Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement. Edited by Kimberle Williams Crenshaw et al.
![handle is hein.journals/clr96 and id is 1373 raw text is: BOOK NOTE
CRITICAL RACE THEORY: THE KEYWRITINGS THAT FORMED THE
MOVEMENT. Edited by Kimberl6 Williams Crenshaw et al., Foreword by
Cornel West. New York: The New Press, 1995. Pp. 494. $60.00.
Reviewed by Victor F. Caldwell
INTRODUCTION
In its challenge to the construction and representation of race and
racial power in American law, Critical Race Theory (CRT) has emerged,
with its distinct intellectual genesis, as perhaps the most dynamic and ex-
citing development in contemporary legal thought. The daunting mis-
sion of Critical Race Theory,according to Cornell West in his foreword to
this important collection, is to examine[ ] the entire edifice of contem-
porary legal thought and doctrine from the viewpoint of law's role in the
construction and maintenance of social domination and subordination
(p. xi). Discontented with the manner in which traditional institutional
practices and intellectual paradigms have silenced insurgent voices of
people of color (p. xxvi), CRT, in novel and compelling ways, seeks to
intervene in the ideological contestation of race in America (p. xiii).
Perhaps the most fearless affront to traditional legal discourse is Critical
Race Theory's employment of storytelling and counterstorytelling in
which scholars draw on parables, chronicles, and anecdotes aimed at re-
vealing the contingency of majoritarian presuppositions, received wis-
doms, and cultural understandings that have driven American legal
thought. Critical Race Theory seeks, above all, to counter the oppressive
and subordinating features of the texts of America's dominant legal, so-
cial, and cultural strata. In so doing, the project claims a critical intel-
lectual domain in American legal jurisprudence.1
In Critical Race Theory, the editors do a great service by compiling the
key writings which delineate the theoretical origins and the essential ex-
isting features of the Critical Race Theory Movement. Edited by premier
1363
1. See John 0. Calmore, Critical Race Theory, Archie Shepp, and Fire Music:
Securing an Authentic Intellectual Life in a Multicultural World, 65 S. Cal. L. Rev. 2129,
2160-62 (1992) (p. 315).](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/clr96&div=48&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement. Edited by Kimberle Williams Crenshaw et al.
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