One of the biggest caricatures of the critical left is that it is relentlessly partisan and believes that any conservative is a racist. To be sure, some of the responses regarding the Malkin case aren’t doing much for the left (check out the battle in Ampersand’s comments), but in general, I think this is something conservatives say without backing up.
The prevailing stereotype on the right is of the radical left (which hates the majority and especially conservatives) having near total control of the academic sphere (either because the administrators are cowed or are outright sympathizers), and using that position to press their shrill, mindless, and partisan anti-conservative views onto the student body.
So what do these folks have to say about Richard Delgado?
For those of you who don’t know him, Professor Delgado is one of the Godfathers of the Critical Race Theory movement. The man is extraordinarily prolific (20 books written or edited since 1994) and extremely talented (of 18 law review articles published in the last five years, 13 were in top 25 journals (and another two were published in the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, the top speciality journal in his field)). He’s the author of the premier CRT textbooks, and with his longtime partner Jean Stefancic, has penned a superb primer to the field entitled “Critical Race Theory: An Introduction.” In other words, this isn’t some obscure character amongst the legal left–he is one of the most respected men in all of the left legal circles (and I daresay academia as a whole).
So, what do we gather when, far from partaking in the supposed rabid leftist trashing of conservatives qua conservatives, he actually goes out of his way to engage, even praise, them?
One of the focus points of the Malkin controversy is how the left treats minority conservatives. The right-wing theory is that they can’t account for them and thus hurl all sorts of invective their way–“Uncle Tom,” “race traitor,” etc., while portraying them as somehow “deficient,” either as useful dupes or having an “impaired consciousness.” So when I read Professor Delgado’s review of two books authored by black neo-conservatives Stephen L. Carter (“Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby”) and Shelby Steele (“The Content of Our Characters”), I prepared myself for the expected assault on the “inauthentic” minority views these two men “of course” represented–especially since the article was a comparison review of those two books with two others by prominent Crits–Patricia Williams and Derrick Bell.
What I got instead was a thoughtful commentary that not only complimented the literary talent of the authors, noting that “all write with style and grace,” but also looked for areas of overlap and consensus by which black conservatives and liberals could find common ground against the common enemy of racism. In other words, far from the blind attack dog rhetoric that the prevailing story tells us should happen, the big Crit dog did–exactly what he should do, engage with his intellectual adversaries in a respectful manner while at the same time trying to find areas of mutual agreement and consensus [Richard Delgado, Enormous Anamoly? Left-Right Parallels in Recent Writing About Race, 91 Colum. L. Rev. 1547, 1549, 1555-57 (1991) (book review)].
Even more stunning is that, in a previous article, he specifically broached the question of whether Blacks should consider teaming with “progressive” Republicans instead of Democrats to increase their chances at achieving racial equality. See Richard Delgado, Zero-Based Racial Politics: An Evaluation of Three Best-Case Arguments on Behalf of the Nonwhite Underclass, 78 Geo. L.J. 1929, 1940-45 (1990). Obviously, the Crits aren’t blindly loyal to Democrats–some are so far to the left that they consider the Dems to be too moderate, but supporting Republicans? Isn’t this supposed to be beyond the pale for those irrational nutcases?
So, if the single biggest name in Leftist Legal Scholarship is willing to engage in bipartisan dialogue (and far from bashing minority conservatives, praises their additions to the literature), what does that do to conservative stereotypes of the Crits?
Discuss.