What’s Critical Race Theory Really About?
We can look for clues in “Rodrigo's Seventh Chronicle: Race, Democracy, and the State,” by Richard Delgado (1993).
NYU press describes Delgado’s fictional interlocutor, Rodrigo Crenshaw, as “a brash and brilliant African-American law graduate [who] has been living in Italy and has just arrived in the office of a professor when we meet him.”
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RODRIGO:
If you are black or Mexican, you should flee Enlightenment based democracies like mad, assuming you have any choice. Enlightenment philosophy is the very means by which you are rendered a nonperson, always one-down. A thousand myths and tales, a thousand scripts, plots, narratives and stories will paint you as hapless, primitive, savage, lascivious, and not-so-smart, suitable only for menial work. It's as rigid a system as the Middle Ages, yet harder to change because it's all informal and implicit. There is nothing to rebel against. Indeed, the formal guarantees are impeccably egalitarian. A black person can be president, even though none ever has, and only three of us have ever been in the Senate.”
DELGADO:
“Then why are you here?” I asked. “You just said black persons should flee this place, yet you took a teaching job in the Midwest!”
RODRIGO:
“I have a mission,” Rodrigo replied levelly, “As I mentioned before. Besides, I was born here. We have work to do.”
DELGADO:
“And the thing we have to work on is that which we have all been taught to treasure-- democracy, which you see as the means of our oppression?”
RODRIGO:
“The very instrument,” Rodrigo replied cheerfully. “Liberal democracy and racial subordination go hand in hand, like the sun, moon, and stars. Enlightenment is to racism as sexuality is to women's oppression--the very means by which we are kept down.”
DELGADO:
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“And to think I once studied mathematics and Descartes,” I shuddered in mock disbelief. “Rodrigo, do you have any idea how paradoxical your equation is? Democracy as the very
source not just of majoritarian oppression--many have warned of that--but of racism, of steady, enduring, systemic subjugation on the basis of color!”
RODRIGO:
“All truth is paradoxical,” Rodrigo replied. “It starts out with a question, goes underneath what is accepted.”
DELGADO:
“There are paradoxes and then there are paradoxes. As I have done more than once, I must encourage you to keep these ideas to yourself, at least until you are finished with your degree and have tenure. I see nothing but trouble ahead if you air them too freely. Our white friends have a healthy self-image. For them, Enlightenment philosophy is the crown jewel of civilization, the pride of Western culture. To portray it as the source of bigotry and oppression--along that way lies trouble. If I were you, Rodrigo, I would keep these ideas of yours quiet for a while.” Rodrigo looked at me mildly.?
RODRIGO:
“I know you're on my side, Professor. I appreciate your counsel.”
[...]
DELGADO:
As I rode rather sleepily homeward through the dark streets, I reflected on what we had said. Rodrigo's ideas on Enlightenment as the source of racial oppression seemed to me plausible, even powerful. I wondered how his new colleagues would see them, and how they would receive this new wunderkind with his audacious ideas. I wondered whether the racial problems of our people were really rooted in some basic flaw of our form of government, so that only a radical reconception of the state could enable us to go beyond cosmetic changes and periodic peaks of progress. Like many, I had grown up thinking that democracy was a good thing, and it pained me somewhat to hear Rodrigo's remorseless indictment, on fairness and formality grounds, perfectionism, color imagery, the association with Calvinism and individualistic mindset, law's contribution to stasis, and free market economics.
I thought how kind and courteous, almost tender, Rodrigo had been of my aging frailties in calling an early halt to the evening and hailing a cab for me. Was that not a root example of democracy, namely, considering the other person's feelings? Or was it socialism?
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