Rodrigo's Seventh Chronicle: Race, Democracy, and the State
![handle is hein.journals/uclalr41 and id is 745 raw text is: RODRIGO'S SEVENTH CHRONICLE:
RACE, DEMOCRACY, AND THE STATE
Richard Delgado*
INTRODUCTION
The familiar voice in my receiver gave me quite a start: Professor, it's
me, Rodrigo Crenshaw.' I'm at the corner grocery store just down the block
from your building.
I had been getting a number of calls from former students wanting to
know if I would serve as a reference for the bar examiners or an employer.
Sorry it took me a minute to recognize your voice, I said. Come on
up if you have time. It's been a while.
In a few minutes, the tall, lanky Rodrigo was standing in my doorway.
An African-American LL.M. student at the famous university across town,
the brilliant young firebrand had entered my life about a year ago when he
sought me out for career advice.2 The son of a U.S. serviceman and an Ital-
ian mother, Rodrigo had been educated in Italy, where his father was then
* Charles Inglis Thomson Professor of Law, University of Colorado. J.D., U.C. Berkeley,
1974. I gratefully acknowledge the support of the Rockefeller Foundation Scholar-in-Residence
Program in Bellagio, Italy, where much of this Chronicle was written.
1. Rodrigo Crenshaw, my fictional alter ego and interlocutor, was first introduced in Richard
Delgado, Rodrigo's Chronicle, 101 YALE L.J. 1357 (1992) (book review) [hereinafter Rodrigo's Chron-
icle]. The younger half-brother of civil rights activist Geneva Crenshaw, Rodrigo was born in the
United States but has been living and studying in Italy. Id. at 1357-59; see DERRICK A. BELL, JR.,
AND WE ARE NOT SAVED: THE ELUSIVE QUEST FOR RACIAL JUSTICE (1987) [hereinafter NOT
SAVED]; Derrick A. Bell, Foreword: The Civil Rights Chronicles, 99 HARV. L. REV. 4, 13-17 (1985)
(on Geneva). Additional information about Rodrigo is introduced at different points in this narra-
tive. See also Richard Delgado, Rodrigo's Sixth Chronicle: Essentialism, Anti-Essentialism, and the
Dilemma of Law Reform, 68 N.Y.U. L. REV. (forthcoming 1993) [hereinafter Sixth Chronicle]; Richard
Delgado, Rodrigo' s Fifth Chronicle: Civitas, Civil Wrongs and the Politics of Denial, 45 STAN. L. REV.
1581 (1993) [hereinafter Fifth Chronicle]; Richard Delgado, Rodrigo's Fourth Chronicle: Neutrality and
Stasis in Anti-Discrimination Law, 45 STAN. L. REV. 1133 (1993) .[hereinafter Fourth Chronicle];
Richard Delgado, Rodrigo's Third Chronicle: Care, Competition and the Redemptive Tragedy of Race,
81 CAL. L. REV. 389 (1993) [hereinafter Third Chronicle]; Richard Delgado, Rodrigo's Second Chron-
icle: The Economics and Politics of Race, 91 MICH. L. REV. 1183 (1993) (book review) [hereinafter
Second Chronicle].
Like Rodrigo, the narrator of this piece is a fictional construct, a composite of several persons
I have known, and is not to be identified with any particular individual. He is a man of color in
the late stages of his career, teaching at a law school located in a major American city.
2. Rodrigo's Chronicle, supra note 1, at 1359-60.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/uclalr41&div=30&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Rodrigo's Seventh Chronicle: Race, Democracy, and the State
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