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Stephen Gaynor

Critical Race Theory

Pages 644- 651

Richard Delgado

Critical Legal Studies and the Realities of Race: Does the Fundamental ContradictionHave a Corollary?

One structural feature of human experience separates people of color from our whitefriends, accounting in large part for our differing perceptions in matters of race.

White people rarely see acts of blatant or subtle racism, while minority people

experience them all the time.

This structural feature has two consequences: one experimental and the

other political.

Experimental

The experimental consequence is that even the most sympathetic, left-leaning

whites, are constantly having to learn and relearn what racism is.

Structural

Minorities experience racial incidents much more often than whites observe them

which also has a second effect.

It colors legal and political theorizing, causing member of the two groupsto strike different balances and trade-offs.

According to Duncan Kennedys famous fundamental

contradiction: we both need, and fear, others. Western societies struggle to promote twovalues that are in tension: community and security. It is difficult to have both.

Community

High in sharing, trust, and love; lack the formal structures that protect individuals

from one another and the state.

Security

Formal structures but risks a pinched, lonely, alienated life.

White leftist almost always resolve this dilemma on the side of community. Minorities by

contrast, would set the balance much further toward protection and formality. Minorities

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principle fear is not coldness, alienation, or lack of community. Minorities have

community, of a sort in our common victimhood.

Delgados corollary to Kennedys maxim is racially divided societies, like ours, there is a

further split: members of the majority race will generally prefer informality, minorities

formality.

Charles R. Lawrence IIIIf He Hollers, Let Him Go: Regulating Racist Speech On Campus

Heads bowed, we are intently watching Muck, who is hunkered down on one knee so that

he can touch our toes as he calls out the rhyme.

In a moments time it has made me an other. In an instant it has rebuilt the wall between

my friends humanity and my own, the wall that I have so painstakingly disassembled.

Being good at games was the main tool I used to knock down the wall Id found when I

came to this white school in this white town. I looked forward to recess because that waswhen I could do the most damage to the wall. But now this rhyme, this word, had undone

all my labors.

I just wished Muck had used one potato, two potato

Paul Butler

Racially Based Jury Nullification: Black Power in the Criminal Justice System

While at the U.S Attorneys office, I made two discoveries that profoundly changed the

way I viewed my work as a prosecutor and my responsibilities as a black person.

The first discovery, despite having persuaded a jury beyond a reasonable doubt

that the defendant was guilty, we would lose many of our cases. We would lose because

some black jurors would refuse to convict black defendants who they knew were guilty.

The second discovery, that some of my fellow African-American prosecutors

hoped that the mayor would be acquitted, even though he was obviously guilty of at least

one of the charges. These black prosecutors wanted their office to lose because theybelieved that the prosecution of the mayor was racist.

Butlers thesis is that the black community is better off when some nonviolentlawbreakers remain in the community rather than go to prison. The decision as to what

kind of conduct by African-Americans ought to be punished is better made by African-

Americans themselves, based on the cost and benefits to their community, than by the

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traditional criminal justice process, which is controlled by white lawmakers and white

law enforcers.

Criminal conduct among African-Americans is often a predictable reaction to oppression.

Sometimes it is a symptom of internalized white supremacy; other times it is a reasonable

response to the racial and economic subordination every African-American faces everyday. Punishing black people for the fruits of racism is wrong if that punishment is

premised on the idea that it is the black criminals just deserts.