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C H A P T E R E L E V E N Toward a Critical Race Theory of Political Science A New Synthesis for Understanding Race, Law, and Politics* BARBARA LUCK GRAHAM Introduction THE POST–CIVIL RIGHTS ERA, described as a period of retrenchment that began in the 1980s, scholars of race, law and politics began to reassess the role of race and ethnicity in their understanding of domestic and international subordination , marginalization, and exclusion of people of color. According to Walton and Smith (2000, xvii), “Race is the most important cleavage in American life, with enormous impact on the nation’s society, culture and politics.” Despite the saliency of race and ethnicity in American law and politics, however, political scientists and law professors continue to articulate their opposition to the lack of serious scholarly attention paid to the structural disempowerment of racial and ethnic groups. Alex-Assensoh (2000, 10) echoes this sentiment by observing that “political science as a discipline has not devoted adequate attention to issues of race and ethnicity, very often relegating minority politics to a stepchild position in the discipline.” Delgado, in his seminal law review article, “The Imperial Scholar: Reflections on a Review of Civil Rights Literature,” observed the presence of a second scholarly tradition in legal writing (1984, 51), namely, “that it consists of the exclusion of minority writing about key issues of race law, and that this exclusion does matter; the tradition causes bluntings, skewings, and omissions in literature dealing with race, racism, and American law.”1 Political scientists and law professors have sought to bridge this gap by developing new frameworks and directions for understanding multiracial politics and law in domestic, international , and comparative contexts. The Supreme Court’s conservative decision making in the 1980s and 1990s in particular prompted civil rights lawyers and law professors to reconsider the role of law and the courts in eradicating racial hierarchies and oppression of people of color. Critical race theory (CRT) emerged as a form of oppositional scholarship devoted to developing a distinct legal strategy informed by the actual conditions of people of color. Critical race theory offers a harsh critique of traditional liberal principles while at the same time rejecting conservative visions of equality. Critical race theory seeks to uncover how appeals to color blindness, merit, neutrality , and equality of opportunity actually impede racial progress and contribute to the continual oppression of people of color. Critical race theory has been driven largely by legal scholarship; however, its central tenets and ideas have influenced scholarly writings on race and ethnicity in other disciplines, including education, ethnic studies, and feminist studies. In short, CRT, which seeks to challenge rights-based individualism and hierarchy, holds considerable promise for understanding the role of race and ethnicity in America. Despite the fact that CRT has figured prominently on the intellectual map of law for over two decades, there is a curious absence of mention of critical race theory in political science, particularly in the subfield of public law—the subfield most closely identified with legal studies. This lack of attention from political scientists is indeed puzzling, given that CRT is pervasive in the legal academy and has influenced the discourse on race and the law.2 What accounts for the scant attention paid to CRT by political scientists who study race, ethnicity and politics ? Is this oversight another example of “imperial scholars’” attempts to exclude “outsider” scholarship? Another answer might be that CRT grew out of critical legal theory and has maintained a close alliance with legal scholars. Whatever the explanation for the inattention given to CRT in political science, however, I argue that CRT is consistent with political trends and intellectual developments in the subfield of racial and ethnic politics. Both critical race theorists and scholars of race and ethnicity politics seek to understand how law and politics subordinate marginalized groups. Critical race theorists, also known as race crits and scholars of critical race politics, critique the existing liberal paradigm and the limitations of other extant theories utilized in explaining the nexus between race, law, and politics in the United States.3 I argue, however, that the contemporary connection between CRT and the study of race, ethnicity, and politics goes deeper. Both race crits and scholars of critical race politics try to reconcile the same set of tensions between the dominance of the liberal individual rights paradigm and the placement of race at the center of intellectual inquiry. In...

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