Defending Delgado

Oy gevolt, what a day. I just got into to Eugene, Oregon. It was a three-legged trip: Washington to Minneapolis to Salt Lake City to Eugene. In other words, I was in every time zone today. And this computer is brand new--I'm still getting used to it.

Anyhow, I trolled about a few of my regular sites, and wouldn't you know it if I hit jackpot at Concurring Opinions. Not the post itself, but the pointer to Law and Letters. An aspiring law professor with a background in Critical Race Theory? To the blogroll!

But alas, it appears that Belle (the proprietor) is tiring of Critical Race Theory, and is turning her attention to other scholarly endeavors. That's sad enough by itself--I'm not really close enough to the legal academic community to be sure, but it seems as if CRT is in a bit of a rut recently. Whenever I do research, it seems the big pathbreaking articles were published in the late 80s and early 90s, with a significant drop off post, say, 1995. Obviously, part of this is due to the fact that more recent articles have not gotten the same degree of penetration, but it feels like a deeper type of stagnation has beset the movement. In any event, it's a shame that a talented young prospect is leaving the fold.

However, Belle also takes the time to write a post slamming Richard Delgado. Since I have expressed adoration for bordering on creepy obsession with Delgado (and his co-author/wife, Jean Stefancic), I feel compelled to offer at least a partial defense.

I should start by saying that despite what the above-linked post might have you believe, I don't think Delgado is perfect. In fact, I share many of Belle's particular discontents. His foray into the blogosphere (both in his guest-stint at BlackProf and his permanent position as advice columnist there) was a big disappointment. And while I admit to owning The Rodrigo Chronicles (Belle underestimates how many of them there are, by the way, there are at least 11 printed so far in various journals, collected in the book), and enjoying them immensely, his skill as a narrative author is passing at best. It can be overbearing, the characters' reactions often seem contrived, and that is a significant downside to the book.

At the same time, I think Delgado is a very important author, and I think Belle is slightly too quick to dismiss him based on only a subsection of his work. First, I'd note that the Rodrigo Chronicles are not the be-all end-all of Delgado. He's written plenty of other important scholarly works, some of which don't really include narrative at all, others which do but have it in the type of "separated" form that Belle claims to appreciate. One can hate all the Rodrigo articles, and still appreciate the contribution of Delgado's Imperial Scholar articles, Legal Storytelling for Oppositionists and Others, and many others. I think that while Rodrigo is obviously an important portion of Delgado's c.v., it isn't the whole and is in some sense an anomaly--he doesn't really write like that in any of his other pieces.

Also, and of more parochial concern, is Delgado's role in introducing me personally to the CRT movement. In a sense, it's almost an absurd happenstance that I am talking about this at all: my senior year of High School, I participated in a debate round where my opponent ran an anti-essentialism kritik against me. Despite being utterly demolished in the round (and thinking that he said it was an "anti-centralism kritik), I was intrigued. Somehow, I knew that "Critical Race Theory" had to do with post-modern political theory in general, and I ran a search for it on Amazon, where "Critical Race Theory: An Introduction" was first to come up.

This book was a life changer for me. It stopped my slow spiral into libertarianism, and helped reinvigorate my progressive ideals and pluralist spirit. It spoke to me in a way that few authors had. I've since read works by the authors Belle cites (Bell, Carbado, Cheryl Harris, Angela Harris, and Lawrence), and they are quite compelling. In fact, if anything I consider myself closer ideologically with Lawrence, at least, than Delgado. But none of them, I think, lays out the core issues as simply and as powerfully as Delgado does. I've personally recommended that book to some friends as the quick and dirty primer on CRT, and borrowed liberally from it in many more informal discussions. When I fail to bring a point across, the examples he gives unfailingly help illuminate them. For the non-initiate, this is critical.

Maybe for more advanced thinkers, this comes off as simplistic, and Delgado is akin to a favored tricycle that it's time to give up. But I think that we should give him more credit than that. Rodridgo may not be the world's gift to fiction. But it is not the antichrist either, and in any event Delgado's other scholarship is quite worthwhile in its own right.