The advent of critical race theory (CRT) in legal scholarship changed the way in which legal scholars think about race and racism in at least three ways. First, CRT scholars argue that the problem of racial justice is fundamental to American law, whereas the previous generation of civil rights scholars saw racial justice as a problem of institutional dynamics resolvable through ordinary legal process. Second, CRT scholars have infused greater social, disciplinary, and scholastic "reflexivity" into legal scholarship on race. Third, CRT scholars have developed a rich and nuanced language for understanding race and racism, replacing an earlier and less sophisticated legal conception of people of color as "discrete and insular" minorities facing unreasoning prejudice.