Symposium Articles

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  • Identity Crisis: “Intersectionality,” “Multidimensionality,” and the Development of an Adequate Theory of Subordination

    This Article arises out of the intersectionality and post-intersectionality literature and makes a case against the essentialist considerations that informed the Human Rights Campaign's endorsement of United States Senator Alfonse D'Amato. Part I discusses the pitfalls that occur when scholars and activists engage in essentialist politics and treat identities and forms of subordination as conflicting forces. Part II examines how essentialism negatively affects legal theory in the equality context. Part III considers the historical motivation for and the efficacy of the "intersectionality" response to the problem of essentialism. Part III also extensively analyzes the "multidimensional" critiques of essentialism offered by the most recent school of thought in this area-the race-sexuality critics of law and sexuality and critical race theory. Finally, Part III examines the conceptual and substantive distinctions between multidimensionality (and other post-intersectionality theories) and intersectionality and offers suggestions for future theorizing in anti-subordination jurisprudence.

  • “Suitable Targets”? Parallels and Connections Between “Hate” Crimes and “Driving While Black”

    This Essay seeks to show that there is less to some of these apparent differences than meets the eye. While hate crimes may tend to be less routine and more violent than discriminatory traffic stops, closer examination of each shows the need to complicate our understanding of both. The work of social scientists who have studied bias-motivated violence and of legal scholars who have studied racial profiling- prominent among them my fellow panelist, Professor David A. Harris- reveals striking similarities and connections between the two practices. In particular, both hate crimes and racial profiling tend to be condemned only at the extremes, in situations where they appear to be irrational and excessive, but overlooked in cases where they seem logical or are expected. The tendency to see only the most extreme cases as problematic, however, fails to recognize that neither practice is as marginal as it might seem. Both forms of discrimination are strongly influenced by a social context that has designated certain social groups as the accepted or "suitable" targets for ill treatment. They both reflect especially strongly the myth that certain groups are prone to criminality or deviance. In turn, the perpetration of both practices also reinforces both the suitable target designation and myth of criminal propensity by influencing the perceptions and behavior of both members and nonmembers of vulnerable groups.

  • Seeking Redress for Gender-Based Bias Crimes- Charting New Ground in Familiar Legal Territory

    This Essay will analyze how courts have defined gender-motivation, focusing on the Civil Rights Remedy cases decided before the law was struck down, in an attempt to cull from those cases the standards federal courts have used to assess gender-motivation. The article will first provide an overview of existing and proposed laws that offer some form of redress for gender-motivated crimes. It will then analyze cases decided under the Civil Rights Remedy, focusing on two key issues that have arisen as policymakers struggle with whether and how gender-based bias crimes fit in the rubric of hate crimes legislation. The first of these issues is how courts have assessed whether claims of domestic violence reflect discriminatory motivation, and what type of evidence they have found useful in that context. The second issue is how courts treated VAWA civil rights claims based on allegations of sexual assault, and what, if any, evidence, in addition to allegations of sexual assault, they found to indicate gender-motivation.

  • Generations: Nanook of the Law School Library and the Classroom

    Many of the essays in this symposium are rooted in the Western Law Professors of Color Conference held in Oregon in the Spring of 1998. The University of Oregon minority colleagues, as faculty of one of the co-sponsoring law schools, were charged, among other tasks, with the selection of the conference theme and tee-shirt design. The title “Generations” was chosen to focus on the challenges across the years for law faculty of color.

  • Introduction: Critical Race Praxis and Legal Scholarship

    The publication of this symposium issue is an occasion for three distinct and yet related celebrations. First, we honor the Western Law Teachers of Color, whose sixth annual meeting on the sublime Oregon Coast in 1998 provided the occasion for organizing the papers published here. Dean Strickland's preface, as well as Professors Linda Greene's and Jim Jones's essays examine the historical significance of this occasion in greater detail. Second, we engage in a festschrift of a particular member of this group-Professor Eric K. Yamamoto -whose publication of a book this year is a significant capstone to fifteen years of scholarship on racial justice. The articles in this symposium issue address one of Yamamoto's many path-breaking concepts: critical race praxis. Finally, the various pieces published here form a testament to the growing maturity of legal scholarship on race and law, as well as-sadly-the still highly contested legitimacy of this kind of scholarship within the mainstream legal academy as an editorial board of one of the Western Law Teachers participating law schools' law reviews decided against publication despite an earlier commitment. The very fact that there was a politicized dispute elsewhere over the articles published here demonstrates the on-going nature of racial struggle inside the walls of law schools, as well as the strategic importance of law students committed to the principle of racial justice. Thus our obligatory first footnote, which thanks those on the editorial board of the Michigan Journal of Race & Law, does not begin to convey the complexity of the interracial dynamics-both alliances and fractures-that undergird this particular legal scholarship project.

  • Beyond the Rhetoric of “Dirty Laundry”: Examining the Value of Internal Criticism Within Progressive Social Movements and Oppressed Communities

    Part I of this Article discusses examples of resistance to internal criticism within progressive social movements in order to demonstrate the extent to which such opposition operates as a barrier to constructive dissent. Part II argues that resistance to internal criticism may often result from the embrace of heterosexism, patriarchy, and racism within oppressed communities and among progressive intellectuals, and that any remaining explanations for such resistance are outweighed by the value of internal criticism to progressive theory and politics. Part III offers suggestions-to both internal critics and to the objects of their critiques-for minimizing the potentially negative effects of internal criticism and for advancing a more inclusive conceptualization of justice.

  • Some Observations on Teaching from the “Pioneer” Generation

    A paper from the perspective of the "pioneer" generation.

  • Lawyering for Social Change: What’s a Lawyer to Do?

    This article analyzes two questions that are raised by Professor Yamamoto's provocative article. Part I argues that any significant transformation of the social structure of United States society is far more likely to occur through mass political movements than through litigation. Consequently, advocates of social change, especially those trained in law, should not expect too much reform from the courtrooms. They instead should consider how traditional legal action might complement and encourage-not replace-community activism and political involvement. Put simply, an exclusive focus on litigation will not accomplish fully the desired objective. Part II contends that attorneys' ethical duties to their clients limit lawyers' ability to shape the world in the ways they see fit. The constraints increase considerably after the attorney agrees to represent the client. At that point, she must zealously pursue the case in a way that furthers the client's best interests. The attorney primarily must represent the client, although she does have control over how to conduct that representation and may be able to shape the client's case in important ways. Combining these two points, I contend that the potential for social change through litigation is limited, and that the discretion of attorneys to promote change through traditional legal remedies is similarly constrained. Consequently, visionaries advocating social change must look well beyond these limited horizons.

  • From Tokenism to Emancipatory Politics: The Conferences and Meetings of Law Professors of Color

    In this paper, the author traces the history of the First National Meetings and conferences since 1969. In Part II, this paper explores the range of meetings and conferences which outlined the development of a proactive agenda for minority student and faculty inclusion within mainstream historically White legal institutions and the evolution of this agenda from one of access to an agenda of security, retention, and the advancement of legal theory and scholarship within and without the established academy. Part III chronicles the maturation of this tradition of independent meetings and conferences of professors of color into a network of legal education institutions promoting institutional, as well as ideological, pluralism. Finally, the concluding comments are devoted to an analysis of the two-fold function of this tradition of meetings and conferences: to combat the paradoxical isolation and heightened visibility of professors of color within historically White institutions and to generate legal theory responsive to the experiences of people of color.

  • Transnational Critical Race Scholarship: Transcending Ethnic and National Chauvinism in the Era of Globalization

    Eric Yamamoto's article, Critical Race Praxis: Race Theory and Political Lawyering Practice in Post-Civil Rights America, brings a needed perspective to scholarship seeking to place domestic social justice struggles within the context of a broader and more complex mix of forces at play. While Yamamoto does not highlight a critical transnational perspective in this particular article, he writes from a perspective that presumes transnational analysis is essential in making sense of the socio-economic and political forces affecting our lives as individuals and members of multiple, intersecting communities. The local, the national, and the international are inextricably bound and present in all his work. This article, as well as his larger body of works, helps puncture the self-satisfied attitude of American national exceptionalism, or superiority, that now so crudely bestrides the world.