Some questions African American critics ask about literary texts But where’s Harlem?: an African American reading of

of sex with race and class, it renders this legal safety net the least accessible to those who need it the most. 6. Voice of Color—Many critical race theorists believe that minority writ‑ ers and thinkers are generally in a better position than white writers and thinkers to write and speak about race and racism because they experience racism directly. This positionality is called the voice of color. Indeed, “black,

Indian, Asian, and Latino/a writers and thinkers may be able to commu‑ nicate to their white counterparts matters that the whites are unlikely to know” (Delgado and Stefancic 9). One might argue that the logic of this idea seems so strong that the phrase matters that the whites are unlikely to know could be accurately replaced with matters that most whites almost certainly don’t know. White people can and do know about many kinds of oppression—for instance, oppression due to class, sex, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, and so forth—and all forms of oppression are horrific.

But to think that racial oppression isn’t unique in a myriad of important ways is to ignore over three hundred years of American history regarding race.

It is interesting to note that Delgado and Stefancic believe the voice‑ of‑color thesis “[c]oexist[s] in somewhat uneasy tension with anti‑essen‑ tialism” (9). That is, because antiessentialism, which critical race theory embraces, holds that there are no essential, or inborn, genetic character traits associated with what we define as race, it may seem self‑contradictory to assert that there is such a thing as a voice of color. For the term voice of color, taken out of context, implies that because some people are born with black or brown skin, they are born with some kind of natural racial insight into the operations of oppression. One might argue, however, that there is no self‑contradiction here because Delgado and Stefancic are not positing that the voice of color is an essential—that is, an inborn, or genetic— quality. Rather, it is learned through the experience of racial oppression.

In other words, the voice of color—the enhanced ability to speak and write about race and racism due to the experience of racial oppression—is socially, not biologically, acquired. So it is reasonable to argue that the voice‑of‑color thesis is not an example of essentialism and thus does not contradict critical race theory’s antiessentialist philosophy.

Of course, we must remember that even members of the same minority group will not necessarily experience the same kind or amount of oppres‑ sion and that individuals will handle their experiences differently. For this reason, members of a minority group who deny the racial oppression they’ve encountered, or who deny that racial oppression is still a prob‑ lem today, obviously would not be useful examples of the voice‑of‑color thesis. But those who seek to use the voice of color to inform others of the racial injustice they’ve experienced are being encouraged to tell their

stories. “The ‘legal storytelling’ movement urges black and brown writers to recount their experiences with racism and the legal system and to apply their own unique perspectives to assess law’s master narratives” (Delgado and Stefancic 9), that is, to assess the ways in which the law is not the col‑ orblind, neutral instrument of justice it claims to be. In the frontline of this movement are, among others, Derrick Bell, Patricia Williams, and Richard

Delgado. Delgado, for example, wrote an article “pointing out that white‑ collar and corporate/industrial crime—perpetrated mostly by whites— causes more personal injury, death, and property loss than all street crime combined” (cited in Delgado and Stefancic 43). Yet it’s the black, relatively small‑time lawbreakers that are filling our prisons today, while white big‑ time corporate criminals are rarely pursued by our legal system. I hope these six tenets have given you a fairly clear idea of the general perspec‑ tive and goals of critical race theory. To expand on that understanding, let’s take a brief look at a few representative examples of the kinds of issues that continue to engage many critical race theorists. Specifically, we’ll examine the issues of white privilege, the problem with liberalism, and racial realism. White privilege can be defined as “the myriad of social advantages, benefits, and courtesies that come with being a member of the dominant race” (Delgado and Stefancic 78). Peggy McIntosh, whose famous list is frequently mentioned by critical race theorists, “identified forty‑six advantages available to her as a white person that her African American coworkers, friends, and acquaintances could not count on” (Wildman 18). They include, for example, being told that people of her race were responsible for America’s heritage (just think back to the his‑ tory books we’ve all read that purported to give a balanced picture of America’s past but in reality focused on white American accomplishment); not having to explain to her children, for their own protection, the many modes of white racism; never being asked to speak for her race (cited in Wildman 18); knowing that her achievements will not be considered exceptions to the rule for people of her color; assuming that her occasional errors will not be viewed as signs of her racial inferiority; and expecting that she will be treated with common courtesy—rather than with fear, suspicion, or discomfort—by the individuals she encounters in public places over the course of her day (cited in Delgado and Stefancic 78). White privilege, McIntosh observes, also allows whites to expect that their children will be able to find summer employment of some sort from their unofficial network of white neighbors or from the friends and acquain‑ tances of those neighbors; to feel reasonably confident that their children will get help from a white teacher, if only in the form of an extra‑credit assignment to raise a borderline grade; and to rely on a quiet network of favoritism—a kind of “club”—that would help a borderline white candidate receive an important promotion (cited in Delgado and Stefancic 78–79). “This [last] example becomes