I owe a special thanks to Richard Nunan for his suggestion that Philosophy and the Black Experience and Philosophy and Law publish this joint issue of our respective newsletters on the topic of "Critical Race Theory" (CRT). The lion’s share of production work on this issue is also to Richard’s credit. Workloads aside however, it has been my pleasure to join the Newsletter on Philosophy and Law in our convergence on the topic of CRT. I know that our readers will find this joint newsletter as edifying as I did.

We would also like to thank the authors for their contributions to this issue of the newsletters. They were all very cooperative in working to help us meet our publication objectives as we sought to maximize the conveyance of their ideas for our readers.

Our collection of articles begins with Richard’s general introduction to Critical Race Theory. Operating on the assumption that many of our readers have only modest familiarity with the CRT movement, Richard’s introduction includes a brief sketch of the history of the inception of the movement, introduces some of the core literature as well as the central themes of the movement, and familiarizes readers with a standard approach to criticism of the movement. Richard also offers some of his own evaluations of that criticism.

In "A Short History of the ‘Critical’ in Critical Race Theory," Lewis Gordon, of Brown University, provides us with a lucid contextualization of CRT in terms of some of its most important historical antecedents, ideas from figures like W.E.B. DuBois and Franz Fanon which have been catapulted into new prominence through the CRT movement. We have also included a book review written by Lewis, of Anthony Bogues’ Caliban’s Freedom: The Early Political Thought of C.L.R. James. This book review, in addition to giving us a sense of the book’s strengths, provides us with examples of key issues which have resurfaced in the development of CRT. Finally, Lewis has also supplied us with a couple of course syllabi treating of CRT-related issues.

In her article, Kim Hall, of Appalachian State University, raises some ethical questions relating to white feminists doing CRT, and suggests ways in which such scholars might want to be sensitive in their work to the needs of the movement. In addition to those ethical questions, she argues that moral suspicions directed towards white feminists doing CRT become even more prevalent when directed toward white men and even men of color in CRT. The two groups tend to suppress the voices of women of color, thereby running the risk of unduly impoverishing the explanatory or descriptive wealth of CRT.

Thomas Simon, of Illinois State, contributed a much more detailed evaluation of a single sustained critique of the CRT movement than Richard could afford to do in his introduction. His article, entitled "Racists Versus Anti-Semites?: Critical Race Theorist Criticized," is devoted primarily to a review of Daniel Farber’s and Suzanna Sherry’s recent book, Beyond All Reason: The Radical Assault on Truth in American Law, focusing mainly on their attack on the narrative approach to scholarship (really two rather different approaches) employed by Derrick Bell and Patricia Williams. He devotes special attention to their charge that some of Bell’s and Williams’ work may be anti-semitic (a charge which Simon finds groundless), and speculates on the significance of this kind of attack on CRT scholarship.

A few remarks about bibliographic information on CRT and some general references might be in order at the outset. In my introductory overview, there are a fair number of citations to classic works in the CRT field, and Lewis Gordon offers some additional suggestions in a brief bibliographic addendum to his paper. Still more citations surface in the remaining articles, and the contents of several recent law review symposia devoted to CRT-related issues can be found in this issue’s "Recent Law Review Symposium Issues" section. But for a systematic review of the literature, the best available resource I’m aware of is:

Delgado, Richard & Stefancic, Jean, "Critical Race Theory: An Annotated Bibliography," Virginia Law Review 79 (1993), 461-516

The annotations are quite informative, giving the reader a good sense of the range of issues which have enervated the movement, and providing an encapsulated summary of its intellectual history (making allowances, of course, for the convenience of ordering it alphabetically by author and title, rather than chronologically). Unfortunately, while it is fairly exhaustive up to its date of publication, that means the field since 1991 is left uncovered (except for a handful of 1992 entries). I know of one more recent, somewhat less comprehensive bibliography (not annotated), which takes the literature up through 1994, with spotty 1995 coverage:

Bauman, Richard W. Critical Legal Studies: A Guide to the Literature (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996), Chapter 23, "Critical Race Theory", 183-202.

For those who would like a convenient reference compiling historically significant CRT material in a single source, I’m aware of four lengthy anthologies published in recent years:

Delgado, Richard. 1995. Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Crenshaw, Kimberlé; Gotanda, Neil; Peller, Gary; & Thomas, Kendall. 1995. Critical Race Theory: Key Writings from the Movement. New York: W.W. Norton.

. Critical Race Theory: Essays on the Social Construction & Reproduction of "Race". 1997. New York: Garland Publishing.

Johnson, Alex M., Jr. Readings in Race & Law: A Guide to Critical Race Theory. 1998. St. Paul: West Publishing.

There is also one shorter, and much more widely circulated slightly older paperback anthology devoted to the debate about hate speech, which collects some important early CRT work on that issue in one place:

Matsuda, Mari J.; Lawrence, Charles R. III; Delgado, Richard; & Crenshaw, Kimberlé Williams. 1993. Words That Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech, and the First Amendment. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

The Delgado and Crenshaw anthologies have already received a good deal of attention from book reviewers. Delgado’s consists of heavily edited versions of an eclectic selection of original CRT law review articles, some of them historically central to the movement, some of them not. They are generally well-edited, giving the reader a good appreciation of the central arguments in the original articles. The anthology is a bit heavy on Delgado’s own contributions to CRT literature, and has some serious omissions: Crenshaw, Matsuda, and Charles Lawrence declined to participate, and are not represented. Their work is represented however, in the competing anthology edited by Crenshaw, et al., which focuses more exclusively on historically influential papers in the movement, with an eye towards tracing the movement’s development as a distinct field of inquiry. The selections are less heavily edited, and therefore longer. Delgado’s anthology is perhaps better suited to undergraduate classes, but Crenshaw, et al. is the more authoritative reference source for more advanced students. In my opinion, Crenshaw and her co-editors have written the best general introduction to the movement (although it too is pitched at a fairly sophisticated level).

I’m unfamiliar with the two newer offerings. The Garland collection is one of a series of works which compile reprints of seminal papers in various legal fields. Unfortunately, it’s prohibitively expensive. Johnson’s book is a West caselaw text. I expect that it will become the standard text in the field, given West’s general track record.