis of the investigator interviews. We also examined the instructions for authors for the journals from which publications were selected.

We contacted 43 investigators and conducted 33 interviews (response rate=77%) who had been a PI on between 2–50 (range) prior studies. Characteristics of the investigator–participants in this study are presented in Table 1 . When discussing race in their research, the investigators responded in a variety of ways to the questions: “How do you think about race in your research? How do you conceptualize race in your work?” Some investigators focused on issues of the measurement and race in their work, while others went on to describe how they were using the variable, what they thought it meant or how they would explain the finding of racial differences in their work. Each of these themes is described below, and illustrative quotes are shown in Table 2 .

Principal investigator (PI) characteristic (n=33)

Themes and Illustrative Quotes

Measurement and Race

Investigators described a variety of methods for collecting data on racial categories. Most investigators used self-identification (i.e., asking the research subject) or self-selection based on predefined categories as the main data collection strategy for race. Some investigators augmented these methods in 2 ways: 1) gathering data on self-reported racial identity or using a validated measure of racial identity; or 2) “quantifying” race by asking for detailed information about the race of parents and grandparents, then using a predetermined algorithm to determine the subjects’ race. Most investigators also described data collected on race from administrative databases as being unreliable, being uncertain about how to analyze data from individuals who self-identify as “mixed race” or “other,” and not being able to adequately represent heterogeneity within racial groups.

Race as a Biological Construct

In discussing how race might operate in their research, several investigators endorsed the idea of race as a biologic construct. Responses in this category included the identification of genetic variants, differences in response to treatments and race as a risk marker for disease. Several investigators cited scientific literature to support their hypotheses about why there might be biologic differences between races. For example, they referred to findings on differences in prevalence of hypertension and other chronic diseases or differences in allele frequencies.

Race as a Social Construct

Many investigators described their conceptualization of race as a social construct rather than biologic or genetic. Most investigators in this category pointed to differences in risk of disease based on social factors that are associated with race (e.g., environmental, behavior, diet, socioeconomic status, education and/or wealth). Some investigators linked race to discrimination, oppression and racism, or invoked feminist theory in their conceptualization of race. One investigator who described race as a multidimensional concept included measures of “ethnic identity” as well as race and detailed data on social position, wealth, ethnic identity and acculturation in the analyses.

Race as Both Social and Biological

Several investigators held both social and biological concepts of race, not as mutually exclusive but as complementary. Those who took this stance varied along a continuum of how much influence they attributed to biological and social components of their model. Here too, investigators referred to extant literature to support their concepts of race. Their frameworks included balanced combinations of social and biological elements, and at times, models that privileged the importance of one concept over the other: for example, some held a primarily biologic model of race and racial differences in health augmented by social factors such as behavior and environment. Others acknowledged possible genetic differences, but said social factors were the primary determinants of racial differences. A third group of respondents suggested both social and biologic factors were equally responsible for racial differences in health and disease.

We also included in this category investigators who used conceptually different ways of collecting data on race and conceptualizing race in their work—for example, using self-identity in data collection and examining genetic differences in drug metabolism.

There were no clear associations between investigator conceptualizations of race and NIH funding, institution, investigator self-identified race or research focus when examined bivariately.

Challenges and Opportunities

Investigators often expressed confusion and/or frustration as they described how they conceptualized race in their work. They noted the challenge of disaggregating race and socioeconomic status, and many endorsed the view of one investigator who observed, that race was “a useless variable, encompassing so many things.” Several investigators also mentioned the challenge of finding and using appropriate measures and scales that had acceptable psychometric and biometric properties, and had been adapted for different racial and ethnic groups. Others raised concerns about the possibilities of misuse of data that examine racial differences in health through either “blaming the victim” or perpetuating notions of genetic inferiority.

In addition to the challenges described above, many study participants identified opportunities that arose from examining racial differences. They pointed to institutional support for race-focused work, capitalizing on the renewed interest of funding agencies in this area of research, and the possibility of uncovering sources of racial differences in outcomes. Those who used race as “a constant rather than a variable in their research” stated that research that focused on 1 racial group would more readily lead to improved health for a particular population.

Investigators’ Use of “Race” in Manuscripts

We identified 50 manuscripts that fit the inclusion criteria. No articles were found for 3 PIs and a single article was found for one PI ( Table 3 ). As noted in Table 3 , 84% of the manuscripts mentioned race in the text. Among those, only 18% provided a definition or rationale for how or why race was included as a variable in the study. At the time of this study, none of the journals in the sample gave explicit instructions to authors on how to use race in submitted articles. However, 10% of the journals referred to the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals, which asks for description of the sample, suggests avoiding the term “race” and asks investigators to “specify what the descriptors mean.”

Description of manuscripts (n=50)

In reviewing the descriptions and explanations of the use of race as a variable in these manuscripts, we found examples of the 3 categories described above: race as a social construct, biological construct and combined. Two-thirds of the manuscripts in which a definition or explanation were in evidence were coded as consistent with the definition that was coded in the interview transcript.

In this study, the investigators we interviewed were thinking critically about the use and implications of using race in their research but did not consistently include this reflection in their published work. Our findings reflect a spectrum of views on the concept of race in health-related research and a range of approaches for collecting data on race. The study participants’ conceptualization of race included constructs across a continuum of definitions, from biological to social. While the majority did not define race in their publications, most of those few who did used definitions that were consistent with how they described race in the interviews.

These results must be interpreted in light of the limitations of this study. While we sought to sample investigators from institutions with different educational and research missions, and investigators with a variety of funding and research foci, all of the institutions were located in the southeastern United States. Based on the historical and social context of this area, it is possible that investigators in this geographic region may have given more thought to the operationalization of race. However, it is difficult to assess the direction of the potential bias, since it is equally likely that they may have been more or less likely to share their thoughts on race with the interviewer, an African-American female clinician researcher whose work focuses on minority populations. Because of the potential bias that the interviewer’s characteristics may have introduced, we conducted all interviews by phone unless an in-person interview was explicitly requested by the respondent. Also, while we used a comprehensive algorithm to select manuscripts, we did not ask investigators to identify articles that reflected their concept of race; the latter strategy may have led to the inclusion of articles with more explicit descriptions of race or to more concordance between interviews and manuscripts.

Despite these limitations, our results reflect the evolving debate on where and how to use race in health-related research. Authors in the public health, social science and medical literature have described the increasing but also contested use of “race” and “ethnicity” in health research, and are engaged in the debate on how race should be used to understand and explain health disparities. 3 – 7 , 9 , 11 – 13 , 22 – 24 This ongoing discussion in the published literature was well known to our respondents, many of whom cited competing literature to bolster the conceptualization of race in their work, regardless of where they positioned themselves on the biological-social continuum.

The dominant and enduring understanding of race in the biomedical literature is of physiological and biological differences between population groups, particularly those of skin color and facial features. While most researchers no longer subscribe to simplistic ideas of racial differences promoted by eugenicists, an assumption that racial categories are based in part on natural and genetic distinctions underlies much medical research. 4 , 13 , 25 This interpretation has been reinforced and supported by advances in genetic research. Investigators call on work in population genetics and use ancestral tree diagrams to support racial classification schemes. 26 – 31 In addition, genetic variation research has uncovered millions of genetic polymorphisms, 32 – 34 and a growing body of research seeks to use these variations to make sense of racial differences in health. For example, pharmacogenomics and targeted drug therapy are growing areas of research and are held out as one way to address health disparities. 24 , 35 , 36 This is still a controversial position, however, as shown in the arguments over potential racial differences in the effectiveness of heart failure medications 37 , 38 and birthweight differences between black and white babies. 39 – 42

Race is also conceptualized as a social category, emphasizing shared social and cultural heritage and high-lighting the deleterious impact of power differentials that exist in society. 8 , 12 , 43 The social interpretation emphasizes the importance of history, geographic origins, language, cultural norms and practices, and religious traditions of a group of people based on common ancestry. Because of this emphasis, some researchers prefer to use the term “ethnicity” instead of “race.” 44 – 46 Proponents of the social construction of race also point to the fact that the idea of human races predated modern genetics and was used to create a hierarchy reflecting notions of moral and social superiority and inferiority. This perspective views race as proxy for the effects of racism, differences in socio-economic status, exposure to the health risks of highly stressful home and neighborhood contexts, less access to care and other life experiences that provide limited opportunities for well-being. 5 , 7 , 12 , 47

Other authors have noted the variability in how investigators use race to describe the study samples in their research 16 , 17 , 48 and found that study samples are often incompletely described. If described, little rationale is given for how racial categories are applied. This variation in the use of race in the scientific literature has led authors to question whether investigators are thinking critically about this variable. 17 In contrast, the investigators we studied struggle with the concept of race in their research, describing a range of methods to collect data on this variable and considering the “best” application in their work. Investigators were able to articulate some of the methodological challenges and opportunities in using race as a variable in their analyses.

In our view, authors, journal editors and peer reviewers have an important role in moving this debate forward, and we recommend that they play a more explicit and widespread role in shaping the process. Investigators in our study referred to the scientific literature as they contemplated the meaning of race in their work. If peer reviewers and journal editors demand that authors clarify and refine definitions and theories, the dialogue will be advanced, as will continued reporting of empirical findings that explicitly define causal pathways linking race and racial differences in health.

When reporting results by race, investigators should provide a statement on the theory underlying hypothesized racial differences in health. They should be cautious in invoking either biological or social constructions of race, thus demonstrating an appreciation of the nuances and implications of using this variable. In addition, as is evident from our findings, investigators hold a range of views on the concept of race, and authors should not assume that others know what is meant by the term “race” in their published work. Journals should require authors to provide explicit definitions of this term, following the lead of several journals. ( Journal of the American Medical Association , Nature Genetics , Archives of Internal Medicine , American Psychologist , British Medical Journal ). The researchers we interviewed were grappling with the current unsettled status of race and ethnicity, both empirically and conceptually. Yet these observations, reservations and critiques remain largely “backstage” or informal among colleagues. In order to make progress regarding race as a factor in health, we suggest that a critical and reflective analysis of how race was conceptualized and measured be included as an important component of discussion sections of publications. In conclusion, as we continue to work to understand and address differences in health by race, attention to the complex measurement issues and clear descriptions of underlying theory of how race is conceptualized in a body of research will advance the debate in this field.

Acknowledgments

Financial support: This project was supported by grants from the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Program, the National Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities, and an unrestricted grant from Pfizer Inc.

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Changing Partisan Coalitions in a Politically Divided Nation

5. party identification among religious groups and religiously unaffiliated voters, table of contents.

What this report tells us – and what it doesn’t
Partisans and partisan leaners in the U.S. electorate
Party identification and ideology
Education and partisanship
Education, race and partisanship
Partisanship by race and gender
Partisanship across educational and gender groups by race and ethnicity
Gender and partisanship
Parents are more Republican than voters without children
Partisanship among men and women within age groups
Race, age and partisanship
The partisanship of generational cohorts
Religion, race and ethnicity, and partisanship
Party identification among atheists, agnostics and ‘nothing in particular’
Partisanship and religious service attendance
Partisanship by income groups
The relationship between income and partisanship differs by education
Union members remain more Democratic than Republican
Homeowners are more Republican than renters
Partisanship of military veterans
Demographic differences in partisanship by community type
Race and ethnicity
Age and the U.S. electorate
Education by race and ethnicity
Religious affiliation
Ideological composition of voters
Acknowledgments
Overview of survey methodologies
The 2023 American Trends Panel profile survey methodology
Measuring party identification across survey modes
Adjusting telephone survey trends
Appendix B: Religious category definitions
Appendix C: Age cohort definitions

The relationship between partisanship and voters’ religious affiliation continues to be strong – especially when it comes to whether they belong to any organized religion at all.

Bar charts showing party identification among religious groups and religiously unaffiliated registered voters in 2023. As they have for most of the past 15 years, a majority of Protestant registered voters (59%) associate with the GOP. And 52% of Catholic voters identify as Republicans or lean toward the Republican Party, compared with 44% who identify as Democrats or lean Democratic. Meanwhile, 69% of Jewish voters associate with the Democratic Party, as do 66% of Muslims. Democrats maintain a wide advantage among religiously unaffiliated voters.

The gap between voters who identify with an organized religion and those who do not has grown much wider in recent years.

Protestants mostly align with the Republican Party. Protestants remain the largest single religious group in the United States. As they have for most of the past 15 years, a majority of Protestant registered voters (59%) associate with the GOP, though as recently as 2009 they were split nearly equally between the two parties.

Partisan identity among Catholics had been closely divided, but the GOP now has a modest advantage among Catholics. About half of Catholic voters identify as Republicans or lean toward the Republican Party, compared with 44% who identify as Democrats or lean Democratic.

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints remain overwhelmingly Republican. Three-quarters of voters in this group, widely known as Mormons, identify as Republicans or lean Republican. Only about a quarter (23%) associate with the Democratic Party.

Trend charts over time showing that Protestants remain solidly Republican, and Catholics now tilt toward the GOP.

Jewish voters continue to mostly align with the Democrats. About seven-in-ten Jewish voters (69%) associate with the Democratic Party, while 29% affiliate with the Republican Party. The share of Jewish voters who align with the Democrats has increased 8 percentage points since 2020.

Muslims associate with Democrats over Republicans by a wide margin. Currently, 66% of Muslim voters say they are Democrats or independents who lean Democratic, compared with 32% who are Republicans or lean Republican. (Data for Muslim voters is not available for earlier years because of small sample sizes.)

Democrats maintain a wide advantage among religiously unaffiliated voters. Religious “nones” have become more Democratic over the past few decades as their size in the U.S. population overall and in the electorate has grown significantly. While 70% of religiously unaffiliated voters align with the Democratic Party, just 27% identify as Republicans or lean Republican.

Related: Religious “nones” in America: Who they are and what they believe

Over the past few decades, White evangelical Protestant voters have moved increasingly toward the GOP.

Today, 85% of White evangelical voters identify with or lean toward the GOP; just 14% align with the Democrats.

Trend charts over time showing how race, ethnicity and religious identification intersect with registered voters’ partisanship. Today, 85% of White evangelical voters identify with or lean toward the GOP; just 14% align with the Democrats. Over the past three decades, there has been a 20 point rise in the share of White evangelicals who associate with the GOP. 60% of Hispanic Catholic voters identify as Democrats or lean Democratic, but that share has declined over the past 15 years.

Over the past three decades, there has been a 20 percentage point rise in the share of White evangelicals who associate with the GOP – and a 20-point decline in the share identifying as or leaning Democratic.

Over the past 15 years, the GOP also has made gains among White nonevangelical and White Catholic voters.

About six-in-ten White nonevangelicals (58%) and White Catholics (61%) align with the GOP. Voters in both groups were equally divided between the two parties in 2009.

Partisanship among Hispanic voters varies widely among Catholics and Protestants.

60% of Hispanic Catholic voters identify as Democrats or lean Democratic, but that share has declined over the past 15 years.
Hispanic Protestant voters are evenly divided: 49% associate with the Republican Party, while 45% identify as Democrats or lean Democratic.

A large majority of Black Protestants identify with the Democrats (84%), but that share is down 9 points from where it was 15 years ago (93%).

Atheists and agnostics, who make up relatively small shares of all religiously unaffiliated voters, are heavily Democratic.

Among those who identify their religion as “nothing in particular” – and who comprise a majority of all religious “nones” – Democrats hold a smaller advantage in party identification.

More than eight-in-ten atheists (84%) align with the Democratic Party, as do 78% of agnostics.
62% of voters who describe themselves as “nothing in particular” identify as Democrats or lean Democratic, while 34% align with the GOP.

Trend charts over time showing that religiously unaffiliated registered voters are majority Democratic, especially those who identify as atheist or agnostic.

Voters who regularly attend religious services are more likely to identify with or lean toward the Republican Party than voters who attend less regularly.

Trend charts over time showing that Republicans hold a majority among registered voters who regularly attend religious services. Most less-frequent observers align with the Democratic Party.

In 2023, 62% of registered voters who attended religious services once a month or more aligned with Republicans, compared with 41% of those who attend services less often.

This pattern has been evident for many years. However, the share of voters who identify as Republicans or lean Republican has edged up in recent years.

For White, Hispanic and Asian voters, regular attendance at religious services is linked to an increase in association with the Republican Party.

However, this is not the case among Black voters.

Dot plot chart showing that across most Christian denominations, registered voters who attend religious services regularly are more likely than others to align with the GOP. However, this is not the case among Black voters. Only about one-in-ten Black voters who are regular attenders (13%) and a similar share (11%) of those who attend less often identify as Republicans or Republican leaners.

Only about one-in-ten Black voters who are regular attenders (13%) and a similar share (11%) of those who attend less often identify as Republicans or Republican leaners.

Higher GOP association among regular attenders of religious services is seen across most denominations.

For example, among Catholic voters who attend services monthly or more often, 61% identify as Republicans or lean toward the Republican Party.

Among less frequent attenders, 47% align with the GOP.

Black Protestants are an exception to this pattern: Black Protestant voters who attend religious services monthly or more often are no more likely to associate with the Republican Party than less frequent attenders.

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