The problem is that racism, sexism, and discrimination exist. Critical race theory (CRT) is concerned with equity in terms of a person’s complete identity, which may begin with race and include gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and/or some other characteristic.
The Solution
CRT advocates radical change in systems and organizations. CRT critiques power structures in an attempt to provide guidance to those who maintain inequitable and racialized structures. Corporate policies and programs should be scrutinized to see how they affect all workers. The assumption that policies and programs are neutral should be abandoned. The acknowledgment of race (including Whiteness as a race) and racism is central. Change should embrace all people and provide equivalent opportunities to all employees. Change means breaking the glass ceiling, erasing salary differentials, and eliminating harassment and discrimination.
The Stakeholders
The power structures that support societal-level stakeholders create policy and law. These policies and legal mandates are implemented by Human Resource Development (HRD) practitioners and rarely questioned. Stakeholders include employees, staff, and clients. Individuals at all ranks within organizations, clients, consumers, and suppliers uphold the racism inherent in society by ignoring it or being blind to it. We all have a stake in seeing racism and all bias so we can work as a community of stakeholders to eliminate it.
AlfredM. V.ChlupD. T. (2010). Making the invisible, visible: Race matters in human resource development. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 12, 332-351.
ArriolaE. (2000). Gendered inequality. In DelgadoR.StefancicJ. (Eds.), Critical race theory: The cutting edge (2nd ed., pp. 322-324). Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
4.
BellD. (1980). Brown v. Board of Education and the interest-convergence dilemma. Harvard Law Review, 93, 518-533.
5.
BellD. (1992). Faces at the bottom of the well: The permanence of racism. New York, NY: Basic.
6.
BernierJ. D.RoccoT. S. (2003). Working in the margins of critical race theory and human resource development. In FerroT.DeanG. (Eds.), Proceedings of the Midwest Research-to-Practice Conference in Adult, Continuing, and Community Education (pp. 13-18). Columbus: The Ohio State University.
7.
BieremaL. L. (2009). Critiquing human resource development’s dominant masculine rationality and evaluating its impact. Human Resource Development Review, 8, 68-96.
8.
BowmanL. (2004). Black and White attorneys’ perspectives on race, the legal system, and continuing legal education: A critical race theory analysis (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Georgia, Athens.
9.
BrookfieldS. D. (2004). The power of critical theory: Liberating adult learning and teaching. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
10.
ByrdM. Y. (2007). The effects of racial conflict on organizational performance: A search for theory. New Horizons in Adult Education and Human Resource Development, 21, 13-28.
11.
ByrdM. Y. (2009). Telling our stories of leadership: If we don’t tell them they won’t be told. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 11, 562-605.
12.
CaputoR.CianniM. (1997). The job training experiences of black and white women. Human Resource Development Quarterly, 8, 197-217.
13.
ChakrabartyN.RobertsL.PrestonJ. (2012). Critical race theory in England. Race Ethnicity and Education, 15, 1-3.
14.
ChakrabartyN.RobertsL.PrestonJ. (Eds.). (2014). Critical race theory in England. London, England: Routledge.
15.
CollinsJ. C.RoccoT. S. (2014). Disparities in health care for racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities. In CollinsJ. C.BryantL. O.RoccoT. S. (Eds.), Health and wellness concerns for racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities (New directions for adult and continuing education: No. 142; pp. 5-14). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
16.
CookD. A. (2013).Blurring the boundaries: The mechanics of creating composite characters. In LynnM.DixsonA. (Eds.), The handbook of critical race theory in education (pp. 181-194). New York, NY: Routledge.
17.
DanielsD. C. (2006). Critical HRD (CHRD) and Critical Race Theory (CRT)—Theory building and suggested methodologies from the voices of descendants of the African Diaspora. In PoellR. (Ed.), Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on HRD Research and Practice across Europe (pp. 22-2). Tilburg, The Netherlands: University of Tilburg.
18.
DelgadoR. (1989). Storytelling for oppositionists and others: A plea for narrative. Michigan Law Review, 87, 2411-2441.
19.
DelgadoR.StefancicJ. (2000). Introduction. In DelgadoR.StefancicJ. (Eds.), Critical race theory: The cutting edge (2nd ed., pp. xv-xix). Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
20.
DelgadoR. (2003). Crossroads and blind alleys: A critical examination of recent writings about race. Texas Law Review, 82, 121-152.
21.
DelgadoR.StefancicJ. (2001). Critical race theory: An introduction. New York: New York University Press.
22.
EnsherE. A.Grant-ValloneE. J.DonaldsonS. I. (2001). Effects of perceived discrimination on job satisfaction, organizational commitment organizational citizenship behavior, and grievances. Human Resource Development Quarterly, 12, 53-72.
23.
FenwickT. (2004). Toward a critical HRD in theory and practice. Adult Education Quarterly, 54, 193-209.
24.
FredricksonG. M. (2002). Racism: A short history. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
25.
FreemanA. D. (1977). Legitimizing racial discrimination through antidiscrimination law: A critical review of Supreme Court doctrine. Minnesota Law Review, 62, 1049.
26.
GordonR. (1990). New developments in legal theory. In KairysD. (Ed.), The politics of law: A progressive critique (pp. 413-425). New York, NY: Pantheon Books.
27.
GotandaN. (1995). A critique of “our constitution is color blind”. In CrenshawK.GotandaN.PellerG.ThomasK. (Eds.), Critical race theory: The key writings that formed the movement (pp. 257-275). New York, NY: The New Press.
28.
GotandaN. (2011). The racialization of Islam in American law. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 637, 184-195.
29.
GougeonT.HuttonS. (1993). Effects of culture and gender on principle-teacher communication in schools. Human Resource Development Quarterly, 4, 277-291.
30.
Guy-SheftallB. (1993, April). Black feminist perspectives on the academy. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Atlanta, GA.
31.
HarrisC. I. (1993). Whiteness as property. Harvard Law Review, 106, 1709-1791.
32.
HarrisC. I. (1995). Whiteness as property. In CrenshawK. W.GotandaN.PellerG.ThomasK. (Eds.), Critical race theory: The key writings that formed the movement (pp. 276-291). New York. NY: The New Press.
33.
HartelC. E.DouthittS. S.HartelG.DouthittS. Y. (1999). Equally qualified but unequally perceived: Openness to perceived dissimilarity as a predictor of race and sex discrimination in performance judgments. Human Resource Development Quarterly, 10, 79-89.
34.
HeywoodJ. S.ParentD. (2012). Performance pay and the White-Black wage gap. Journal of Labor Economics, 30, 249-290.
35.
HirschmanC.AlbaR.FarleyR. (2000). The meaning and measurement of race in the US Census: Glimpses into the future. Demography, 37, 381-393.
36.
HiteL. M.McDonaldK. S. (2010). Perspectives on HRD and diversity education. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 12, 283-294.
37.
hooksb. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York, NY: Routledge.
38.
JacobsR. L. (1997). HRD partnerships for integrating HRD research and practice. In SwansonR. A.HoltonE. F. (Eds.), Human resource development research handbook (pp. 47-64). San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler.
39.
Jean-MarieG.WilliamsV.ShermanS. (2009). Black women’s leadership experiences: Examining the intersectionality of race and gender. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 11, 551-581.
40.
KimC. J. (2004). Imagining race and nation in multiculturalist America. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 27, 987-1005.
41.
KolbJ. A. (1999). The effect of gender role, attitudes toward leadership, and self-confidence on leader emergence: Implications for leadership development. Human Resource Development Quarterly, 10, 305-320.
42.
KormanikM. B. (2000). White male backlash: Practitioner perspectives on the phenomenon. In KuchinkeK. P. (Ed.) 2000 Academy of Human Resource Development Conference Proceedings (Vol. 1, pp. 180-187). Raleigh, NC: AHRD
43.
Ladson-BillingsG. (2013). Critical race theory—What it is not! In LynnM.DixsonA. (Eds.), The handbook of critical race theory in education (pp. 35-47). New York, NY: Routledge.
44.
LawrenceC.MatsudaM.DelgadoR.CrenshawK. (1993). Introduction. In MatsudaM.LawrenceC.DelgadoR.CrenshawK. (Eds.), Words that wound: Critical race theory, assaultive speech, and the first amendment (pp. 1-15). Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
45.
LeeS. M. (1993). Racial classifications in the US Census: 1890–1990. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 16, 75-94.
46.
Lloyd-JonesB. (2009). Implication of race and gender in higher education administration: An African American woman’s perspective. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 11, 606-618.
47.
LobelS. A. (1999). Impact of diversity and work-life initiatives in organizations. In PowellG. N. (Ed.), Handbook of gender and work (pp. 453-474). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
48.
McGowanJ. (2007). American liberalism: An interpretation for our time. Chapel Hill: North Carolina University Press.
49.
PaneD. M.RoccoT. S. (2014). Transforming the school-to-prison pipeline. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
50.
PetersonE. (1999). Creating a culturally relevant dialogue for African American adult educators. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 82, 79-91.
51.
PetittB. (2009). Borrowed power. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 11, 633-645.
52.
RynesS. L.ColbertA. E.BrownK. G. (2002). HR professionals’ beliefs about effective human resource practices: Correspondence between research and practice. Human Resource Management, 41, 149-174.
53.
SchiedF.CarterV.HowellS. (2001). Silent power: HRD and the management of learning in the workplace. In CerveroR. M.WilsonA. L. (Eds.), Power in practice: Adult education and the struggle for knowledge and power in society (pp. 42-59). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
54.
SnyderR. (1993). The glass ceiling for women: Things that don’t cause it and things that won’t break it. Human Resource Development Quarterly, 4, 97-106.
55.
SueD. W. (2003). Overcoming our racism: The journey to liberation. San Francisco, CA: Wiley.
56.
SueD. W.CapodilupoC. M.TorinoG. C.BucceriJ. M.HolderA.NadalK. L.EsquilinM. (2007). Racial microaggressions in everyday life: Implications for clinical practice. American Psychologist, 62, 271-286.
57.
TateW. F. (1997). Critical race theory and education: History, theory, and implications. Review of Research in Education, 22, 195-247.
58.
ThijssenJ.Van der HeijdenB.RoccoT. S. (2008). Towards the employability-link model: Current employment transition to future employment perspectives. Human Resource Development Review, 7, 165-183.
59.
ThomasR. (1991). Beyond race and gender. New York, NY: AMACOM.
60.
WalvinJ. (2001). Black ivory: A history of British slavery. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
