Critical Race Research

Drawing on an interdisciplinary foundation of critical feminist legal studies, critical legal studies, ethnic studies, history, and sociology, critical race research has been used to interrogate the role of race and the entrenchment of racism in sociocultural and sociopolitical structures, policies, and practices. After years of challenging law school curricula that ignored race and racism, the lack of law professors of color, and the relative devaluation of race and racism conversations at an annual meeting on critical legal studies, legal scholars began organizing themselves in order to engage with ideas that they believed germane to legal jurisprudence. In 1989, legal scholars such as Kimberlé Crenshaw, Mari Matsuda, Derrick Bell, Richard Delgado, Neil Gotanda, Angela Harris, Teri Miller, Patricia Williams, John Calmore, and others gathered at ...