Rodrigo's Book of Manners: How to Conduct a Conversation on Race - Standing, Imperial Scholarship, and Beyond
![handle is hein.journals/glj86 and id is 1071 raw text is: CHRONICLE
Rodrigo's Book of Manners: How to Conduct a
Conversation on Race-Standing, Imperial
Scholarship, and Beyond
BEYOND ALL REASON: THE RADICAL ASSAULT ON TRUTH IN AMERICAN LAW.
By Daniel A. Farber and Suzanna Sherry. (New York: Oxford University Press,
1997.) Pp. 3, 195. $25.00.
REVIEWED BY RICHARD DELGADO*
Responding to a number of Critical Race Theory's critics, the professor and
his alter ego Rodrigo Crenshaw discuss a number of themes in the writings of
Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry, Judge Richard Posner Stephen Gey, and
others. The two discuss whether the espousal of multiculturalism really
constitutes an assault on the truth, and criticism of conventional standards of
merit an implicit attack on Jews and Asians. They also ponder whether legal
storytelling and narrative jurisprudence fall outside the realm of serious
scholarship, as their detractors maintain, or whether certain truths can best
be brought to light by these methods. After observing that many of CRT's
detractors overstate, misquote, employ ad hominem attacks, or set up and
then destroy straw men, the two protagonists propose a series of rules, like
standards of etiquette, for conducting scholarly conversations about race.
Expanding on the insights of an early article, The Imperial Scholar, Rodrigo
and his mentor draw analogies from rules of civil procedure and constitu-
tional adjudication that have worked to facilitate the orderly presentation of
ideas in these other areas. The chronicle concludes by urging that both sides
of scholarly disagreements in heated areas such as race draw inspiration
from the rules of engagement that keep in-court conversations on course,
minimize rancor, and discourage the presentation of mock or bogus claims.
INTRODUCTION: IN WHICH RODRIGO AND I MEET IN AN AIRPORT LOUNGE AND
DECIDE TO DISCUSS THE FARBER-SHERRY BOOK
Rodrigo? I said, looking up at the tall, smiling young man who had
materialized, as though by magic, as I sat in a self-absorbed stupor in the airport
boarding area, a half-read newspaper in my lap.'
* Jean Lindsley Professor of Law, University of Colorado. J.D., U.C. Berkeley (Boalt Hall), 1974.
1. See Richard Delgado, Rodrigo's Chronicle, 101 YALE L.J. 1357 (1992) [hereinafter Rodrigo's
First Chronicle], introducing my interlocutor and alter ego, Rodrigo. The son of an African-American
serviceman and Italian mother, Rodrigo was born in the States but raised in Italy when his father was
assigned to a U.S. outpost there. Rodrigo graduated from the base high school, then attended an Italian
university and law school on government scholarships, graduating second in his class. When the reader
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Rodrigo's Book of Manners: How to Conduct a Conversation on Race - Standing, Imperial Scholarship, and Beyond
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