Mr. Mason is at it again. In an article designed to demonstrate that Dr. Voddie Baucham, who has released a book criticizing Critical Race Theory, fails to understand CRT, Mason’s first line of evidence is the following:
(1) Claim: “Harvard Law professor Derrick Bell and some colleagues held a conference in Wisconsin, where Critical Race Theory was officially born” (p. XI).
a) Derrick Bell and colleagues did not hold a conference in Wisconsin in 1989. Rather, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Neil Gotanda, and Stephanie Phillips held a conference in Madison, WI on July 8, 1989, titled “New Developments in CRT.” Dr. Bell was merely invited and subsequently attended. (See, “The First Decade: Critical Reflections, or A Foot in the Closing Door” and “The Christian and Critical Race Theory, Part 8: the Harvard Story and the Birth of ‘Critical Race Theory’” for full overviews.)
b) I think it is quite a stretch to suggest that “Critical Race Theory was officially born” at the 1989 event. We might be able to say it was the first time the title was officially used in print. Later in Fault Lines, Baucham even refers to Dr. Bell as the “father of CRT” (p. XVI) and “the founder of Critical Race Theory,” which is in many ways true. But Bell’s seminal text, Race, Racism, and American Law was published in 1970, “Serving Two Masters” in 1976, and “Brown v. Board of Educationand the Interest Convergence Dilemma” was published in 1978. Of “Serving Two Masters,” for example, the editors of Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed a Movement, wrote:
All that was necessary was a race-conscious perspective that focused on the effect of integration on the black community. That change in perspective is the intellectual starting point of Critical Race theory. (p. 2)
Further, Baucham quotes from Critical Race Theory: An Introduction (Delgado and Stefancic) just a couple pages later, a book which argues plainly that,
Critical race theory sprang up in the 1970s, as a number of lawyers, activists, and legal scholars across the country realized, more or less simultaneously, that the heady advances of the civil rights era of the 1960s had stalled and, in many respects, were being rolled back. Realizing that new theories and strategies were needed to combat the subtler forms of racism that were gaining ground, early writers, such as Derrick Bell, Alan Freeman, and Richard Delgado, put their minds to the task. (p. 4)
Did he miss this when he read the book?
Against Dr. Baucham’s dating issue and the claim that “Derrick Bell and some colleagues held a conference,” Mason offers two references for “full overviews.” One of the references is his own work. We’ll put that one aside since it is his own spin on the origins story. Let’s consider the first reference, “The First Decade: Critical Reflections, or A Foot in the Closing Door.” That reference is significant because it is a paper by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, the woman who coined the phrase “Critical Race Theory.”
This is when it gets comical. Just look at the title…
“The First Decade…”
Does Mason know what a “decade” is? In case he doesn’t, a decade is 10 years.
The paper he is referencing is a work by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw who is reflecting back on the last ten years of CRT. Why ten years? Because that’s when CRT came into existence. The paper was published in 2002, but if you read the very first footnote, Crenshaw writes,
This Article was delivered as a plenary talk at the 1997 CRT conference held in New Haven, Connecticut.
Do the math. 1997 minus 10 equals 1987.
“Aha! The workshop was in ‘89, not ‘87. Got you.”
Actually, Crenshaw states in a video found on YouTube that she came up with the label “Critical Race Theory” in 1987. She says something even more revealing than that: {start at 45:11}
Did you catch that?
Crenshaw stated that in 1987, she sent out an invite to a retreat that she called "New Developments in Critical Race Theory." She then states that only “she [Matsuda], Neil Gotanda, Chuck Lawrence, and maybe a handful of others knew that there were no new developments in critical race theory, because CRT hadn't had any old ones – it didn't exist, it was made up as a name. Sometimes you gotta fake it until you make it."
Here you have one of the major OG’s of the movement saying that Critical Race Theory did not have any new developments prior to 1987 because it didn’t have “any old ones.” Why? Because “it didn’t exist.”
Later on in the paper by Crenshaw referenced by Mason, she asks the question in a new section entitled: “V. Where We've Been, Where We're Going,” “So what should we Critical Race Theorists do now, facing the second decade?” In the conclusion, she asks, “In assessing the first decade of Critical Race Theory I asked myself: If I were to gather it all up into a snapshot, what caption would I inscribe beneath?”
She said all of this at a ten-year anniversary event in 1997. Are you getting it yet? She’s at a ten-year celebration. She delivers a speech called “The First Decade: Critical Reflections.” She says they are then “facing the second decade.” She says in a video that CRT “didn’t exist” prior to 1987. There were no new developments of CRT in ‘87 because there had been no old ones.
Hello? Is this thing on?
Imagine if Dr. Voddie Baucham had said those words. Imagine if Dr. Baucham had said, “Critical Race Theory did not exist until 1987. There had not been any developments in the field until then.” I think we know how Mason would have responded. He would have gone on some rant about how ignorant Dr. Voddie is….because…well…that is exactly what he has done with just the words “officially born.”
Is it “quite a stretch to suggest that ‘Critical Race Theory was officially born’ at the 1989 event”? Only if you’re a Crit looking for attention.
It should also be noted that Derrick Bell was not just “merely invited and subsequently attended.” According to Crenshaw, each invitee had to submit a paper as a ticket to the event. All 24 attendees were participants, not spectators of a person or two lecturing to everyone else. That’s why it was called a workshop. If there is anything to quibble over in Dr. Baucham’s statement, it would be calling it a “conference.” But Mason calls it that too. Soooo…….