Critical Race and Legal Theory

The African Canadian Legal Odyssey explores the history of African Canadians and the law from the era of slavery until the early twenty-first century. ;This collection demonstrates that the social history of Blacks in Canada has always been inextricably bound to questions of law, and that the role of the law in shaping Black life was often ambiguous and shifted over time.Comprised of eleven engaging chapters, organized both thematically and chronologically, it includes a substantive introduction that provides a synthesis and overview of this complex history. This outstanding collection will appeal to both advanced specialists and undergraduate students and makes an important contribution to an emerging field of scholarly inquiry.

In And We Are Not Saved, legal scholar and civil rights activist Derrick Bell calls for a deeper understanding of how white supremacy functions in the United States. Bell challenges the idea that significant social, political, and economic progress was achieved by the civil rights movement in the wake of the 1954 Brown v. Board decision. Through a series of fables and dramatic dialogues modeled on the grim fairytales of the eighteenth century, Bell explains the true pervasiveness of racial oppression within the American legal system. Racial inequality, he argues, is an integral part of American law and society, and it cannot be easily reversed through legislation.

Born and raised in Truro, Nova Scotia, Burnley 'Rocky' Jones is one of Canada’s most important figures of social justice. Often referred to as Canada’s Stokely Carmichael, Jones was tirelessly dedicated to student movements, peace activism, Black Power, anti-racism, women’s liberation and human rights reform. He was a leader in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, brought the Black Panthers to Canada, taught at Dalhousie and founded his own law firm. This autobiography tells the story of Jones’s inimitable life and his accomplishments. But it also does more. It illuminates the Black experience in Nova Scotia, it explains the evolving nature of race relations and human rights in recent Canadian history, and it reveals the origins of the “remedial” approach to racial equality that is now practiced by activists and governments.

The growth of the Critical Race Theory genre began in Canada when scholars of colour in Canada began to articulate a dissatisfaction with the existing Canadian legal discourse which failed to include an analysis of the role that “race” and racism has played in the political and legal structures of Canadian society. This book is about the role that race and racism play in the theory and practice of law. It shows how Canadian Black lawyers and others are beginning to seriously consider the role of race in litigation and to develop critical race litigation strategies to address the issue. The author documents how a growing body of work designed to move us beyond theory to practical application, is being developed to help recognize the complex relationships among race, racism and the law.

White supremacy had a tenacious hold on the historical roots of the Canadian legal system. Backhouse presents convincing case studies to illustrate how early 20th-century law played a dominant role in creating and preserving racial inequality. The cases focus on Aboriginal, Inuit, Chinese-Canadian and African-Canadian individuals, taking us from the criminal prosecution of traditional Aboriginal dance to the trial of members of the ‘Ku Klux Klan of Kanada!

The original essays in Crimes of Colour explore the link between "race" and "crime" in the Canadian context. Much of the literature on race and crime to date has treated the category of "race" unproblematically; debate on this topic has focused primarily on the assumption that members of certain racial groups are most likely to commit crimes.In charting a different path, the authors in this collection provide critical and historical analyses of the connections between processes of "racialization" and "criminalization" in Canada. The book seeks to engage the reader in thinking critically about how conceptualizations of racial identity and crime are interwoven. The editors begin by arguing for a need to shift from an analysis of "race" to an analysis of "racialization" in order to create the space for new ways of looking at the connections between race and crime. They investigate the history of the treatment of racialized people in Canada, looking at the processes through which First Nations people, immigrants, and people of colour have been defined in racialized terms and the way in which state policy has racialized individuals and groups. The insights provided by the historical backdrop situates the problematic legal positions First Nations people and people of colour occupied vis-a-vis the criminal justice system.Contemporary analyses of "race" and crime continue to highlight the on-going, complex, and subtle nature of the issues. Understanding how individuals are racialized in the legal system forms one of the main themes in this collection. Specifically, these discussions involve identifying the processes through which racialized groups and individuals are criminalized. The processes of racialization and criminalization come together in many contexts including various criminal justice institutions like the police and social institutions like the media.

Updated to include the Black Lives Matter movement, the presidency of Barack Obama, the rise of hate speech on the Internet, and more. Since the publication of the first edition of Critical Race Theory in 2001, the United States has lived through two economic downturns, an outbreak of terrorism, and the onset of an epidemic of hate directed against immigrants, especially undocumented Latinos and Middle Eastern people. On a more hopeful note, the country elected and re-elected its first black president and has witnessed the impressive advance of gay rights. As a field, critical race theory has taken note of all these developments, and this primer does so as well. It not only covers a range of emerging new topics and events, it also addresses the rise of a fierce wave of criticism from right-wing websites, think tanks, and foundations, some of which insist that America is now colorblind and has little use for racial analysis and study. Critical Race Theory is essential for understanding developments in this burgeoning field, which has spread to other disciplines and countries. The new edition also covers the ways in which other societies and disciplines adapt its teachings and, for readers wanting to advance a progressive race agenda, includes new questions for discussion, aimed at outlining practical steps to achieve this objective.

In the past few years, a new generation of progressive intellectuals has dramatically transformed how law, race, and racial power are understood and discussed in America. Questioning the old assumptions of both liberals and conservatives with respect to the goals and the means of traditional civil rights reform, critical race theorists have presented new paradigms for understanding racial injustice and new ways of seeing the links between race, gender, sexual orientation, and class. This reader, edited by the principal founders and leading theoreticians of the critical race theory movement, gathers together for the first time the movement's most import essays.

Its opponents call it part of "the lunatic fringe," a justification for "black separateness," "the most embarrassing trend in American publishing." "It" is Critical Race Theory. But what is Critical Race Theory? How did it develop? Where does it stand now? Where should it go in the future? In this volume, thirty-one CRT scholars present their views on the ideas and methods of CRT, its role in academia and in the culture at large, and its past, present, and future. Critical race theorists assert that both the procedures and the substance of American law are structured to maintain white privilege. The neutrality and objectivity of the law are not just unattainable ideals; they are harmful actions that obscure the law's role in protecting white supremacy. This notion—so obvious to some, so unthinkable to others—has stimulated and divided legal thinking in this country and, increasingly, abroad. The essays in Crossroads, Directions, and a New Critical Race Theory—all original—address this notion in a variety of helpful and exciting ways. They use analysis, personal experience, historical narrative, and many other techniques to explain the importance of looking critically at how race permeates our national consciousness.

Lawyer, activist, teacher, writer: for over 40 years, Derrick Bell provoked his critics and challenged his readers with uncompromising candor and progressive views on race and class in America. A founder of Critical Race Theory and pioneer of the use of allegorical stories as tools of analysis, Bell's groundbreaking work shattered conventional legal orthodoxies and turned comfortable majoritarian myths inside out. Edited and with an extensive introduction by leading critical race theorists Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, The Derrick Bell Reader reflects the tremendous breadth of issues that Bell grappled with over his phenomenal career, including affirmative action, Black nationalism, legal education and ethics. Together, these selections offer the most complete collection of Derrick Bell's writing available today.

This new volume of Sociology of Crime, Law and Deviance addresses issues of race and ethnicity within the law and law-related phenomena. Even in today's so-called multicultural, post-racial world racial and ethnic concerns prevail in many aspects of modern law. Contributors to this volume examine racial and ethnic disparities in sentencing and punishment; the continued problematic nature of the African American experience within the US system; the criminalization of immigrants; racial inequities in the administration of drug laws; and the racial disparities that affect juvenile justice. This volume will be of interest to students and researchers in law, socio-legal studies, criminology, criminal justice, sociology and public policy.

Every academic discipline has an origin story complicit with white supremacy. Racial hierarchy and colonialism structured the very foundations of most disciplines' research and teaching paradigms. In the early twentieth century, the academy faced rising opposition and correction, evident in the intervention of scholars including W. E. B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, Carter G. Woodson, and others. By the mid-twentieth century, education itself became a center in the struggle for social justice. Scholars mounted insurgent efforts to discredit some of the most odious intellectual defenses of white supremacy in academia, but the disciplines and their keepers remained unwilling to interrogate many of the racist foundations of their fields, instead embracing a framework of racial colorblindness as their default position. This book challenges scholars and students to see race again. Examining the racial histories and colorblindness in fields as diverse as social psychology, the law, musicology, literary studies, sociology, and gender studies, Seeing Race Again documents the profoundly contradictory role of the academy in constructing, naturalizing, and reproducing racial hierarchy. It shows how colorblindness compromises the capacity of disciplines to effectively respond to the wide set of contemporary political, economic, and social crises marking public life today.

Chronicling just one year in the struggle against racism in this country, The Skin We're In reveals in stark detail the injustices faced by Black Canadians on a daily basis: the devastating effects of racist policing, the hopelessness produced by an education system that fails Black children, the heartbreak of those separated from their families by discriminatory immigration laws, and more. Cole draws on his own experiences as a Black man in Canada, and locates the deep cultural, historical, and political roots of each event. What emerges is a personal, painful, and comprehensive picture of entrenched, systemic inequality.

Presents African-American essays on a broad range of issues of concern to scholars in sociology, history, literature, political science, health, art, women's studies and ethnic studies.

The Michigan Journal of Race & Law is a legal journal that serves as a forum for the exploration of issues relating to race and law. To that end, MJR&L publishes articles, notes, and essays on the cutting edge of civil rights scholarship from a wide variety of scholarly perspectives. MJR&L’s diversity is reflected by the authors with whom we collaborate, ranging from scholars and students to practitioners and social scientists. In addition to having been recognized as one of the leading civil rights journals in the country, MJR&L has also been consistently ranked among the top 25 specialty journals overall.

Race and Justice (RAJ) serves as a quarterly forum for excellent scholarship on race, ethnicity, and the justice system. The journal prioritizes rigorous empirical studies that use quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods. RAJ’s scope includes policy examinations, theory tests, program evaluations, and other types of studies that speak directly to policy, practice, or theory and advance the scholarly literature in one or more substantive areas. The journal is open to scholarship from all disciplinary origins and from countries around the globe.

Rutgers Race & the Law Review provides a forum for the analysis and discussion of the relationship between race and the law. The idea for the Race Review originated with students at Rutgers School of Law - Newark, who were perplexed by the fact that the school which has a progressive tradition and the largest affirmative action program in the nation, had no law journal specifically devoted to issues of race, ethnicity, and culture. Upon further research and discussion with the faculty, it became clear such a journal would not only be welcomed by the school, but would in fact play a crucial role in creating awareness in the legal community of the interplay between race and the law.
The Race Review has created a forum where legal scholars and students openly discuss issues of race as they relate to the law. Race frequently surfaces as an issue in the judicial system today, yet the availability of discussion in legal journals does not reflect the importance of its role. The goal of the Race Review is to fill this void.