Demonstrating the Power of CRT in the Experience of Graduate Students

Nearly 30 years ago, Critical Race Theory (CRT) was introduced to the field of education. Ladson-Billings and Tate argued that in order to understand educational inequities in the United States, it is essential to analyze the intersections of race and property. Throughout the past three decades, scholars within the field of education have utilized CRT to gain a greater understanding of educational outcomes and the experiences of students, teachers and administrators of color in schools. Presently, CRT has gained nation-wide attention. Conservative media has co-opted the theory and rebranded it as an indoctrination tool to teach students to hate whiteness. The authors of this paper have found CRT useful in unpacking our experiences as graduate students at a predominantly white public university and in our work as teacher educators. This paper was penned in response to the misinformation campaign targeting CRT. The authors use a tenet of CRT, centrality of experiential knowledge, to discuss their raced experiences within their doctoral programs.