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28 Wm. & Mary J. Race Gender & Soc. Just. 61 (2021-2022)
Reform, Retrench, Repeat: The Campaign against Critical Race Theory, through the Lens of Critical Race Theory

handle is hein.journals/wmjwl28 and id is 73 raw text is: REFORM, RETRENCH, REPEAT: THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST CRITICAL RACE THEORY, THROUGH THE LENS OF CRITICAL RACE THEORY VIVIAN E. HAMILTON* ABSTRACT The protest movement ignited by the 2020 murder of George Floyd was of a scale unprecedented in U.S. history. The movement raised the nation's consciousness of racial injustices and spurred promises-and the beginnings-of justice-oriented reform. Reform and racial progress, however, have rarely been linear over the course of U.S. history. Instead, they typically engender resistance and re- trenchment. The response to the current justice movement is no exception. One manifestation of the retrenchment has been a rush by states to enact legislation curtailing race-related education in gov- ernment workplaces and in public schools, colleges, and universities. These legislative measures purport to prevent the teaching of divisive tenets of Critical Race Theory (CRT), an intellectual dis- cipline that originated in the legal academy in the 1980s. The proposed bills and enacted statutes, however, will instead prevent educators, for fear of incurring threatened penalties, from teaching about the role of racism in U.S. history and engaging students in meaningful dis- cussions about race. If they remain in place, the laws increase the chances that the next generation of students will remain uninformed of the racial history of the United States and its legacy and will thus come of age unmotivated-and unequipped-to improve upon it. This Article describes first the racial justice movement that surged after Floyd's murder, then the resistance and retrenchment that rapidly followed. Next, it draws on CRT to place these events in historical and theoretical context. It describes the intellectual pre- decessors of CRT, the emergence of CRT as an intellectual and po- litical movement, and its core insights. It explains how the insights of CRT, despite being caricatured by conservative opponents of race reform, instead explain the retrenchment and backlash to the racial * Professor of Law, William & Mary Law School and Director, William & Mary Center for Racial & Social Justice. For insights that helped shape my thinking, I benefitted from the participants of a LatCrit virtual summer session, particularly Lucille Jewel, Ediberto Roman, and Vincent Wong. For helpful comments, I thank Rebecca Green and Laura Shepherd. For their excellent research assistance, I am grateful to Francesca Babetski and Victoria Nauman. 61

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