Critical Race Methodologies: The Praxis of Understanding, Critiquing, and Disrupting Injustice
Document Type
Book Chapter
Abstract
"In the late 1970s, scholars working in predominantly white law schools in the United States established Critical Legal Studies (CLS). Many of them were civil rights activists and attorneys who had witnessed a growing conservative judiciary undercut the limited victories “only just achieved in the prior decade, particularly with respect to affirmative action and legal requirements for the kinds of evidence required to prove illicit discrimi‑ nation” (Crenshaw et al. 1995a:xvii). Conservative think tanks launched “colorblindness” as a strategy in affirmative action and anti‑discrimination cases (Crenshaw 1988), and the courts provided redress for only the most egregious cases of racial discrimination (Delgado and Stefancic 2001). Informed by critical theory, including Antonio Gramsci’s (1891–1937) work on Marxism and hegemony, CLS scholars argued against conceptions that law schools or the judiciary were neutral and apolitical institutions. They studied the judiciary as a site of cultural reproduction (Delgado 1995). Among CLS scholars were law a multiracial group of students and professors who identified as “race crits” and focused explicitly on analyses of the law at the intersection of Race, racism, and inequity (Crenshaw 1995a; Dalton 1995; Delgado 1995; Freeman 1995; Kairys 1998). By the late 1980s, these African American, Asian, Indigenous, Latino, multiracial, and white scholars identified themselves with Critical Race Theory (CRT). They continued to analyze the systemic reproduction of racism facing Indigenous People and people of Color." (Martinez et al., 2026, p. 218)
Publication Info
Published in Approaches to Qualitative Research, 2026.
Rights
© 2026 selection and editorial matter, Jessica Nina Lester; individual chapters, the contributors
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APA Citation
Martínez, D. G., Cook Sumpter, D., & Anders, A. D. (2026). Critical race methodologies: The praxis of understanding, critiquing, and disrupting injustice. In J. N. Lester (Ed.), Approaches to qualitative research (1st ed., pp. 218–234). Routledge.