For the critical theorist, culture was front and center, after economics and traditional Marxism. For critical race theorists, clearly, race is front and center, and that was not a particularly big emphasis for the critical theorist, with one exception—Herbert Marcuse.

Downstream from Critical Theory

How should we think about critical theory as compared to critical race theory? Critical theory is older. Think of it as the older dad, grandpa, or uncle, and critical race theory is downstream a bit. But it’s not an easily identifiable relationship. It’s not as if critical race theory just said, Well, let’s adopt everything about critical theory and add race.

I would take critical race theory more as a nephew or great-nephew of critical theory. Critical race theory would be generally progressive and Marxist-leaning, whereas critical theory is explicitly Marxist and transformed, reworked Marxism.

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