Event Date
Monday March 28, 2022
King Hall, Room 1301 and Via Zoom
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM
Lunch Provided
"Critical Race Theory: Reality versus Politics"
Critical Race Theory is a body of legal and sociological thought that addresses problems of structural racism. It recognizes that race and racism pervade American society, harming people of color while preserving the advantages of being white. But CRT has been so distorted in recent political controversy that it is now hopelessly misunderstood by the general public. This presentation will first outline the principal ideas of CRT, explaining what it is in reality, and then trace the politicization of the past two years that obscured its meaning.
Critical Race Theory evolved over the past forty ears to explain why severe racial disparities persist in American society that bestow economic advantages on whites while closing off those same benefits to African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, and Asian Americans, despite well-meant federal and state anti-discrimination efforts. The lasting effects of slavery and Jim Crow discrimination disrupt our society, economy, and public institutions. Grounded in residential segregation, which Justice William O. Douglas called ”slavery unwilling to die”, systemic racism contaminates our schools, job markets, voting practices, and law enforcement, imposing burdens on people of color that whites do not experience or even realize exist. Critical Race Theory describes the mechanisms that enable this injustice and the role of law in perpetuating them. Register for the Zoom here.
William M. Wiecek practiced law in New Hampshire and taught legal and constitutional history at the University of Missouri-Columbia for 16 years before joining Syracuse University College of Law, where he taught for over 25 years. At Syracuse University College of Law, Wiecek held the Congdon Chair in Public Law and Legislation. He has written or edited ten books, as well as over forty articles and chapters, on slavery and its abolition, republicanism, nineteenth-century constitutional development, and the United States Supreme Court. He has taught courses in constitutional law, property, race and law, legal and constitutional history, corporations, civil procedure, and Roman law. Professor Wiecek has taught as a visiting professor of law at the law schools of the University of Kentucky, Arizona State University, UC Davis, and Pacific-McGeorge. Professor Wiecek received a B.A. from Catholic University, an LL.B. from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. in History from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.