The demand for "falsification" is a
little bit strange, as CRT is more an approach or a paradigm than a single hypothesis or claim. This is a bit like demanding that the theory of evolution or the ecological approach to field biology be "falsified". It isn't that scientific paradigms aren't subject to empirical review, but they tend to be the sum of many parts rather than a single concrete claim that could be reasonably tested against a single case study. Any of the basic ideas that make up CRT could and are subject to scientific scrutiny, but it's not going to be as simple as "CRT claims x, y, and z, which are supported by these three studies I'm linking to." Rather than trying to do both things at once, discussing potential routes to falsification and also trying to "prove" that CRT is "factual" as per popular misunderstandings of how science works, in this post, I'm going to restrict myself solely to the question of how one might go about "falsifying CRT" in a manner that would be convincing to a social scientist. Throughout, I will make reference to the short list of core ideas that I presented in post #61 of this thread, asking in each case: what might it mean to "falsify" the implied claims or set of claims attached to each major point.
--------
One would need in this case to establish either that race was a genuine biological phenomenon, or contrarily, while conceding that there is no biological basis for race, by showing that it is nevertheless not a
social phenomenon but rather created by some other agent.
I'm not sure what would constitute falsification in this case; it's more an implication of the first premise. But you could demonstrate that the entire premise is incoherent if you were able to demonstrate that race is not, in fact, a consistent predictor of socioeconomic status.
3. These inequities aren't the sole work of individuals, so they cannot be addressed solely by educating individuals about race issues as seen by scientists
There are a number of ways one could falsify this premise. The most obvious would be to show that an individual who formerly held racist views eliminated the social markers of racial inequalities in their environment simply by altering their perspective in response to new information. Alternatively, on a macro scale, you could examine the impacts of real social programs that have attempted to end systemic racism through education programs, and evaluate whether and how they succeeded or failed in ending systemic racial inequalities within the communities that attempted them. You might also attack this one sideways, by demonstrating that within certain environments such as medical, legal, or sociological academic institutions in which a certain degree of education about racial issues can be assumed on the part of nearly every participant, such inequlaities do not exist to begin with.
4. Systematic racism both helped to create, and was eventually further created by, massive sociocultural institutions such as the legal, punitive, and labor systems of the colonial world.
You could either demonstrate that some other factor created racial categories and inequlities, or demonstrate that the impact of colonialism at some point ended, leaving no legal or social legacy behind at some point before racial inequalities somehow, for reasons unconnected to that history in any way, re-emerged.
5. Ending those systems requires a substantial reimagining of the social, political, and legal institutions that they left behind.
Another one that is more or less a logical implication of the previously established premises, rahter than an original claim, and therefore difficult to falsify except by connection . One could easily disagree that this approach to solving the issue would be ffective, and if you could demonstrate that previous straegies involving imaginative approaches to systemic reform were either ineffective or only as effective as the more individualistic approaches of the 1960s, that critique would have some teeth.
6. Also left behind are people, whose intergenerational situations vary widely but tend to reflect severe racial inequities
You would need to demonstrate that all people from a certain racial background have exactly equivalent prospects of success in society regardless of their starting economic position, or contarily, that inheriting a social position partially created by the racial minority status of your ancestors does no impact your socioeconmic status in
any meaningful way.
7. Analyzing these disparities becomes complicated by the intersectional boundaries between race, gender, wealth, and other forms of social categorization that may greatly impact any one individual's life
You would in short need to disprove intersectional effects on individual success. There's no quick way to do this, since several dozen factors have been identified as hav ing intersectional effects over the last few decades. But to take the popular case of gender, for instance, you would need to show that the impact of race is an independent causative factor from that of gender, for instance by demonstrating that gender disadvantage is level across gender categories,and vice versa, that the impact of gender disparity is unaffected by perceived race.
8. Meaningful solutions to systemic racism need to focus on the systemic before the individual, but take the variability of individual circumstances into account
Like 2, 5, and 8, this is more a logical implication of the previous premises han an original claim if any of the supporting premises leading to it were shown to be invalid, thiis proposed approach to solutions would likewise be called into question.
9. The narratives and categories we use to talk about racial issues are also products of this suspect past, and many may need to be altered or retired.
This one tends to be pursued case by case, and I don't know how you would falsify it except to do the same thing in reverse, looking at cases where a given common system of categorization or routinized explanation is accused of bearing a historical racial bias, and demonstrating in each case that no racial bias or systemic racialized effects are caused by it.
10. Greater diversity in the academic and legal professions is a necessary element of reform, as experiences of race differ widely and often in non-overlapping ways.
You would need to demonstrate that projects of systemic reform concerning race are equally effective whether or not persons of color are involved in those projects.
--------
So, there you go. Aside from those which are heavily contingent on other CRT premises, all of the above are theoretically "falsifiable" to various derees of meaningfulness. Get to it, I suppose?
