On Critical Race Theory by Victor Ray

Author:Victor Ray [Ray, Victor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2022-08-02T00:00:00+00:00

CHALLENGING AMERICA’S DOMINANT STORIES

The stories America tells about itself are weighted on a racial “hierarchy of credibility,” as the sociologist Howard Becker described our propensity to believe those with greater power or higher status.[9] Messages are not interpreted independently of the messenger, and those at the top of social hierarchies, such as bosses in the workplace, professors during lectures, or generals in the military, are typically given deference. In the workplace or classroom, refusing to fall in line and accept the view of reality dictated from the top results in getting fired or failed. Anyone who has worked for a boss knows that those at the top of a hierarchy aren’t always correct and don’t always know what’s best. Bosses, generals, and professors routinely make errors. It isn’t the bosses’ ideas, the generals’ charisma, or the professors’ wit but their relative power that compels obedience.

Hierarchies of credibility distort reality because they encourage believing the powerful and discounting the accounts of the relatively powerless, the marginalized, or social outcasts. Racism is a hierarchical system whose victims are disempowered, dehumanized, and disbelieved. Discounting the voices of the racially marginalized was (and remains) a feature of the American legal system. Prior to the passing of the Fourteenth Amendment, the enslaved couldn’t testify against their enslavers, and in some free states, Black people couldn’t testify against whites.[10] Jim Crow laws often ensured that Black people’s testimonies were either inadmissible or easily ignored (if, indeed, Black people were brave enough to testify against whites because doing so could get them murdered). Notorious all-white juries acquitted unquestionably guilty white lynching parties—such as Emmett Till’s killers—when they were brought to trial at all.[11] Such acquittals aren’t historical relics of less enlightened times. Narratives of Black criminality and white fear were central to the not-guilty verdict that let George Zimmerman walk after he killed Trayvon Martin and to former officer Darren Wilson facing no charges after shooting Mike Brown.

The sense that Black people can’t be objective on race matters leads to their legal exclusion from juries. Although the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional to bar a juror based on their race in Batson v. Kentucky, some prosecutors have developed an array of creative colorblind excuses for removing nonwhites.[12] According to Gilad Edelman, the farce of race neutrality in juror removals for traits like “too old, too young; living alone, living with a girlfriend” led one Illinois judge to quip, “New prosecutors are given a manual, probably entitled, ‘Handy Race-Neutral Explanations’ or ‘20 Time-Tested Race-Neutral Explanations.’ ”[13] Excluding Black jurors isn’t a hypothetical harm, as juries drawn from all-white pools are 16 percent more likely to convict Black defendants. Including just one Black person in a jury pool eliminates this disparity.[14] Racial hierarchies of credibility also shape courtroom interactions. As sociologist Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve shows in her critical race analysis of Chicago’s Cook County courthouses, judges and prosecutors routinely subject Black and Latino defendants to dehumanizing “racial degradation rituals” that undermine their testimonies, for instance by mocking Black vernacular English or Black names.

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