Vorlesung: 'Who’s afraid of “Critical Race Theory”?'

"(White) identity politics and the contemporary US culture wars" (PD Dr. Simone Knewitz)
Part of the lecture series and collaborative interdisciplinary research project "Democratisation and Power Structures".
This talk will trace the “career” of the term “critical race theory” and the discourse it has generated to shed light on how the power of language is deployed within the culture wars around identity politics in the United States. It highlights “critical race theory” as a paradigmatic example of a larger conservative strategy to appropriate and reframe concepts of the political left in order to secure power. Situating the debate on “critical race theory” within the contemporary discourse on racism in the US, the presentation seeks to raise the question of why this strategy is successful and whether it exposes flaws in progressive ideas about race and (anti-)racism.