Critical Race Theory, An Introduction Quotes

“our system of race is like a two-headed hydra. One head consists of outright racism—the oppression of some people on grounds of who they are. The other head consists of white privilege—a system by which whites help and buoy each other up. If one lops off a single head, say, outright racism, but leaves the other intact, our system of white over black/brown will remain virtually unchanged. The predicament of social reform, as one writer pointed out, is that “everything must change at once.” Otherwise, change is swallowed up by the remaining elements, so that we remain roughly as we were before.”
― Richard Delgado, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction

“3. Serving Two Masters Derrick Bell has pointed out a third structure that impedes reform, this time in law. To litigate a law-reform case, the lawyer needs a flesh-and-blood client. One might wish to establish the right of poor consumers to rescind a sales contract or to challenge the legal fiction that a school district is desegregated if the authorities have arranged that the makeup of certain schools is half black and half Chicano (as some of them did in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education). Suppose, however, that the client and his or her community do not want the very same remedy that the lawyer does. The lawyer, who may represent a civil rights or public interest organization, may want a sweeping decree that names a new evil and declares it contrary to constitutional principles. He or she may be willing to gamble and risk all. The client, however, may want something different—better schools or more money for the ones in his or her neighborhood.”
― Richard Delgado, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction

“white-collar and corporate/industrial crime—perpetrated mostly by whites—causes more personal injury, death, and property loss than does all street crime combined, even on a per capita basis.)”
― Richard Delgado, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction

“Closely related to differential racialization—the idea that each race has its own origins and ever-evolving history—is the notion of intersectionality and antiessentialism. No person has a single, easily stated, unitary identity.”
― Richard Delgado, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction

“That society frequently chooses to ignore these scientific truths, creates races, and endows them with pseudo-permanent characteristics is of great interest to critical race theory.”
― Richard Delgado, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction

“A fourth-grade teacher, shortly before beginning a unit on world cultures, passes out a form asking the children to fill out where their parents “are from.” The bright child who raised her hand earlier hesitates, knowing that her parents are undocumented entrants who fear being discovered and deported.”
― Richard Delgado, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction

“Will the United States ever have a black woman president?”
― Richard Delgado, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction

“Takao Ozawa v. United States, 260 U.S. 178 (1922).”
― Richard Delgado, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction

“In 1790 Congress had limited naturalization (acquisition of United States citizenship) to free white persons only. With minor modifications, this racial qualification for citizenship stood on the books until 1952.”
― Richard Delgado, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction

“neither the NAACP nor any other predominantly African American organization filed an amicus brief challenging Japanese internment in the World War II case of Korematsu v. United States.”
― Richard Delgado, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction

“Community-betterment organizations like the League of United Latin American Citizens reacted to rampant discrimination against their members by insisting that society treat Latinos as whites.”
― Richard Delgado, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction

“In the years following the Civil War, southern plantation owners urged replacing their former slaves with Chinese labor.”
― Richard Delgado, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction

“In our system, rights are almost always procedural (for example, to a fair process) rather than substantive (for example, to food, housing, or education).”
― Richard Delgado, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction

“Three years after I got my law degree, in the summer of 1989, I was a first-year law teacher invited to attend the first-ever workshop on something called “critical race theory,” to be held at the St. Benedict Center in Madison, Wisconsin. At that workshop, I discovered what had been missing for me as a student. I met some of the people who, by then, had begun to be recognized across the nation as major intellectual figures: Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Richard Delgado, Mari Matsuda, Patricia Williams. And I discovered a community of scholars who were inventing a language and creating a literature that was unlike anything I had read for class in three years of law school. As we enter the twenty-first century, critical race theory is no longer new, but it continues to grow and thrive.”
― Richard Delgado, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction

“None of my professors talked about race or ethnicity; it was apparently irrelevant to the law. None of my professors in the first year talked about feminism or the concerns of women, either. These concerns were also, apparently, irrelevant. Nowhere, in fact, did the cases and materials we read address concerns of group inequality, sexual difference, or cultural identity. There was only one Law, a law that in its universal majesty applied to everyone without regard to race, color, gender, or creed.”
― Richard Delgado, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction