1988/05/01 by Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, Kimberle Williams Crenshaw · 10 citations
Medicine · Social Sciences · #Law, Rights, and Freedoms #Legal Cases and Commentary #Legal Systems and Judicial Processes
paper · doi:10.2307/1341398
crossref issued 1988/05/01 · crossref published 1988/05/01 · crossref published-print 1988/05/01 · openalex publication_date 1988/05/01 · crossref created 2007/03/27 · crossref deposited 2018/04/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · crossref indexed 2026/07/30 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Recent works by neoconservatives and by Critical legal scholars have suggested that civil rights reforms have been an unsuccessful means of achieving racial equality in America. In this Article, Professor Crenshaw considers these critiques and analyzes the continuing role of racism in the subordination of Black Americans. The neoconservative emphasis on formal colorblindness, she argues, fails to recognize the indeterminacy of civil rights laws and the force of lingering racial disparities. The Critical scholars, who emphasize the legitimating role of legal ideology and legal rights rhetoric, are substantially correct, according to Professor Crenshaw, but they fail to appreciate the choices and possibilities available to an oppressed group such as Blacks. The Critics, she suggests, ignore the singular power of racism as a hegemonic force in American society. Blacks have been created as a subordinated "other," and formal reform has merely repackaged racism. Antidiscrimination law, she argues, has largely succeeded in eliminating the symbolic manifestations of racial oppression, but has allowed the perpetuation of material subordination of Blacks. Professor Crenshaw concludes by demonstrating the importance of exposing the racist nature of ostensibly neutral norms, and of devising strategies for change that include the pragmatic use of legal rights.