The intent of this project was to identify and relate the values and perceptions of today's African American students to culturally relevant teaching and learning practices. The reason for relating student culture with teaching practices is to improve pedagogical processes for African American students. Culturally relevant pedagogy, according to previous research, is considered rewarding to students, teachers, and the local and national community. However, culturally relevant teaching and learning elements have yet to be evaluated in the context of today's African American students (members of Generation Y), who live in a very diverse and technologically savvy world. Critical race theory (CRT) is the main framework used in this project to explain the ubiquity of a culturally relevant pedagogy. The purpose of this quantitative study is to test this critical race theory, which relates the presence of the factors associated with culturally relevant teaching strategies with perceived relevance, controlling for race, at a historically black university (HBCU) in the southeast. The culturally relevant teaching strategies were defined based on characteristics recommended by previous researchers. The presence and importance of the existing teaching strategies was evaluated based on student self-report. Participants in this study included approximately 145 students from a HBCU. A survey consisting of 37 items related to culturally relevant pedagogy was constructed. Overall themes included; use of culturally-specific examples in class whenever possible; use of culture-specific presentational models, use of "relational reinforcers", and active engagement. Each of these themes was captured by the survey items. Participants reported the extent to which teaching strategies were present on a 5-point scale Likert-type scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree and importance of these on a 3-point scale ranging from not at all important to very important. A new variable, "Relevance" was formed based on the multiplicative function of importance and presence of a teaching and learning strategy. A set of six demographic questions were also included in the survey. Results of a factor analyses with varimax rotation identified 8 factors that explained 71% of the variance. Factors considered relevant included some identified in previous studies, intertwined with others which were more related to the technology skills of Gen-Y. Results of this study are expected to inform educational practices and pedagogies for African American students and improve teaching and learning outcomes.