The Critical Race Initiative (CRI) is a group of scholars who center critical race theory (CRT) as an important framework by which to understand inequality in society. CRT addresses the ways that race permeates social institutions to maintain systemic forms of inequality. Under this framework, racism not only operates through social interaction stemming from individual prejudice but also through i
nstitutional conditions rooted in the culture of social life. Entrenched in white privilege, these conditions maintain an ideology of inferiority among minorities that dictate status, power, and prestige structures. In addition to focusing on what race is, CRI more so focuses on what race does, how it is used, and how it operates via individual, social/cultural, and institutional conditions that manufacture and maintain racial inequality within political, social, and economic spheres. Correspondingly, race is treated as a social process rather than simply a variable to control for in a statistical model. In this social process, race operates not only as a point of departure to differentiate individuals and groups but as socially constructed destinations: that is, we all experience an ongoing process of racialization in our daily lives.
