Under Construction @ Keele 2017 Under Construction @ Keele Vol. III (3) | Page 16

Coupled with this is a legacy of racial injustice in the United States. While there were
significant accomplishments made by the Civil Rights Movement, some scholars in
the field of Critical Race Theory argue that this movement in fact contributed to
stalling major transformational change for communities of colour. Kimberle
Crenshaw’s discussion of the Civil Rights Movement’s influence on structural change
in America is apt here. In particular, she argues that a post-Civil Rights Movement
consciousness developed which ‘rejected race-consciousness in toto’ and left no
room around which to develop a ‘conceptual basis from which to identify the cultural
and ethnic character of mainstream American institutions’.
Instead, Crenshaw
explains, these very institutions (schools, the justice system, unions) ‘we thus
deemed to be racially and culturally neutral. As a consequence, the deeply
transformative potential of the Civil Rights Movement’s interrogation of racial power
was successfully aborted as a piece of mainstream American ideology.’ 16 Instead of
learning to reimagine and restructure American institutions – particularly in education
and justice – race theorists argue that a “colourblindness” approach was adopted,
thus removing the particular (and often painful, severe and memorable) experiences
of people of colour from American race relations discourse. “Acts of racism” were
seen as anomalous, committed by outlying racist individuals, while institutions and
norms were perceived as colourblind and neutral.
As a result, more distinctions and characterisations developed. Audrey
MacFarlane argues: ‘[R]acializing space effectively demarcates particular areas not
only based on racial identity but also imposes popular stereotypes, anxieties, and
concerns on these places. The role of these places in the popular imagination
justifies their subordination and oppression.’ 17 By confining certain communities to
spaces inside cities and urban centers, narratives begin to gel. The physical
boundaries, not just between regions and nation-states, but between communities in
local areas like Flint, become deeply politicised and contested. Keith Aoki writes that
‘the very units of political representation that may have arisen in response to earlier
overt racial segregation’ 18 can also be harnessed as sites of resistance and struggle.
Kimberle Crenshaw, “Introduction: Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the
Movement,” in Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement, ed. Kimberle
Crenshaw et al. (New York: The New Press, 1995), xvi.
17
Audrey MacFarlane, “Race, Space and Place: The Geography of Economic Development,” San
Diego Law Review 36 (1999): 339-341.
18
Keith Aoki, “Space Invaders: Critical Geography, The ‘Third World’ in International Law and Critical
Race Theory,” Villanova Law Review 45 (2000): 938.
16