Many of the foundational ideas of critical race theory trace back to feminist organizing, particularly from women of color feminism, as well as from Black Power movements of the civil rights area. CRT, as it is often called, grew out of a movement in the mid-1970s among American lawyers, legal scholars, and activists who were concerned that the important structural advances of the civil rights era had ground to a halt.1 This brief discussion makes some key connections between CRT and feminist media studies in the United States. It is not possible in this space to cite the many media scholars whose work can be linked to critical race theory. I provide just a few examples of recent feminist work that arguably employs CRT approaches. While feminist ideas were a catalyst in the genesis of CRT in the 1970s and 1980s, feminist media studies can benefit in the twenty-first...
Critical Race Theory
Katherine M. Bell teaches media and cultural studies and journalism at California State University, East Bay. Her research explores celebrity as a form of cultural authority in twenty-first-century social and political life, and its relationship to ideologies of race, gender, and sexuality. Her recent work includes analysis of media coverage of race and white supremacy in the post-Obama era. She worked as a journalist for more than twenty years, mainly with the Canadian Press news agency, where her interests centered on issues involving the environment, industrial development, and indigenous communities.
Katherine M. Bell; Critical Race Theory. Feminist Media Histories 1 April 2018; 4 (2): 57–60. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/fmh.2018.4.2.57
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University of California Press