"Groups" and the Advent of Critical Race Scholarship
Some scholarly commentators have described Owen Fiss's landmark article "Groups and the Equal Protection Clause" as having helped to produce the intellectual framework that has distinguished Critical Race Theory. This essay finds the issue to be more complex, and the critical thrust of Fiss's article more ambivalent. Fiss's approach boldly foresakes the jurisprudential comforts of neutrality, individualism and means/ends analysis for an explicit focuson the material and dignitary circumstances of African-Americans. Yet its account of racial disadvantage is surprisingly de-contextualized: it reflects neither the contemporaneous perspectives of its African-American subjects, nor more than a fleeting sense of the agonistic political dynamics that produced it. This reified rendering yields an account of Black disadvantage that is decoupled from a corresponding account of white supremacy. This essay explores this critical ambivalence and reflects upon its causes. It also considers the implications of Fiss's ambivalence for the Court's increasingly firm embrace of one "mediating principle" in the area of equal protection.
©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Article
- Equal Protection and the Irrelevance of "Groups"
- A Partial Defense of an Anti-Discrimination Principle
- Group Rights, Judicial Review, and "Personal Motives"
- Sources of Status-harm and Group Disadvantage in Private Behavior
- "Law", "Philosophy," or "Politics"? Identifying the Status of the Arguments in Owen Fiss's "Groups and the Equal Protection Clause"
- I and Thou and We and the Way to Peace
- The Return of the Repressed: Groups, Social Welfare Rights, and the Equal Protection Clause
- Groups, Equal Protection and Law
- Status Inequality and Social Groups
- "Groups" and the Advent of Critical Race Scholarship
- The American Civil Rights Tradition: Anticlassification or Antisubordination
- Unnatural Groups: A Reacton to Owen Fiss's "Groups and the Equal Protection Clause"
- Groups, Equality, and the Promise of Democratic Politics
- Affirmative Action and the Group-Disadvantaging Principle
- Groups in a Diverse, Dynamic, Competitive, and Liberal Society: Comments on Owen Fiss's "Groups and the Equal Protection Clause"
- "Black" and "White" in Brown: Equal Protection and the Legal Construction of Racial Identities
- "Group Rights" and the Problem of Statistical Discrimination
- Owen Fiss, Equality Theory, and Judicial Role
- Groups, Politics, and the Equal Protection Clause
- Another Equality
Articles in the same Issue
- Article
- Equal Protection and the Irrelevance of "Groups"
- A Partial Defense of an Anti-Discrimination Principle
- Group Rights, Judicial Review, and "Personal Motives"
- Sources of Status-harm and Group Disadvantage in Private Behavior
- "Law", "Philosophy," or "Politics"? Identifying the Status of the Arguments in Owen Fiss's "Groups and the Equal Protection Clause"
- I and Thou and We and the Way to Peace
- The Return of the Repressed: Groups, Social Welfare Rights, and the Equal Protection Clause
- Groups, Equal Protection and Law
- Status Inequality and Social Groups
- "Groups" and the Advent of Critical Race Scholarship
- The American Civil Rights Tradition: Anticlassification or Antisubordination
- Unnatural Groups: A Reacton to Owen Fiss's "Groups and the Equal Protection Clause"
- Groups, Equality, and the Promise of Democratic Politics
- Affirmative Action and the Group-Disadvantaging Principle
- Groups in a Diverse, Dynamic, Competitive, and Liberal Society: Comments on Owen Fiss's "Groups and the Equal Protection Clause"
- "Black" and "White" in Brown: Equal Protection and the Legal Construction of Racial Identities
- "Group Rights" and the Problem of Statistical Discrimination
- Owen Fiss, Equality Theory, and Judicial Role
- Groups, Politics, and the Equal Protection Clause
- Another Equality
