Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement

by Kimberlé Crenshaw (Editor), Neil Gotanda (Editor), Garry Peller (Editor)

What is Critical Race Theory and why is it under fire from the political right? This foundational essay collection, which defines key terms and includes case studies, is the essential work to understand the intellectual movement Why did the president of the United States, in the midst of a pandemic and an economic crisis, take it upon himself to attack Critical Race Theory? Perhaps Donald Trump appreciated the power of this groundbreaking intellectual movement to change the world. In recent years, Critical Race Theory has vaulted out of the academy and into courtrooms, newsrooms, and onto the streets. And no as intersectionality theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw recently told Time magazine, "It's an approach to grappling with a history of white supremacy that rejects the belief that what's in the past is in the past, and that the laws and systems that grow from that past are detached from it." The panicked denunciations from the right notwithstanding, CRT has changed the way millions of people interpret our troubled world. Edited by its principal founders and leading theoreticians, Critical Race Theory was the first book to gather the movement's most important essays. This groundbreaking book includes contributions from scholars including Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Patricia Williams, Dorothy Roberts, Lani Guinier, Duncan Kennedy, and many others. It is essential reading in an age of acute racial injustice.

Genres: Nonfiction, Race, Politics, Feminism, Social Justice, Philosophy, Law

528 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1996

About the author

Kimberlé Crenshaw (also writes as Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw) is a professor of law at UCLA and Columbia Law School. A leading authority on civil rights, black feminist legal theory, and racism and the law, she is a co-editor of Critical Race Theory (The New Press). Crenshaw is a contributor to Ms. Magazine, The Nation, and the Huffington Post. She lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews

[sologdin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very strong. Written by attorneys for attorneys, a study of jurisprudence and legal theory. Maybe non-attorneys can derive some benefit, but this is not a simplification or popularization for laypersons. It also likely requires some training in philosophy or related disciplines. This isn't a book about the science or sociology of race--it is very much about how race is a creature of law, but also how race ideology in turn controls law; we should know that already from our detailed study of Lemkin's Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, of course; this text demonstrates in many ways how law in the US structured race doctrine and is structured by it in turn.

All of the contributions are good, but some are simply stellar: Freeman on antidiscrimination law, Kennedy on affirmative action, Torres & Milan on Native American tribal definition, Guinier on race-conscious districting, Gotanda on color blind constitutionalism, Harris on whiteness as property, Crenshaw on intersectionality, Roberts on drug afflicted pregnancy, Ford on political geography, Thomas on popular constitutional history--just tremendous.

The one-star review below about this text being "brainwashing" not related to reality is transparent in not having read the book. This is by contrast one of the least propagandistic texts out there--labor-intensive, abstract, even-handed, rigorously factual, nuanced conceptually, fairly unpopular when written, and laden with direct citation to cases, statutes, establishment treatises, empirical studies, and official papers. (Always good to see some fascists get riled up and cry, though: we are laughing at you, Trump voters.) The "unrelated to reality" accusation is particularly dissociated, considering the text is multiple discussions of actual cases and statutes that unquestionably exist.

The one-star review, also below, that accuses the text of being Foucauldian and then accuses Foucault of being a pedophile is simply beyond silly, and acknowledges the silliness by insulating itself from rebuttal comments. Even if the false accusation against Foucault were true, it of course does not follow therefrom that his ideas are wrong. That said, his influence herein is de minimis, and the text proceeds from assumptions that are remote from the continental tradition, breaking from even the marxist roots of critical legal studies. Needless to say that the reviewer has read neither Foucault nor this text--all standard Trump cultist technique: insults, guilt by attenuated association, failure to engage with substance because the substance has not been assimilated.

The one-star review, also below, that claims CRT is segregationist is either completely incompetent or simply lacks candor. We could of course understand that a non-attorney may miss the nuance in Derrick Bell's argument, in the first essay of this text, that the attorneys who handled Brown v. Board were caught in a conflict of interest to the extent that they wanted to destroy the segregation regime but some of their clients may have wanted to have a relatively quick and easy 'separate but equal' remedy permitted thereunder, for the understandable reasons that their children may graduate before the case concluded and that the alternative remedy was riskier. That they may have preferred in that circumstance to keep segregation while suing for more funding in separate schools is not manifestly irrational. It is a question of attorney ethics, professionally speaking, and Bell's argument attempts to capture the difficulty. That essay is only considered a 'precursor' to fully developed CRT, and neither the precursor nor the later version endorse segregation. I thus defy any rightwinger to cite a passage from this text that argues for segregation.

The same review, without any evidentiary rigor, attempts to conflate CRT with the Third Reich and Soviet Union, which makes no sense whether those two states are considered separately or commingled together. Essentially very lazy red-baiting that links no particular argument in this text to any particular policy--or even to any deviation from policy--in the USSR and then commits a drive-by enthymemic argumentum ad hitlerum (i.e., 'Hitler talked about race, and CRT talks about race, ergo CRT is the same as Hitler'), again with no particular citation/policy combination noted, the accusation rests merely upon the unexamined allegation that CRT is 'marxist derived,' which is sort of like saying that the US constitution is monarchy-derived or that Christianity is pagan-derived. More accurate is the identification of the review in question as derived from lumpenized antisocial nihilism, the regular register for rightwing populists who only complain about things they haven't taken the time to understand.

[[Name Redacted] · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is edited & shaped by Kimberlé Crenshaw, the co-inventor of both Critical Race Theory & the concept of "intersectionality." In this book she and her fellow essayists lay out what C.R.T. actually is. If you are familiar with the history of the U.S.S.R, the Third Reich, the People's Republic of China, la República de Cuba, etc. you will find much familiar material here under the veneer of legal theory.

Remember, this book is from the mid-to-late 1990s, collecting many works that had been written previously. It is redolent with the then-recent fall of the Soviet Union and the aftershocks of that fall throughout the world of Soviet-sympathetic Western academia. Fascinating to consider that something like this has been around since the late 20th century, waiting in the wings. The utility of C.R.T. is best exemplified when one considers the atrocities that were perpetrated in the name of "racial consciousness" in the 20th century and then remembers that a similar revolution is the desire of these theorists.

According to the essayists in this tome, Critical Race Theory explicitly advocates segregation (e.g: the first essayist here argues AGAINST Brown v. Board of Education and declares that racial integration & equality are detrimental -- NOTE: let me clarify, Bell argued this in a separate paper published for Stanford but this is still also his ultimate claim here) on the grounds that no human is an individual nor are they truly a part of their religion, nation, family, etc. -- all humans are, it argues, simply cogs in the machine, cells in the organism that is their race. We must see ourselves first and foremost and entirely as "pieces" of our race because our race is what defines us and we must learn to hate those outside even as we learn to love only those inside. This is because Critical Race Theory is, as noted in this book, explicitly a Marxist-derived ideology in which raising "racial consciousness" is vital as a means of dividing populations, because through division the desired Revolution will be hastened. Does it matter that your race may be an invention of modernity, something that didn't exist as currently defined until decades, years, months, weeks ago? No. Because "race" is a metaphysical categorical construct that is summoned into being at the moment and as needed, at which point it projects itself backward and forward in time and should retroactively inform our readings of all past history until it no longer serves the ends we desire. So while until the aftermath of 9/11/2001 people from the Middle East were generally considered "white" in the West, they are now to be read as -- and all past history & encounters are to be read retroactively as though they were always -- part of this nebulous "brown" race we have recently summoned into being. So also the new category of "Hispanic" aka: "Latino" aka: "Latinx" in the U.S.A. & Canada. Likewise, the fact that until the early 1900s the Irish were NOT considered "white" is irrelevant because they are considered as such now and must therefore be retroactively read as having always been such. Very "we have always been at war with Eastasia" sort of stuff. The ends justify the means and through racial divisions we will foment the glorious struggle that eventually gives birth to the material utopia. Thus it is little surprise to learn here that C.R.T actually had its effectual beginnings as a school of legal theory, the first place it was really able to make inroads without facing horrified opposition.

Time Jesum Transeuntum et Non Riverentum, I suppose.

[Avatara Smith carrington · Rating 5 out of 5]

This seminal collection of work centering Critical Race Theory has not only proven to be personally revolutionary in how I both conceptualize and contextualize the nuanced interaction between race and law in this country and within the realm of academia but has also helped in rooting my understanding of jurisprudence in a manner that shifts my marginalized and disenfranchised identities from "object" to "subject". This has honestly proven to be a necessary facet in influencing the way that I envision liberation through the confines/practice of law.

[Христо · Rating 1 out of 5]

Keep in mind the theory is segregational in its roots. The textbook on CRT - a manual of imposed group guilt inspired strongly by the likes of Foucault, a proponent of paedophilia, and an avid postmodernist.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read a handful of the essays. While I’m not a law scholar, I did study CRT in my MSW and have done reading on the subject outside of my degree. This book gives a solid and scholarly foundation in much of the thinking and framework within CRT, but it is not a simple or easy read.

[Ale · Rating 1 out of 5]

A load of BS brainwashing... Does not relate to reality

[Scott Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement is a phenomenal work. It is a compilation of some of the most important writings that formed and sustained the Critical Race Theory (“CRT”) movement. The book includes articles from Derrick Bell, Richard Delgado, Mari Matsuda, Anthony Cook, Duncan Kennedy, Gary Peller, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and others. All of the articles add something to CRT, and read independently, add significant portions to the CRT movement.

The central thesis of the book can be found in the introduction, where it states that the purpose of CRT is to “examine the entire edifice of contemporary legal thought and doctrine from the viewpoint of law’s role in the construction and maintenance of social domination and subordination.” Or, otherwise stated, CRT seeks to offer the counter narrative to centuries of the narrative espoused in American legal thought.

Victor Caldwell, in a book review for the Columbia Law Review, sums up the impact of Critical Race Theory when he states, “Critical Race Theory marks a certain coming of age for this important movement. Through their choices of articles, the editors both tell the story of how CRT came to be and define its important characteristics.” Critical Race Theory brought many of the most important pieces in the CRT movement and cemented them to create a groundbreaking story of its own.

CRT plays such a significant role in race and American law because it is the American movement that focuses on applying Marxist concepts to reshaping American law to examine and correct racial inequalities. CRT focuses on correcting institutional racism, which in turn should correct individual racism.

While the editorial work is superb, perhaps the real genius of Kimberlé Crenshaw, Neil Gotanda, and Kendall Thomas is the way the writings are compiled to tell the story of CRT. Upon seeking approval of my book, my professor told me to read the piece in a way that that allowed me to understand an overarching counter narrative. I was confused by this statement. However, I read the book, starting at the beginning. It was not long before I realized that I was learning the story of CRT.
The entire first section, three articles, is devoted to explaining the narrative. After explaining the narrative, the editors construct the counter narrative. It is one of the most powerful recitations of the counter narrative to racial oppression. It is plain that there was clear racial oppression, and dictates further that something had to be done. The story is phenomenal. I would recommend that if you want a strong counter narrative for your paper you should read the first section of this book.

Derrick Bell, in the first section, argues that much of the Civil Rights movement did little to accomplish the desired goals. More importantly, he argues that CRT is necessary because the Civil Rights movement could not eradicate racism and racial injustice. In this first section Richard Delgado points out that an inner circle of white scholars were responsible for most scholarship on the Civil Rights movement. Therefore, CRT was needed—as a mechanism for the racial minorities to express their own voice.

I do have a couple criticisms though. Sometimes when we believe something so strongly we have a difficult time analyzing arguments against our point, and the articles contained in this book have that problem. The articles strongly advocate their points, as they should. However, there is very little reflection on opposing points of view. I wish there were a few more refuted counterpoints. Due to this deficiency, I make counterpoints myself and the author loses the chance to challenge them (refuting my points would probably be relatively easy).

There does seem to be a major contradiction between the pieces. Bell strongly argues that the civil rights movement was just a mere interest convergence, and it is not all it is cracked up to be. However, in the CLS portion of the book, CLS is criticized for taking this position. Why is it okay for a founder of CRT to take a position that is unacceptable for CLS to take? I am sure that there is a simple answer to this, but from my limited experience on the subject and a lack of explanation, I am left seeing a glaring contradiction in the book.

Finally, a critique that goes towards many critical studies—I do not believe that change occurs through the superstructure. Typical Marxist thinking is that the base needs be changed in order for change to occur. Instead, many critical scholars believe that the superstructure (law) needs to be changed in order for racism is to be excised. The problem with this approach is that change to both areas need to be made concurrently. To think that law individually can change people is silly. People make law, and so people must be remade. Once we learn that more progress will be attained legally. I do not believe that Critical Race Theorists completely disregard the base, but I do not believe that this book paid enough attention to changing the base.

In conclusion, I really enjoyed this book. Although there are a few flaws, the book advanced the field of CRT. The editors gave us a masterpiece in regards to counter narratives. The articles they chose addressed most of the issues surrounding CRT. The book stands independently as a great work too.

[Nathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I gave/loaned this book to a student in my AP Statistics course this year and I highly recommend this collection of essays and writing for any person who claims to know anything on race, "intersectionality," etc. Truly eye-opening in terms of how language can be co-opted to mean whatever the speaker wants it to.

For note: the most impressive passages tended to be the court cases and opinions. Read this class for a HLS course titled the same and while the legalise and jargon can be much at times, I attest to the analyses and critiques offered in this work that make/made me question much of what I thought I understood about "race" in America--social construct and all.

[Anthony Hagen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anyone who values a free and open society should read this collection. First, recent right-wing hysteria about CRT threatens basic academic freedoms; so for that reason alone, you should buy this book and make sure it remains on bookstore and library shelves. Second, anyone on the broad left-wing should be able to summarize CRT intelligently, but I think we’ve all seen CRT-adjacent ideas expressed inelegantly on leftist social media. The actual arguments in this book are rigorous and far-reaching, so read the arguments from the source.

[William · Rating 5 out of 5]

powerful writings that gave me a lot of food for thought. was only able to read a third of this book - look forward to returning to it.

[Orlando Smart-Powell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Much of it is soaked in legalese, but well, well worth the time.

[Richard Wilson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Should be burned. Disgusting. All good nationalists and national bolsheviks should buy it then burn it.

[Jud Barry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Critical Race Theory has been around for what I consider to be objectively — in human life-span years — a long time. This book was published in 1995, and it is already a retrospective: “writings that formed the movement.” The editors (or someone) regrettably saw fit not to include the publication origins (dates/places) of the essays included, so I had to look them up myself to get some sense of how many additional years should be tacked on and what kind of institutional connection they had. A good yardstick might be Delgado’s “Words That Wound: A Tort Action for Racial Insults, Epithets, and Name-Calling,” which was originally published in 1982 in the Harvard Critical Race - Critical Legal Law Review (a publication that is itself practically invisible to Google, so c’mon editors: help out a bibliographer here).

1982: I was in graduate school then; I’ve now been retired for eight years following a 30-year career. That is objectively a long time ago. QED.

I’ve been trying for the last couple of years to run down the CRT elephant that the blind men in certain state legislatures describe in bits and pieces by its supposed attributes in order then to ban it. This book has given me the best orientation so far, particularly the essays by such pathbreakers of the movement as Derrick Bell and Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw. They connect the reader in clear terms to the “Ah-ha!” (or maybe the “Oh, shit”) insights that drove them to pursue racial justice in what clearly are nontraditional ways.

The insights stem for the most part from the failure of the civil rights movement to produce a judicial solution to racial inequality. The result that it did achieve — with Brown v. Board of Education as the representative stand-in — dealt a death-blow to what old folks like me back in the day called de jure segregation, but hobbled any further efforts to address de facto racial prejudice by enunciating a judicial doctrine of racial neutrality. Justice — supposedly blind — had never before been blind to race, but now it became convenient to claim to be blindfolded in that regard.

Williams Crenshaw provides what to me is the best one-paragraph explanation of this watershed moment that explains CRT’s origins and project:

“Formal equality significantly transformed the black experience in America. With society’s embrace of formal equality came the eradication of symbolic domination and the suppression of white supremacy as the norm of society. Future generations of black Americans would no longer be explicitly regarded as America’s second-class citizens. Yet the transformation of the oppositional dynamic — achieved through the suppression of racial norms and stereotypes, and the recasting of racial inferiority into assumptions of cultural inferiority — creates several difficulties for the civil rights constituency. The removal of formal barriers, although symbolically significant to all and materially significant to some, will do little to alter the hierarchical relationship between blacks and whites until the way in which white race-consciousness perpetuates norms that legitimate black subordination is revealed. This is not to say that white norms alone account for the conditions of the black underclass; it is, instead, an acknowledgment that until the distinct racial nature of class ideology is itself revealed and debunked, nothing can be done about the underlying structural problems that account for the disparities. The narrow focus of racial exclusion — that is, the belief that racial exclusion is illegitimate only where the ‘whites only’ signs are explicit — coupled with strong assumptions about equal opportunity, makes it difficult to move the discussion of racism beyond the social mental self-satisfaction by the appearance of neutral norms and formal inclusion.” [p. 118]

One of the accomplishments of CRT is that it furthers the notion that all law — even judge-made law — has a whimsical basis formed by politics. In other words, it does not hover as a lofty objective spirit above the whirlpool of civil life and strife. It is in fact a precipitate of that whirlpool. It always has had and always will have wet feet. Judicial interpretation is but one manifestation of this.

Mari Matsuda in her essay “Looking to the Bottom: Critical Legal Studies and Reparations” approaches the question of political interpretation by writing about Frederick Douglass’s transformation of the abolitionist critique of the US Constitution. In the 1840’s the Garrisonians looked upon the Constitution as “a corrupt document that endorsed slavery,” a view Douglass originally accepted. He then went his own way with a radically changed view: “that the Constitution, including the Preamble and the Bill of Rights, contained a ringing indictment of slavery. Douglass stated in his widely disseminated writings and public lectures that slavery was unconstitutional, un-American, and inconsistent with the basic values necessary of the survival of the nation. … He chose to believe in the Constitution but refused to accept a racist Constitution. In his hands, the document grew to become greater than some of its drafters had intended.” [p. 65]

CRT writers like Matsuda show how the language of law can be “appropriated” (her word) by those out of power in order to advance their own claims of justice against a system that denies it, “at the same time … maintain[ing] disrespect for claims of legality that accompanied oppressive acts [my emphasis].” Those at the bottom need “no reminder that the Constitution is merely a piece of paper in the face of the monopoly on violence and capital possessed by those who intend to keep things just the way they are.” [p. 66] Matsuda posits the interpretive existence of a “victim’s Constitution” that includes “freedom from life-threatening abuse as well as the right to seek the nurturance and livelihood human beings need for survival” and also “personhood and participation — the recognition of one’s existence as a human being, free and equal, with power and control over the political processes that govern one’s life,” all of which mean “freedom from public and private racism, freedom from inequalities of wealth distribution, and freedom from domination by dynasties.” It is an “interpretation of liberty” that is “implicit in the founding document of this nation.” [p. 74]

If CRT raises a banner of an alternative view of the meaning of law, it also wonders how best to confront the reality of everyday racism against which the judicial system refuses to act. That this is the reality should come as no surprise in a country such as the US, where the yawning chasm between the day-to-day experiences of whites and blacks is all but invisible to the former. The depth and opaqueness of the divide come as a surprise to *me* — when I stop to think about it — and I am someone who believes that black American history should be taught in parallel with the standard, whitewashed version.

It is arresting for me, a white person, to be shown how something labeled “theory” comes out of the mundane realities of black people in America. White people often claim to be personally not racist, but the claim is shown to be naive, disingenuous, or irrelevant in light of the continuing experiences of black people with what is in fact personal racism that influences where it does not permeate social/institutional attitudes. Williams Crenshaw once again provides an effective explanation that contrasts the white lens of ideological, theoretical individualism that “doesn’t see race” with the black lens of social experience that lives race every day in both positive and negative ways.

The defensive refusal of whites to look at black experience— because the problem of racism has supposedly been “fixed” — all but guarantees the continuing existence of the yawning chasm with its continuing downside, or as Derrick Bell (an African-American) puts it, “[D]espite centuries of struggle, none of us — no matter our prestige or position — is more than a few steps away from a racially motivated exclusion, restriction, or affront.” [p. 306] His response to this is both pessimistic and hopeful: “It is time we concede that a commitment to racial equality merely perpetuates our disempowerment. Rather, we need a mechanism to make life bearable in a society where blacks are a permanent, subordinate class…. The reality is that blacks still suffer disproportionately higher rates of poverty, joblessness, and insufficient health care than other ethnic populations in the United States. The ideal is that law, through racial equality, can lift them out of this trap. I suggest we abandon this ideal and move on to a fresh, realistic approach…. Continued struggle can bring about unexpected benefits and gains that in themselves justify continued endeavor. The fight itself has meaning and should give us hope for the future.” [pp. 307-8]

It is my sense from reading this that insofar as there is a disembodied “theory” determining action on matters of race in the US, it rests with (mostly) white lawmakers insisting that the legislative/judicial declaration of racial equality by fiat is all that is needed. By contrast, it is the CRT writers who are the boots-on-the-ground realists perceiving the limits of the law and looking for solutions beyond legal reform (although that is assuredly a focus for some), which may be produced in a variety of ways and in a variety of fora.

Suffice it to say that the blind men state legislators trying to describe the CRT elephant have in fact not even begun to touch it. Their legislation is a fit of dudgeon, a reactive response to the fact that, in racial matters, someone has dared commit the lèse-majesté of questioning the efficacy of law. Maybe they should take up blind man golf. Their chances of a hole-in-one are better than their chances of engaging honestly with this issue. The real regret, of course, is that these laws represent a shameful limitation of free speech in a country that supposedly guarantees it.

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good overview. Unfortunately, it requires a law degree to get a lot out of it. It's a collection of articles written for other lawyers. Don't expect any hand-holding.

I only read part of this. I chose to read some specific essays based on the recommendations of another Goodreads user (sologdin's review here). I only read Freeman, Torres & Milun, Guinier, Gotanda, Harris, and Crenshaw. All of them are well done. Some of them covered material that I feel I've picked up at least partially through informal sources (e.g., Harris's article on "whiteness as property" describes a concept I've heard before, but I hadn't seen the specifics of her argument and where it's strongest and weakest (e.g., how it deals with the inalienability of whiteness by pointing to other examples of inalienable property in law like the valuation of educational degrees in divorce settlements).

My favorite of the bunch were Freeman's Legitimizing Racial Discrimination through Antidiscrimination law: A Critical Review of Supreme Court Doctrine (which you can find here) and Gotanda's A Critique of "Our Constitution Is Color-Blind" (which you can find here). They both contain broad criticisms of how American law handles race. Their arguments are strong and convincing.

The authors push back against what Cornel West's introduction describes as the liberal idea that law is apolitical. It may surprise the reader that this doesn't lead the authors to a radical reaction to the law. Instead, they suggest plausible reforms. The book criticizes our legal institutions, it doesn't try to discredit them.

I read this because I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I think it's hard to recommend to anyone that's not a lawyer. I think you might be able to get the gist of it if you carefully read the introductions to the articles that I linked above.

[Jon Kuhn · Rating 1 out of 5]

Plain and simple this book advocates for activism. Unlike other theories, CRT (as described by the authors) is inherently action oriented. The goal is to deconstruct societal norms in order to reform them along racial lines with the goal being "equity". Like every form of Marxism, the intentions may be noble but the results are disadvantageous for all involved. As we've seen in this county over the last 2 years, our nation is more racially divided than ever and with the exception of the people that are able to grift off the guilt of others, nobody is better off as a result.

[Judy McDonnell · Rating 3 out of 5]

You learn very little from this author who is a black feminist likes to project white race as a sin.

[Owlseyes]

https://www.nytimes.com/article/what-...

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

AN EXCELLENT COLLECTION OF ESSAYS ABOUT CRT AND CRITICAL LEGAL STUDIES

The Foreword by Cornel West to this 1995 collection explains, “Critical Race theorists have, for the first time, examined the entire edifice of contemporary legal thought and doctrine from the viewpoint of law’s role in the construction and maintenance of social domination and subordination. In the process, they not only challenged the basic assumptions of the prevailing paradigms among mainstream liberals and conservatives in the legal academy, but also confronted the relative silence of legal radicals… who ‘deconstructed’ liberalism, yet seldom addressed the role of deep-seated racism in American life.”

The editorial Introduction states, “This volume offers a representative, though by no means exhaustive, compilation of the growing body of legal scholarship known as Critical Race Theory (CRT). As we conceive it, Critical Race Theory embraces a movement of left scholars, most of them scholars of color, situated in law schools, whose work challenges the ways in which race and racial power are constructed and represented in American legal culture and, more generally, in American society as a whole.” (Pg. xiii) It continues, “however compelling the liberal vision of achieving racial justice through legal reform overseen by a sympathetic judiciary may have been in the sixties and early seventies, the breakdown of the national consensus for the use of law as an instrument for racial redistribution rendered the vision far less capable of appearing even merely pragmatic. By the late seventies, traditional civil rights lawyers found themselves fighting, and losing, rearguard attacks on the limited victories they had only just achieved in the prior decade, particularly with respect to affirmative action and legal requirements for the kinds of evidence required to prove illicit discrimination. An increasingly conservative judiciary made it clear that the age of ever expanding progressive law reform was over.” (Pg. xvii)

Richard Delgado suggests, “I think I have discovered a second scholarly tradition. It consists of white scholars’ systematic occupation of, and exclusion of minority scholars from, the central areas of civil rights scholarship. The mainstream writers tend to acknowledge only each others’ work. It is even possible that, consciously or not, they resist entry by minority scholars into the field, perhaps counseling them, as I was counseled to establish their reputations in other areas of law. I believe that this ‘scholarly tradition’ exists mainly in civil rights; nonwhite scholars in other fields of law seem to confront no such tradition.” (Pg. 48) He adds, “In explaining the strange absence of minority scholarship from the text and footnotes of the central areas of legal scholarship dealing with civil rights, I reject conscious malevolence or crass indifference. I think the explanation lies at the level of unconscious action and choice. It may be that the explanation lies in a need to remain in CONTROL, to make sure that legal change occurs, but not too fast.” (Pg. 52)

Mari Matsuda explains, “The movement known as Critical Legal Studies [CLS] is characterized by skepticism toward the liberal vision of the rule of law… by agreement that fundamental change is required to attain a just society, and by a utopian conception of a world more communal and less hierarchical than the one we know now. This movement is attractive to minority scholars because its central descriptive message---that legal ideals are manipulable, and that law serves to legitimate existing maldistributions of wealth and power---rings true for anyone who has experienced life in nonwhite America.” (Pg. 64)

Anthony E. Cook observes, “Many CLS scholars see the liberal conception of community as heavily dependent on the faith that the state can and does set community-defining boundaries that establish the limits of collective action through the neutral application of objective and determinative principles. Although sovereignty is theoretically vested in ‘the people,’ the specific nature and conditions of that sovereignty are … subject to the interpretation of a ‘judicial aristocracy’ of federal judges. CLS asks, ‘On what grounds can the people be legitimately robbed of this sovereignty?’ … The most troubling aspect of this story of neutrality and dispassionate adjudication is that those in power draw the line between public and private so as to preserve the distributions of wealth and power which limit transformative change and preserve hierarchies directly or indirectly benefiting them.” (Pg. 87)

Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw notes, “CLS scholars do not significantly disagree with the goal of racial equality, but assert only that the basic counterproductivity of seeking that objective through the use of legal rights… [and] that even engaging in rights discourse is incompatible with a broader strategy of social change. They view the extension of rights, although perhaps energizing political struggle or producing apparent victories in the short run, as ultimately legitimating the very racial inequality and oppression that such extension purports to remedy.” (Pg. 103)

She adds, “This belief in color-blindness and equal process, however, would make no sense at all in a society in which identifiable groups had actually been treated differently historically and in which the effects of this difference in treatment continued into the present. If employers were thought to have been influenced by factors other than the actual performance of each job applicant, it would be absurd to rely on their decisions as evidence of true market valuations… One could not look at outcomes as a far measure of merit, since one would recognize that not everyone had been given an ‘equal’ start. It would be apparent that institutions had embraced discriminatory policies in order to produce disparate results, so it would be necessary to rely on results to indicate whether these discriminatory policies have been successfully dismantled.” (Pg. 106)

She continues, “CLS literature exhibits the same proclivities that mainstream scholarship does---it seldom speaks to or about black people. The failure of the CLS scholars to address racism in their analysis also renders their critique of rights and their overall analysis of law in America incomplete. Specifically, this failure leads to an inability to appreciate fully the transformative significance or the civil rights movement in mobilizing black Americans and generating new demands.” (Pg. 110)

Charles R. Lawrence III says, “A crucial factor in the process that produces unconscious racism is the tacitly transmitted cultural stereotype. If an individual has never known a black doctor or lawyer … he is likely to deduce that blacks as a group are naturally inclined toward certain behavior and unfit for certain roles. But the lesson… is learned, internalized, and used without an awareness of its source. Thus, an individual may select a white job applicant over an equally qualified black and honestly believe that this decision was based on observed intangibles unrelated to race.” (Pg. 241)

Cheryl I. Harris argues, “At the individual level, recognizing oneself as ‘white’ necessarily assumes premises based on white supremacy: it assumes that black ancestry in any degree… automatically disqualifies claims to white identity, thereby privileging ‘white’ as unadulterated, exclusive, and rare… Recognizing or identifying oneself as white is thus a claim of racial purity, an assertion that one is free of any taint of black blood.” (Pg. 283) Later, she points out, “Even if one rejects the notion that properly constructed affirmative action policies cause whites no injustice, affirmative action does not implement a set of permanent, never-ending privileges for blacks.” (Pg. 289)

Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw states, “The problem with identity politics is not that it fails to transcend difference, as some critics charge, but rather the opposite---that it frequently conflates or ignores intragroup differences… Moreover, ignoring differences WITHIN groups contributes to tension AMONG groups… Thus, when the practices expound identity as ‘woman’ or ‘person of color’ as an either/or proposition, they relegate the identity or women of color to a location that resists telling.” (Pg. 357)

Later, she points out, “Because black women face subordination based on both race and gender , reforms of rape law and judicial procedures which are premised on narrow conceptions of gender subordination may not address the devaluation of black women… Thus, black women are essentially prepackaged as bad women in cultural narratives about good women who can be raped and bad women who cannot… These narratives may explain why rapes of black women are less likely to result in convictions and long prison terms than are rapes of white women.” (Pg. 369)

She says, “recognizing the ways in which the intersectional experiences of women of color are marginalized in prevailing conceptions of identity politics does not require that we give up attempts to organize as communities of color. Rather, intersectionality provides a basis for reconceptualizing race as a coalition between men and women of color… race can also be a coalition of straight and gay people of color, and thus serve as a basis for critique of churches and other cultural institutions that reproduce heterosexism.” (Pg. 377)

Regina Austin argues, “Implementation of an agenda for black feminist legal scholarship, and the expanded study of the legal status of minority women in general, will require the right sort of environmental conditions, such as receptive or at least tolerant nonminority publishers and a network of established academics engaged in similar pursuits. We minority female scholars must devote a bit of our sass to touting the importance of the perspective of minority women and the significance of their acceptable law review topics.” (Pg. 427)

Richard Thompson Ford says, “I disagree with the critics who insist that such attempts to combine insights about the necessity of group and cultural membership with pluralist and republican thought are hopelessly self-contradictory. Such a criticism misses the point that ALL political thought recognizes such conflicts and attempts to mediate them. I believe that my proposals and the analysis herein are largely consistent with these more sophisticated forms of liberalism, pluralism, and republicanism.” (Pg. 460)

This is a complex, detailed, and ‘academic’ collection of important essays, that (while hardly suitable as an ‘introduction’ to the subject for beginners) will practically be ‘must reading’ for anyone seriously studying Critical Race Theory, or Critical Legal Studies.

[Erik Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of primary source Critical Race Theory (CRT) legal essays. Reading primary sources is extremely informative and this book is a helpful tool for understanding CRT, it’s genesis, it’s tenets, and how liberal and progressive attempts to overcome systemic injustice have not achieved their desired goals, often because of the reluctance of the legal system to deal with the issues that perpetuate the subordination of people of color even after formal renunciations of de juré racist policies. This book exposes the uncompleted reforms of the civil rights movements in these United States. CRT is not Marxist—nor derived from Marx—and this book clearly shows the actual background of Critical Race Theory.

This book exposes faults in our legal system which continue to disadvantage those who aren’t white men. Critical Race Theory doesn’t necessarily offer solutions and doesn’t seek to destroy American society, but it does diagnose many hidden faults in our Republic and in our past attempts to deal with our 400 years of racial subordinationism of people of color. This book calls us to examine our presuppositions about the law through empirical study and to seek to reimagine and revise legal practice where needed to create the equity claimed by the US Constitution and its amendments. We cannot have liberty and justice for all without re-examining and reforming our legal system which was constructed by white supremacists often for the purpose of suppressing people of color and protecting the rights of wealthy white men. This book deals with complex issues in a nuanced way which is so needed in this fundamentalist age.

[Kathleen O'Neal · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very interesting book and really gives the reader a good idea of the diversity of perspectives within critical race theory as well as a sense of what it is that unifies these diverse perspectives. One of my biggest criticisms of the book is that in its understandable focus on African-American issues, it didn't deal as much with issues involving American Indians, Hispanic Americans, and Asian-Americans. I would also have been interested in reading more about the laws surrounding interracial marriage and multiracial people in the book. That said, the book was still a worthwhile read and it truly helps the interested reader to separate the reality from the media panic surrounding critical race theory.

[Nanette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Terrific overview & in-depth treatment of critical race theory (CRT). Each chapter has classroom exercises and suggestions for further reading along with legal case examples wherein CRT was appropriately applied. I appreciate the glossary of terms for easy reference—so many terms are specific to CRT, terms that have become ubiquitous today yet originate in CRT. Without the CRT contextualization it’s too easy to loose sight of the implications of the glossed terms as they’re appropriated in other discourse. I especially liked Ch. 2, Hallmark Critical Race Theory Themes because it demonstrated CRT applications to real-world situations.

[Bryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I believe everyone should read this.

It's a tough read since it's a lot of legal theory and I am not a legal scholar.

However, there are concepts anyone can pick up on - things that blew my mind, such as whiteness being property and so on.

To address the elephant in the room, the other facts that come out of this is that CRT is definitely not what the Right Wing Propaganda Machine says it is.

Like. At all.

Therefore, I am very glad I read it so I can talk about it more properly to people of any stripe.

[Kyle]

The Bible for Critical Race Theory

[Leonard Janke · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is no royal road to knowledge of what critical race theory is and certainly not by listening to what CNN, Fox News or any secondary source says. To really know you need to go to primary sources and this book provides them.

This book is quite long: about 500 pages and it takes quite a bit of time to read it all. For comparison it took me a bit longer to read this book than a typical volume in the Oxford History of the United States series even though the latter come in around 800 pages. Part of the difference is due to the fact that there is currently no audio version of this book but there is also more need to stop to think about whether what the authors say seems true or not. The good news is that although critical race theory centers around the study of laws and legal decisions in their historical and political context this book is quite accessible to people who are not lawyers. With most essays it helps to Google the cases discussed to "spot check" what the writers are saying. Having a deep knowledge of legal doctrines and terms is not a prerequisite, however.

The writings, for the most part, are quite clear. With a few exception there is very little academic gobbledygook and other pretentiousness. Unfortunately, Calmore's essay on what Critical Race Theory is deviates from this and ventures off into some real gibberish. This is the exception however, and quite surprisingly, even the essays in the "Race and Postmodernism" section are very understandable. In that section a couple of the essays start off with gibberish but are able to get grounded and become very understandable, whether you ultimately agree with their conclusions or not.

The section on intersectionality was also a pleasant surprise. Whatever the current popular understanding of intersectionality is it started off with a well argued essay by Crenshaw that women of color were not well served by either the feminist or anti-racist movements at the time.

There is some good history in this volume: for example, the aftermath of Brown v Board and how and why desegregation fell short of what had been hoped. Civil rights lawyers are implicated along with the vagueness and soundness of the decision itself (Bell thought that the correct decision should have been for black people to have been given the option of attending either segregated but truly equal schools or integrated schools.)

One aspect of the book that many will find refreshing compared to mass market political writings is that the writings are a few steps higher in terms of integrity in presenting what they are arguing against fairly as opposed to trying to topple blatant straw-men. The essays, on average, are also somewhat better than mass market political books at anticipating and responding to serious objections although there are notable exceptions.

On the downside, many of the articles do not seem to make a good case for they are arguing for. Richard Ford's article on how local government perpetuates segregation in the absence of overt racism is an example. He has a model which purports to demonstrate this but ultimately it does not show this. It might be possible to do so with assumptions beyond what he provides but he leaves out the math and it seems that if he called out additional necessary assumptions they would be quite open to objection for superficial reasonableness and whether they correspond to what happens in reality (specifically how has upward mobility of black people trended since the civil rights era).

Another common flaw in the book is to look at something undesirable about the current legal system and purpose only vague solutions, e.g. it proposed to subject laws which invoke historically cultural symbols of racism to strict scrutiny without clearly defining what the terms mean; how the test would be applied impartially; and what the undesirably consequences of the purported solution would be. Another example is a call for increased legal reliance on "story telling" and "oral traditions" of groups which did not keep written ones. There is no serious attempt in either case to discuss what the possible problems that this would raise are.

Overall, critical race theorists are proposing some very drastic changes to the American legal system and are becoming highly influential. A central theme is that "color blindness" which they call "formal equality" is not enough to bring about racial equality in the country. This is due to the historical wrongs which, absent more intervention, make the playing field permanently unequal. This means that reparations and affirmative action are necessary. To the book's credit, the essays on reparations and affirmative action make the most compelling case I have seen. Cumulative voting is also proposed as part of the solution. One of the most controversial suggestions is to accept the inevitability that folks will not act objectively in the legal system or as legal scholars and to attempt to embrace the subjectivity instead. This is proposed rather than ideas on how to improve objectivity.

[Joe Olipo · Rating 3 out of 5]

i am outside of history.
i wish i had some peanuts,
it looks hungry there in its cage.
i am inside of history.
its hungrier than i thot.* — Ishmael Reed

Whole lot of heavy hitters here. Generally, we are proceeding from a "Deconstructivist" Critical Legal Studies to an "Interventionist" theory (which might be called "Critical Race Theory," though not necessarily), on the basis of a materialist legal scholarship which makes explicit the tension between Plaintiff and Counsel, and also tensions between the Subaltern non-Plaintiff and the at-present edifice of the Juridical System.

Early Sections: good, technical pieces by Derrick A Bell Jr. (introduction on interests of legal orgs vs plaintiffs in school integration cases with a taste of aporia) also has an excellent piece on "racial realism" (vs legal formalism) in part IV ("Reflections on Justice Thomas"); Alan David Freeman (inventive); Kimberlé Crenshaw (clear-sighted sangfroid). Also contains the some polemical essais, such as Gary Peller's fraught embrace of black nationalism as a means-to-an-end (against integration-ism).

Later Sections: Duncan Kennedy demonstrating strong fundamentals and humor in, "A Pluralist Case for Affirmative Action." Gerald Torres and Kathryn Milun doing a good exegesis in: "Translating 'Yonnondio' by Precedent and Evidence: The Mashpee Indian Case" (--> "The baked and the half-baked.") Charles R Lawrence III's Approach from Psychoanalysis in, "The Id, the Ego, and Equal Protection," requires an anatomy of the subaltern undercurrents of racial animus very difficult if not impossible to pull off, and also possibly dangerous in that it can be used against itself, but also one of the rare conceivable means of advancement against an immovable object. Cheryl I. Harris: finally the fabled text on, "Whiteness as Property" (i.e. whiteness as a category of inalienable property (e.g. the degree of Juris Doctor) legitimated by a corresponding institutional recognition/reputation).

On deconstructed dichotomies, "Rights Talk," and turning the empty promise against itself. Kimberlé Crenshaw on Mark Tushnet:

Tushnet: (1) Once one identifies what counts as a right in a specific setting, it invariably turns out that the right is unstable; significant but relatively small changes in the social setting can make it difficult to sustain the claim that a right remains implicated. (2) The claim that a right is implicated in some settings produces no determinate consequences. (3) The concept of rights falsely converts into an empty abstraction (reifies) real experiences that we ought to value for their own sake. (4) The use of rights in contemporary discourse impedes advances by progressive social forces . . ."

Crenshaw: "The commitment of CLS scholars to trashing is premised on a notion that people are mystified by liberal legal ideology and consequently cannot remake their world until they see how contingent such ideology is. However, this version of domination by consent does not present a realistic picture of racial domination. Coercion explains much more about racial domination than does ideologically induced consent.”
-->In addition to exaggerating the role of liberal legal consciousness and underestimating that of coercion, CLS scholars also disregard the transformative potential that liberalism offers
-->" Civil rights protestors, articulating their formal demands through legal rights ideology, exposed a series of contradictions, the most important being the promised privileges of American citizenship and the practice of absolute racial subordination. Rather than using the contradictions to suggest that American citizenship was itself illegitimate or false, civil rights protestors proceeded as if American citizenship were real and demanded to exercise the “rights” that citizenship entailed. By seeking to restructure reality to reflect American mythology, blacks relied upon and ultimately benefited from politically inspired efforts to resolve the contradictions by granting formal right"
-->" On the other hand, Peter Gabel may well be right in observing that the reforms which come from such demands are likely to transform a given situation only to the extent necessary to legitimate those elements of the situation that “must” remain unchanged. Thus, it might just be the case that oppression means “being between a rock and a hard place’—in other words, that there are risks and dangers involved both in engaging in the dominant discourse and in failing to do so"

ASIDE

From Derrida: "Western thought [...] has always been structured in terms of dichotomies or polarities: good vs. evil, being vs. nothingness, identity vs. difference, mind vs. matter, man vs. woman, nature vs. culture, speech vs. writing. These polar opposites do not, however, stand as independent and equal entities. The second term in each pair is considered the negative, corrupt, un-dersirable version of the first, a fall away from it. . . . The two terms are not simply opposed in their meanings, but are arranged in a hierarchical order which gives the first term priority . . . "

[Frederick · Rating 2 out of 5]

Have been examining this American version of Marxism and trying to understand what they believe. I did manage to read some things I wasn't aware of like their claim that black people in the 1950s did not care about integration but more about better schools and job opportunities. In fact, the very idea that their lives would be improved by just associating with white people was insulting. But in the main CRT sets race relations back sixty years. It is a disgusting ideology that makes minorities, especially American black people, as the new proletariat, the oppressed class, and all white people and any brown skinned person who values faith, hard work, and family as life motivators, as the new bourgeoisie, the oppressor class. It took me a long time to read this and to try to understand it and I think anyone who values fair play and Constitutional rights should also try to understand CRT's main writings.

[Kendall Lauber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Needless to say, CRT is timeless and an incredible body of work. I understand why this so terrifies the right! It took me a long time to read the whole thing, and without a legal background many pieces are dense or difficult to understand, but I still recommend it highly. I won’t try to write a true review, so I’ll just throw in a few notes or thoughts I jotted down while reading:
- pages 49-50 provide the most clear explanation for purpose and method of reparations that I have ever heard/read, want to hold onto this for future reference
- article about Christianity and experiences of enslaved people was so so interesting
- kimberle crenshaw continues to be one of the most incredible minds and writers of this era
- starting on page 452- I really enjoyed the models developed in this article. Very easy to understand and great explanations for people who do not understand how segregation continues to influence us/society

[Christian Barrett · Rating 3 out of 5]

This legal text book on CRT walks through the development of the thought in legal studies in the U.S. The variety of writers consistently present their ideas in a breadth of articles that are organized chronologically in some sense and categorically based on what area of culture at large they are touching. From a logical flow stand point the arguments presented are consistent, and this work is excellent at pointing out the foundation of CRT and at exposing the desired logical outcomes of CRT by those who adamantly hold to this line of racially segregated thinking. This is not an introductory book on the topic, and I don’t know if it should be recommended for the most part to someone who just wants an understanding of the thinking of CRT.

[Karla Kitalong · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't realize this book was 30 years old when I bought it. A lot of the content was technical legal language, demonstrating that the origins of CRT do indeed come from the realm of jurisprudence and not from what the critics call wokeness. I didn't understand every detail, but I found it enlightening, and I marked a dozen passages for future reference. However, I do wish the editors had included original publication information as is typical (and necessary) in edited collections.

[Clémence Dufresne · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you want to understand more about the topic of racism this book is perfect for you. It will explain to you why some actions or mentions should not be said and done and how it impacts people of different ethnicities. They also explained why Asian people are less inclined to be the target compared to Africans or other countries with black color skin.