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Just like you cross intersections

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where intersectionality came from.

1:00

That's legal scholar and professor Kimberly

1:02

Crenshaw. When she introduced

1:04

the concept of intersectionality in the late

1:07

nineteen eighties, Crenshaw was underlining

1:10

the ways that race and gender discrimination

1:12

converge. As a student,

1:14

she saw how laws that address race and gender

1:17

separately failed to deliver

1:19

justice to those at the intersections.

1:22

Just an attempt to help

1:25

lawyers see things that they apparently

1:27

were having a hard time sin. Intersectionality

1:30

found its way into the Oxford English

1:32

Dictionary in twenty fifteen and

1:35

became widely used in discussions about

1:37

the Women's March and the Me Too movement.

1:40

But intersectionality isn't the only

1:42

phrase that Timberly Crenshaw has coined.

1:45

Crenshaw is one of the handful of

1:47

legal scholars who originated

1:49

and developed critical race theory.

1:52

In Layman's terms, I would

1:54

describe it as the

1:56

study of how law consistently

2:01

supports institutionalized

2:04

forms of racial inequality.

2:07

Like intersectionality, critical

2:10

race theory was originally developed

2:12

to unpack issues of identity

2:14

and status in our justice system,

2:17

and like intersectionality, critical

2:19

race theory has become a household phrase.

2:22

It's also become a cornerstone

2:24

for a national attack on education. It's

2:27

used to shut down any additions to the

2:29

curriculum taught in American public

2:31

schools which would more accurately

2:34

reflect our nation's history. I'm

2:40

Anita Hill. This is

2:42

getting even my

2:44

podcast about equality and

2:46

what it takes to get there. I'll

2:49

be speaking with people who are improving

2:51

our imperfect world, people

2:54

who took risks and broke the

2:56

rules. In this episode,

2:58

I'm talking with Kimberly Crenshaw about

3:01

critical race theory.

3:05

Crenshaw and I have known each other

3:07

since the nineteen eighties. I

3:09

think people need to know that. At the time

3:12

and need to there was just

3:14

a handful of black women law professors.

3:16

We all either knew each other

3:19

or new of each other. We

3:21

could all get in a minivan if

3:25

we had a lunch meeting. You know, we just need

3:27

one table, right, Yes, Crenshaw

3:30

and I both found that our formal education

3:33

lack teaching about race, racism,

3:35

and the law. For Crenshaw,

3:38

that meant creating the theories that we're missing

3:41

writing them herself. You

3:43

know, funny, you should say that my

3:46

mic is sitting here on the Critical

3:48

Race Theory Book as we speak.

3:50

It's the foundation of everything, right, the

3:53

critic It's

3:55

called the Red Book now, the Critical

3:57

Race Theory the key writings that formed the movement

4:01

effectively. If we want to understand,

4:04

for example, why we

4:06

still have housing segregation

4:09

that in some ways is as significant

4:13

ablight upon our society

4:15

as it was fifty years ago, we

4:18

have to look at how legally

4:21

segregated neighborhoods were created

4:23

and sustained. If we want to understand

4:26

why schools remain

4:28

racially separated, we

4:31

have to understand the legacy

4:33

of decisions

4:35

that are perfectly legal that

4:38

sustain racial separation.

4:41

So the overall point is to

4:43

understand that race

4:46

and racism are legally

4:48

constituted concepts and processes.

4:51

We like to think of Critical race theory not

4:53

so much of a thing, but

4:56

of a way of viewing a thing, a

4:58

way of viewing what we think. Race is

5:01

a way of understanding why

5:03

it is utterly predictable who's

5:05

most likely to be the CEO and

5:08

who's most likely to be the

5:10

person cleaning the CEO's office.

5:13

Race is still a primary factor

5:16

in determining access to the

5:19

good things in life. As

5:21

long as race is a predictive

5:23

factor, we would want to understand,

5:26

well, how does it happen fifty

5:29

years after Brown versus Board

5:31

of Education, the Civil

5:33

Rights Act of sixty four and sixty

5:35

five? Why do we still have these problems?

5:38

Critical race theory attempts to

5:40

ask those questions and provide

5:42

some answers from the vantage point

5:44

of the law. We didn't

5:47

know it was called critical race theory,

5:50

but we started the

5:52

thinking as a way of

5:54

understanding why.

5:57

When we arrived at Harvard

5:59

Law School, we saw ourselves

6:01

as advancing the

6:03

cause of racial justice through

6:05

learning how to be good lawyers. And we

6:08

got there and found that there really weren't

6:10

many courses, many any

6:12

courses that were dedicated

6:14

to sharing the knowledge

6:17

about how to do that. Derek Bell's

6:19

courses were no longer being taught. He

6:21

left before we got there, So

6:24

we engaged in a

6:27

strategy of trying to

6:30

ask politely the institution

6:33

to teach us these courses, and the

6:35

institution didn't think that they

6:37

were as significant as

6:39

we did. It was, in fact, Derek

6:42

Bell, who was this towering figure in legal

6:44

education, who had this

6:47

famous class of Race in the Law

6:50

that he taught at Harvard. But it

6:52

was his absence that

6:55

really drove you and the

6:57

other students to organize. That's

7:00

a real irony. You would

7:02

think that, Okay would be inspired by Derek

7:05

Bell, and that's how things happen.

7:07

But when you get to a place and you know

7:10

something is missing, you know it's

7:12

needed, and that it has been

7:14

there before, you all were

7:17

inspired to do

7:19

something about it. Yeah,

7:22

we invited law professors of

7:24

color from across the country to come and teach

7:26

a chapter out of Derek Bell's

7:28

book, Race, Racism, and American

7:31

Law, and it came out of

7:33

a concrete engagement with institutions

7:36

that weren't prepared to deal with us. That

7:38

cohort of students included Maria

7:41

Matsuda. Some of the people that we invited

7:43

included Chuck Lawrence, Richard Delgado

7:46

the core group that

7:49

eventually came together with

7:51

about twenty other people, and

7:53

we called ourselves critical race theorists.

7:56

Basically, we were the kids who were

7:58

watching the civil rights movement

8:01

happened on television. We were the

8:03

ones who were aware

8:06

but not old enough to really become

8:08

involved in the demands

8:10

for voting and the demands

8:13

for even what we were called.

8:15

I mean, you and I grew up at

8:17

a time where it wasn't even a

8:19

good thing to be called a black person, right.

8:23

So, becoming

8:25

a law student going into

8:27

these institutions, after having

8:30

watched the doors open and

8:32

understanding the role that students

8:35

had played not only in voting

8:37

rights, not only snick, but

8:40

the role that students had played in universities,

8:42

to say, look, universities, you are not

8:45

immune. You are not disconnected

8:48

from what's happening in the rest of the society.

8:51

If we don't have the ability to learn

8:53

what the true history was, what reconstruction

8:57

was all about, how all

8:59

of the advances from reconstruction were

9:01

rolled back. If we're not learning

9:03

that stuff, we're not learning the

9:06

truth about America. So

9:08

we went into Harvard Law

9:11

School with the sense that we were

9:13

entitled to learn this history. That's

9:16

what desegregation was supposed to be

9:18

about, not just about bodies, but

9:20

about knowledge. So in

9:23

going there and thinking, okay, well,

9:25

the person we were coming here to learn from,

9:28

the courses we were hoping to take

9:31

are not being offered. Surely

9:33

you're going to do something about this, right,

9:37

And the answer was as

9:39

instructive as the absence.

9:41

The absence presented

9:43

the moment to raise the question, and

9:46

the answer to the question told us

9:49

reams right, like,

9:52

basically, there are no qualified

9:54

people of color, at

9:57

least people we think who are qualified

9:59

to come here and teach. Well, that caused

10:01

us to say, well, what counts this qualification, particularly

10:05

in an institution and an entire

10:07

field that into like yesterday

10:10

largely was a place that was not welcoming

10:13

to people of color. So how do you become qualified

10:16

when your people weren't really part of

10:18

that institution? And we

10:20

were coming so inspired

10:23

by what had happened during the first fifteen

10:25

years of the civil rights movement, we thought,

10:27

of course it's going to continue, right, these

10:30

are the new lunch counters. And

10:32

we got there, Nita, just as

10:35

the Supreme Court was beginning to push back

10:37

and beginning to say, we're at the end of the road.

10:40

We've done all the reform that's necessary,

10:42

So telling us why there

10:44

wasn't more coming became

10:46

the text that we were reading and

10:49

critiquing, and that critique

10:51

became critical race theory. This

10:53

was a conversation happening

10:56

mostly inside law schools, and

10:58

not even in all law schools at

11:00

that Nope, but law school conversations

11:03

were going on in the eighties and

11:06

then ultimately though, this

11:08

idea started to spread

11:11

outside of the law school, and one of

11:13

the factors was a book that you

11:15

co author, that book, Critical

11:18

Race Theory, the key writings. But

11:21

even in the nineties, Kimberley

11:23

wasn't It's pretty fair

11:26

to say that critical

11:28

race theory was something that was really

11:31

still thought about in

11:35

the academy in law

11:37

and even though it started to spread in

11:39

other areas, it was

11:42

still by the end of the nineties, it was still

11:45

in academic. Yeah, people

11:47

started reading it in political science,

11:50

in sociology and American

11:52

studies and cultural studies, and

11:54

so that's where it existed until

11:57

like last year, and then it was discovered

12:00

as the Unamerican anti

12:03

American idea. I

12:05

don't know if this is one of the reasons. But

12:08

evidence of that is the extent

12:10

to which it was challenging

12:13

for people to think about race

12:16

and racial power outside of the

12:18

framework of an individually

12:21

biased person. And

12:23

the solution to that narrow

12:25

conception of what racism is

12:28

or could be was, well, let's not look

12:30

at race, let's all be colorblind.

12:33

So there was sort of a bipartisan

12:36

discomfort with some of the core ideas

12:39

in critical race theory, which where

12:42

race does not go away because you don't

12:44

name it. Racism is not something

12:46

that you can solve by being colorblind.

12:49

My analogy has always been,

12:52

we realize that we built our

12:54

institutions with toxic

12:56

material like asbestos.

12:59

We don't think the solution to brown lung

13:01

disease is to not notice

13:04

that this asbestos is there, not

13:06

use the word or terminology asbestos,

13:09

and to criticize

13:12

those experts who can tell you

13:14

where the asbestos is tucked away in

13:16

our institutions. We would never do

13:18

that with something that we really

13:20

cared about. Yet we've done

13:23

that with race and racism.

13:25

So it's only been, i would

13:27

say, in the reckoning around

13:29

Black Lives Matter, and in particular

13:32

in twenty twenty during the uprisings

13:35

around Brianna Taylor and George

13:38

Floyd that people started uttering

13:40

the phrases structural racism,

13:42

and so I think that created both more

13:45

of a demand for critical thinking about

13:48

race and then quickly

13:50

after that the backlash

13:52

against critical thinking about race. After

13:56

the break, we discussed the recent

13:58

backlash against critical race theory, the

14:00

power struggle over school curriculum and

14:03

the role of education, and moving us toward

14:05

a more equal society.

14:13

You're listening to getting even

14:15

I'm Anita Hill. I'm speaking

14:18

with Kimberly Crenshaw, the legal scholar

14:20

who coined the terms intersectionality

14:23

and critical race theory. And

14:25

we can't talk about CRT without

14:28

talking about education. Can

14:31

you talk about how your early education got

14:33

you to thinking about race, gender

14:36

and the law. Well,

14:40

you know, Anita, it's not even

14:42

my early education. It's sitting at the dinner

14:44

table. My mother was

14:47

what we might call a

14:50

race woman of the twentieth century. She

14:52

was born and raised in Kent, Ohio, and

14:55

partly because her father was

14:58

the town's physician, they weren't

15:01

constrained by concerns

15:04

that many other folks had

15:06

to worry about that if they demanded

15:08

their equal rights, they would lose

15:11

jobs. The way that segregation

15:13

was reinforced in the North was

15:15

through economic punishment, and

15:19

because they relied

15:21

on the black community for their livelihood,

15:24

they were freer to demand

15:27

certain rights. So my mom her

15:30

first civil rights action was as

15:32

a three year old, integrating the Waiting

15:34

pool, and she talks about remembering

15:36

what happened when they decided

15:38

to drain the pool with her in it. Right

15:42

said, she was splashing around and the water

15:45

kept getting lower and lower until it was

15:47

sucked down the drain, and her

15:49

mom gathered her up, went to

15:52

the neighborhood, got a whole bunch of other

15:55

black kids, went and got swimming

15:57

suits, and went right back and jumped back

15:59

into the pool that had been refilled. That

16:02

was sort of where she came from.

16:04

And at our dinner table

16:06

we heard these stories. I

16:08

was raised in the town that she grew up in. The

16:11

history was built in the geography

16:13

everywhere we went. That was the

16:15

place that didn't want to serve us at

16:17

the counter, That was the movie theater that didn't

16:20

want to let us sit where we wanted to sit. So

16:22

that was the conversation at

16:24

the dinner table. So a

16:27

lot of my childhood was

16:29

trying to navigate how to

16:31

think about this thing

16:34

that happens, this thing called

16:36

racism. So going to

16:38

school was a process

16:40

of trying to figure out, well, why aren't we

16:43

talking about this. You

16:46

are one of the legal scholars who developed

16:50

critical race theory beginning

16:53

when you were in law school. I

16:57

wanted to go to law school because I

16:59

wanted to understand how to dismantle the things

17:01

that are just kind of built in. And

17:04

my eyes were continuously open

17:07

to the fact that this thing called

17:09

racism is not just about people

17:12

with a bad heart. It's not about

17:14

people who don't like us because

17:16

of our skin color. It's about

17:19

deeply structured ways in

17:21

which disadvantage functions.

17:23

It's about the historical ways

17:25

that those platforms of advantage

17:27

and disadvantage can reproduce

17:30

themselves without anybody intending to

17:32

do it. So law school was

17:35

the place where I'd be able to develop

17:37

the tools to do something about it. One

17:40

could have figured that something

17:42

like a concept like critical race theory,

17:45

like a way of thinking about race, that

17:48

there would be attacks. So why

17:51

I'm asking this rhetorically, but I'm also

17:53

asking it literally, Why didn't you see

17:55

it coming? Well,

17:58

you know I did see

18:01

it coming. I actually see worse coming.

18:03

And that's really what worries

18:06

me so much. I mean, race reform

18:09

has in this country always

18:11

been met with a backlash,

18:14

and sometimes the backlash

18:17

was more powerful and lasted longer than

18:19

the reform did. So if you

18:21

think about reconstruction, you

18:24

know, how do we take people who

18:26

had been enslaved and make

18:28

them full fledged citizens?

18:31

That lasted about a decade. The

18:34

reaction to that, the retrenchment

18:37

to that, lasted over a half

18:39

century. In the mid eighties

18:41

to the nineties, the response to civil

18:44

rights claim was you're asking

18:46

for handouts.

18:48

Remedies are reverse discrimination,

18:51

preferential treatment. That

18:53

was a backlash to the sixties, and

18:55

it was a backlash that articulated

18:58

itself in the same way

19:00

that the backlash against reconstruction

19:02

was articulated. So reform

19:05

and retrenchment have been a dynamic

19:07

deeply structured into American society.

19:10

So that's a pattern that we've

19:12

seen and I'm more or less expected

19:15

at. What worried me the most

19:17

was when then President Trump

19:20

issued an executive order against all

19:23

training in the federal government

19:25

to advance equal opportunity, framing

19:28

that as discriminatory.

19:31

Most people, I think we're thinking

19:33

ay, it would go away if Biden

19:36

got elected and he would rescind

19:38

the order, which happened. What

19:40

they didn't anticipate would be that

19:42

this would become a multi state

19:45

strategy. It would quickly

19:47

go through state legislatures where there

19:49

wasn't much pushback, and it would quickly

19:53

turn into brush fires in school

19:55

boards. I think people didn't see that

19:57

coming, and as a consequence, there

19:59

wasn't a sense of what the response

20:02

should be to the problem. Because

20:04

what they're getting at is the fundamental

20:07

idea that in order to to become

20:09

a more perfect union, we have to address

20:12

the ways in which we are and always

20:14

have been imperfect well,

20:16

and what it says is that it's ultimately

20:19

going back to the day when

20:21

you were in school trying

20:23

to figure it out yourself. Yeah.

20:26

Yeah, that is what we're doing to children.

20:29

And as you pointed out, when

20:31

we were going

20:33

into law school with a sense that we

20:36

had a right to this more

20:38

inclusive education, it

20:41

was because it had been there. It was because

20:43

there were elements of it in

20:46

various places. And I think our

20:48

opponents recognize that if

20:50

you give them a taste of it, if you open

20:53

up the door to any of this, it will

20:55

become the fuel that

20:58

will energize future

21:00

generations to ask for more of it,

21:03

so shut it down completely.

21:06

Their reaction shows how

21:09

significant it is to be able

21:12

to really grapple with uncover

21:15

the ground upon which we stand, because

21:17

if it was insignificant, they wouldn't

21:19

be spending millions of dollars

21:22

trying to shut it down. Now, one

21:24

of the responses I've heard is

21:27

for students of color, and really any students

21:30

or faculty teachers who are

21:33

subjected to having their curriculum

21:35

stifled or whitewashed, there

21:38

is a recourse, and that is you

21:40

go to predominantly

21:43

black university or

21:45

college where perhaps

21:48

if it's not a state's fund at college,

21:51

then you are able to teach

21:54

whatever you want to learn, what you want to

21:56

understand race and someone in a different

21:58

way then you will

22:00

if you're going to a school where the

22:03

material has been banned. You know, I

22:05

thought about that, and it really does get

22:07

to this larger question shit about

22:12

choice as well

22:15

as about the value of degrees, and that's

22:17

part of the racism and structural racism

22:19

that we exist with. When

22:22

you get a degree from Harvard or Yale

22:25

or their University of Oklahoma, it comes

22:27

with a whole network of people and resources

22:30

that you're not likely to get in a smaller

22:32

institution, and especially not likely

22:34

to get in an institution with less funding,

22:36

which is often the case for our historically

22:39

BIA colleges and universities.

22:42

Do we ask students to

22:44

give up those benefits in order

22:46

to learn about how to end racism?

22:49

Is it fair to those students? I mean, is there an

22:52

equal protection argument to be made

22:55

that something is lost when

22:59

you are not provided with

23:02

the information that is critical

23:04

to understanding bias

23:06

and oppression in this country.

23:10

Well, one of the strategies

23:12

that has been much discussed

23:15

is to raise precisely that

23:17

argument that Brown versus

23:20

Board, and the entire legacy

23:23

of that monumental case was

23:25

that democracy requires

23:29

equitable educational

23:32

opportunity. That's why

23:34

the real injury that Linda Brown

23:37

experience wasn't simply

23:39

that race was taken into account

23:42

in making the school assignment. That would

23:44

mean that the white students were harmed

23:47

in the same way that Linda Brown was harmed.

23:49

And so the main argument there

23:51

was that the message of

23:54

racial subordination that

23:56

is generated from segregation

23:59

undermines our guarantee

24:02

of democracy. It doesn't end

24:05

with just segregation. It includes

24:08

the content of education. It

24:10

includes saying that there's

24:12

only one story that is

24:15

the permissible official story

24:18

of America, and it's a story

24:20

that does not explore the

24:23

consequences of enslavement and

24:25

of all of the other racial

24:28

dynamics that built this country.

24:30

So when you have an educational system

24:33

that denies and deprives

24:36

constituencies of the actual

24:38

factual information that

24:40

explains our history and

24:43

explains how and why our

24:45

society looks the way it does now,

24:47

I would say that that compromises

24:50

the very values that Brown

24:53

versus Board of Education embodied.

24:55

So I think there is an

24:58

argument to be made. I

25:00

think it has a deeper grounding

25:03

in what the fourteenth Amendment was all

25:05

about. We cannot have an

25:07

equal citizen and when

25:10

we're not willing to tell the full story

25:12

of when our society embraced

25:15

inequality and what the echoes

25:17

of that embrace continue to be. So

25:20

my hope is that there will be more

25:22

affirmative efforts to fight

25:25

back against this repression. The

25:27

fourteenth Amendment does embody a value,

25:30

and these laws undermine

25:32

that value. That's

25:34

what we need to be able to teach our young

25:37

people. That's what we need to be able to say

25:39

to ourselves and to our

25:41

elected officials, and that's what we should

25:43

hold them accountable to.

25:45

That value that was fought

25:47

and died for, that value that was resuscitated

25:51

in mid twentieth century, and that value

25:53

that has to rise again if we're

25:55

to save this country. And

25:58

this is where a need of I

26:00

feel that our generation

26:03

has got to make up for the losses.

26:06

So for me, for at least the

26:08

rest of my life, it's like, well, we've got to fight

26:10

back because we have got to pass on something

26:13

to the next generation. It's got to be better

26:15

than what they're getting if these laws

26:17

are effective. So, you

26:20

know, the performance

26:22

that we are seeing by all

26:24

of these critics, the hyperbole,

26:27

the hysteria around

26:30

telling the truth about the constitution,

26:32

telling the truth about slavery, telling

26:35

the truth about the Civil War and

26:37

the laws cause and segregation. The

26:41

response that we ought to collectively

26:43

have is to read all this stuff

26:45

right, all this stuff, learn all this stuff,

26:48

and act accordingly. Kimberly

26:53

Crenshaw's work has helped move us

26:56

to a more equitable world. Her

26:58

ideas have enriched the learning experiences

27:01

of countless students. Education

27:04

is currency and stifling

27:06

education has real costs. We

27:09

all lose. If

27:12

we limit critical thinking about inequalities,

27:15

we will pass problems

27:17

of racism on to our children.

27:21

Quinshaw's words are an urgent

27:23

call to action, because

27:25

learning the truth is how we can equip

27:28

the next generation with the tools

27:30

they need to reach equality.

27:36

In the next episode, I'm talking with

27:38

Cherylyn Eiffel. We

27:40

spoke on her last day as president

27:42

of the NAACP Legal Defense

27:45

and Educational Fund, the country's

27:47

leading civil rights law organization.

27:50

Oh, if you're not daunted, you know

27:52

something is very wrong with you and you're probably not right for

27:54

this job. So yes,

27:57

it is daunting, and I think it

27:59

should be. Getting

28:03

Even is a production of Pushkin Industries,

28:05

and it's written and hosted by me Anita

28:08

Hill. Is produced by Mola

28:10

Board and Brittany Brown. Our

28:12

editor is Sarah Kramer, our

28:15

engineer is Amanda kay Wang, and

28:17

our showrunner is Sasha Matthias.

28:21

Luis Gara composed original

28:23

music for the show. Our executive

28:26

producers are Mia Lobel

28:29

and Letal Malad. Our

28:31

Director of Development is Justine

28:33

Lane. At Pushkin,

28:36

Thanks to Heather Fane,

28:38

Carly Migliori, Jason Gambrel,

28:42

Julia Barton, John Schnarz,

28:44

and Jacob Weisberg. You

28:46

can find me on Twitter at

28:48

Anita Hill and on

28:51

Facebook at Anita

28:53

Hill. You can find Pushkin

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