Politesse
Lux Aeterna
- Joined
- Feb 27, 2018
- Messages
- 12,311
- Location
- Chochenyo Territory, US
- Gender
- nonbinary
- Basic Beliefs
- Jedi Wayseeker
"Theory" was originally in reference to the conept of a legal theory; it's not surprising that Crenshaw chose to frame it in those terms, given the original point of CRT. We've since adopted some CRT-influenced thinking periodically into the arts, politics, the humanities, and the social sciences, and I'd argue its valid to think of CRT as a social scientific theory in the same sense that, say, functionalism or behavioralism are theories. It's not unusual to see scholars adopt overarching paradigms of thought with respect to particular issues. One thing I think we are seeing in this thread is a very limited understanding of what theories are and how they are used in the sciences, be they the physical or social sciences. Theories are not "truth claims" as per internet arguments over philosophy or the existence of God, but rather modifiable working entities meant to aid in the exploration of the universe, for exactly as long (and no longer than) they prove useful in explaining observed phenomena. For a scientist, social categorizations like "race" (or "species", or "colors", or...) are always understood to be an artificial means of modeling reality in a comprehensible way, not eternal truths handed down to the elites of academia. We do students a disservice when in primary and secondary school we give lip service to the scientific method but in practice present scientific knowledge as though it were dogmatic rather than dialectic. You see the result here: people unable to reliably distinguish between science and religion, and managing to misportray both of those magisteria.