Chapter 20: On Becoming a Critical Race Scholar

A constant challenge for Critical Race scholars is how to confront the prevailing norms presumed in society and inherent in the conventions relevant to their field. The path of least resistance is to accept and internalize the relevant norms in an effort to make a scholarly or social contribution; this pathway is made easy by the education required for someone to engage in scholarly inquiry, including that which is contrary to established dominance discourse. The ultimate conundrum for a Critical Race scholar is how to avoid adopting the dominance discourse and the legitimating effects of engaging in reformist efforts within its boundaries (Crenshaw, 1988, p. 1368). This paradox is presented by Kimberlé Crenshaw, “[a]lthough it is the need to maintain legitimacy that presents powerless groups with the opportunity to wrest concessions from the dominant order, it is the very accomplishment of legitimacy that forecloses greater possibilities. (Crenshaw, 1988). Because the likelihood is small that those in subordinated social positions will achieve equality by directly confronting the legitimacy of mainstream ideology, “[b]lack people can afford neither to resign themselves to, nor to attack frontally, the legitimacy and incoherence of the dominant ideology” (Crenshaw, 1988, p. 1385).