Critical Race Theory, Critical Race Feminism and the Stories of Outsiders

Watson, Nicole

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-87327-1_2

Nicole Watson^nAff6

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Race, Ethnicity, Indigeneity and Criminal Justice ((PSREICJ))

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Abstract

This chapter provides the theoretical foundations for the following chapters. It identifies the precepts of critical race theory (‘CRT’) and critical race feminism (‘CRF’). The chapter introduces the work of scholars such as Monica J. Evans and Regina Austin on Black women’s outlaw culture. It also casts light on similarities between racism in Australia and the United States of America. Finally, the chapter acknowledges the work of Australian scholars who are extending CRT to illuminate the pervasiveness of racism in Australian society.

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Notes

1.
Jonathan Richards, ‘’Many Were Killed from Falling Over the Cliffs’: The Naming of Mount Wheeler, Central Queensland’ in Ian D. Clark, Luise Hercus and Laura Kostanski (eds), Indigenous and Minority Placenames: Australian and International Perspectives (ANU Press, 2014), 147, 150.
2.
Clive Moore, ‘Blackgin’s Leap: A Window into Aboriginal-European Relations in the Pioneer Valley, Queensland in the 1860s’ (1990) 14(1/2) Aboriginal History, 61, 65.
3.
Jonathan Richards, The Secret War: A True History of Queensland’s Native Police (University of Queensland Press, 2008), 77.
4.
Moore (n 2), 61.
5.
Ibid.
6.
Mick Roberts, ‘The North Queensland Pub Named After the Tragic Death of Aboriginal Woman, Kowaha’ Time Gents: Australian Pub Project (Blog Post, 7 February 2021), https://timegents.com/2021/02/07/the-north-queensland-pub-named-after-the-tragic-death-of-aboriginal-woman-kowaha/.
7.
347 U.S. 483 (1954).
8.
Derrick A. Bell Jr, ‘Brown v Board of Education and the Interest-Convergence Dilemma’ (1979–1980) 93(3) Harvard Law Review, 518.
9.
Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction (New York University Press, 3rd ed, 2017), 5.
10.
Ibid., 6.
11.
Adrien Katherine Wing, ‘Space Traders for the Twenty-First Century’ (2009) 11 Berkeley Journal of African-American Law and Policy, 49, 50.
12.
‘Derrick Bell (1930–2011): An Iconoclast and a Community Builder’ Harvard Law Today, 6 October 2011, https://today.law.harvard.edu/derrick-bell-1930-2011/.
13.
Ibid.
14.
Latoya Johnson, ‘From the Anti-Slavery Movement to Now: (RE) Examining the Relationship Between Critical Race Theory and Black Feminist Thought’ (2015) 22(3–4) Race, Gender and Class, 227.
15.
Kamau Rashid, ‘“To Break Asunder Along the Lesions of Race”. The Critical Race Theory of W.E.B. Du Bois’ (2011) 14(5) Race, Ethnicity and Education, 585.
16.
Adrien Katherine Wing, ‘Introduction’ in Adrien Katherine Wing (ed), Critical Race Feminism: A Reader (New York University Press, 2nd ed, 2003), 1, 5.
17.
André Douglas Pond Cummings, ‘A Furious Kinship: Critical Race Theory and the Hip-Hop Nation’ in Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic (eds), Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge (Temple University Press, 3rd ed, 2013), 107, 108.
18.
Pierce cited in Chavella T. Pittman, ‘Racial Microaggressions: The Narratives of African American Faculty at a Predominantly White University’ (2012) 81(1) Journal of Negro Education, 82, 83.
19.
Johnson (n 14), 239.
20.
Wing (n 16), 5.
21.
Delgado and Stefancic cited by Johnson (n 14), 239.
22.
Stephanie M. Wildman and Adrienne D. Davis, ‘Language and Silence: Making Systems of Privilege Visible’ in Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic (eds), Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge (Temple University Press, 3rd ed, 2013), 794, 795.
23.
Johnson (n 14), 238.
24.
Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic (eds), Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge (Temple University Press, 3rd ed, 2013), 6.
25.
Patricia J. Williams, ‘Alchemical Notes: Reconstructing Ideals from Deconstructed Rights’ in Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic (eds), Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge (Temple University Press, 3rd ed, 2013), 97, 101.
26.
Derrick Bell, ‘Racial Realism’ (1992) 24(2) Connecticut Law Review, 363, 373–374.
27.
Ibid.
28.
Ibid., 377.
29.
Bell (n 8), 523.
30.
Derrick Bell, Race, Racism and American Law (Little, Brown and Company, 2nd ed, 1980), 7.
31.
Ibid.
32.
Mary L. Dudziak, ‘Desegregation as a Cold War Imperative’ in Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic (eds), Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge (Temple University Press, 3rd ed, 2013), 136.
33.
Ibid., 138.
34.
Adrien K. Wing, ‘Is There a Future for Critical Race Theory?’ (2016) 66(1) Journal of Legal Education, 44, 48–49.
35.
Pond Cummings (n 17), 108.
36.
Wing (n 34), 48.
37.
Richard Delgado, ‘Storytelling for Oppositionists and Others: A Plea for Narrative’ in Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic (eds), Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge (Temple University Press, 3rd ed, 2013), 72.
38.
Wing (n 16), 6.
39.
Cheryl I. Harris, ‘Whiteness as Property’ (1993) 106(8) Harvard Law Review, 1710.
40.
Ibid., 1711.
41.
Ibid., 1715.
42.
Ibid., 1745.
43.
Derrick A. Bell Jr, ‘After We’re Gone: Prudent Speculations on American in a Postracial Epoch’ in Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic (eds), Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge (Temple University Press, 3rd ed, 2013), 9, 10.
44.
Adrien Katherine Wing, ‘Critical Race Feminism and the International Human Rights of Women in Bosnia, Palestine, and South Africa: Issues for LatCrit Theory’ (1996/1997) 28(2) University of Miami Inter-American Law Review, 337, 340.
45.
Ibid., 341.
46.
Lori D. Patton and LaWanda W. Ward, ‘Missing Black Undergraduate Women and the Politics of Disposability: A Critical Race Feminist Perspective’ (2016) 85(3) Journal of Negro Education, 330, 331.
47.
Angela P. Harris, ‘Race and Essentialism in Feminist Legal Theory’ in Adrien Katherine Wing (ed), Critical Race Feminism: A Reader (New York University Press, 2nd ed, 2003), 34.
48.
Kimberlé Crenshaw, ‘Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex’ (1989) University of Chicago Legal Forum, 139.
49.
Johnson (n 14), 235.
50.
Crenshaw (n 48), 149.
51.
Patton and Ward (n 46), 331.
52.
Patricia Williams, ‘Spirit-Murdering the Messenger: The Discourse of Fingerpointing as the Law’s Response to Racism’ (1987) 42(1) University of Miami Law Review, 127, 151.
53.
Ibid.
54.
Ibid.
55.
Jemimah L. Young and Dorothy E. Hines, ‘Killing My Spirit, Renewing My Soul: Black Female Professors’ Critical Reflections on Spirit Killings while Teaching’ (2018) 6(1) Women, Gender, and Families of Color, 18.
56.
Monica J. Evans, ‘Stealing Away: Black Women, Outlaw Culture and the Rhetoric of Rights’ (1993) 28(2) Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, 263.
57.
Ibid., 264.
58.
Ibid., 265.
59.
Regina Austin, ‘“The Black Community,” It Lawbreakers, and a Politics of Identification’ (1992) 65(4) Southern California Law Review, 1769, 1776.
60.
Ibid., 1792.
61.
Evans (n 56), 271.
62.
Ibid., 268 (footnotes omitted).
63.
Ibid., 272.
64.
Kahlil Chism, ‘Harriet Tubman: Spy, Veteran, and Widow’ (2005) 19(2) OAH Magazine of History, 47.
65.
Ibid.
66.
Evans (n 56), 284.
67.
Amii Larkin Barnard, ‘The Application of Critical Race Feminism to the Anti-Lynching Movement: Black Women’s Fight against Race and Gender Ideology’, 1892–1920’ (1993) 3 UCLA Women’s Law Journal, 1, 22.
68.
Ibid.
69.
Ibid., 23.
70.
Ibid., 25.
71.
Evans (n 56), 296.
72.
Ibid.
73.
Christine Judith Nicholls, ‘“Dreamings” and Dreaming Narratives: What’s the relationship?’ The Conversation (online, 6 February 2014), https://theconversation.com/dreamings-and-dreaming-narratives-whats-the-relationship-20837.
74.
Diana James, ‘Signposted by Song: Cultural Routes of the Australian Desert,’ (2013) 25(3) Historic Environment, 30, 33.
75.
Bill Gammage, The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia (Allen & Unwin, 2011), 6.
76.
Matthew Jordan, ‘“Not on Your Life”: Cabinet and Liberalisation of the White Australia Policy, 1964–67’ (2018) 46(1) The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 169, 170.
77.
Mabo v State of Queensland (No 2) (1992), 175 CLR 1, 40 (Brennan J).
78.
Kathy Frankland, ‘A Brief History of Government Administration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in Queensland’, https://www.slq.qld.gov.au/sites/default/files/www.slq.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/93734/admin_history_aboriginal_and_torres_strait_islanders.pdf, 1.
79.
Ibid.
80.
Edward B. Kennedy, The Black Police of Queensland: Reminiscences of Official Work and Adventures of the Early Days of the Colony (Murray, 1902).
81.
Amanda Nettelbeck and Lyndall Ryan, ‘Salutary Lessons: Native Police and the “Civilising” Role of Legalised Violence in Colonial Australia’ (2018) 46(1) The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 47, 56–57.
82.
Raymond Evans, Kay Saunders and Kathryn Cronin, Exclusion, Exploitation and Extermination: Race Relations in Colonial Queensland (University of Queensland Press, 1993), 49.
83.
David Atkinson, ‘The White Australia Policy, the British Empire, and the World’ (2015) Department of History Faculty Publications, Purdue University, Paper 4, https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=histpubs.
84.
Andrew Markus, ‘Of Continuities and Discontinuities: Reflections on a Century of Australian Immigration Control’ in Laksiri Jayasuriya, David Walker and Jan Gothard (eds), Legacies of White Australia: Race, Culture and Nation (University of Western Australia Press, 2003), 175, 176.
85.
Invalid and Old-Age Pensions Act 1908 (Cth) s. 16(1)(c).
86.
Maternity Allowance Act 1912 (Cth) s. 6(2).
87.
John Murphy, ‘Conditional Inclusion: Aborigines and Welfare Rights in Australia, 1900–47’ (2013) 44(2) Australian Historical Studies, 206, 207.
88.
George Williams, ‘The Races Power and the 1967 Referendum’ (2007) 11 Australian Indigenous Law Review, 8, 9.
89.
Russell McGregor, ‘Another Nation: Aboriginal Activism in the Late 1960s and Early 1970s’ (2009) 40(3) Australian Historical Studies, 343, 346.
90.
Ibid., 347.
91.
Marcia Langton, ‘Koowarta: A Warrior for Justice: A Brief History of Queensland’s Racially Discriminatory Legislation and the Aboriginal Litigants Who Fought It’ (2014) 23(1) Griffith Law Review, 16, 26.
92.
(1992) 175 CLR 1.
93.
Garth Nettheim, ‘Judicial Revolution or Cautious Correction? Mabo v Queensland’ (1993) 16(1) University of New South Wales Law Journal, 1, 23.
94.
See the validation provisions and future act regime contained in Part Two of the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth).
95.
Members of the Yorta Yorta Aboriginal Community v Victoria [2002] HCA 58 [86] per Gleeson CJ, Gummow and Hayne JJ.
96.
Bryan Keon-Cohen, ‘From Euphoria to Extinguishment to Co-existence’ (2017) 23 James Cook University Law Review, 9, 11.
97.
Aileen Moreton-Robinson, ‘Witnessing Whiteness in the Wake of Wik’ (1998) 17(2) Social Alternatives, 11.
98.
Aileen Moreton-Robinson, ‘Unmasking Whiteness: A Goori Jondal’s look at Some Duggai Business’ (1999) 6(1) Queensland Review, 1, 2.
99.
Bob Hodge and Vijay Mishra, Dark Side of the Dream: Australian Literature and the Postcolonial Mind (Allen & Unwin, 1991).
100.
Scott Morrison, ‘This is Why We Celebrate Australia Day on January 26’ Sydney Morning Herald (online, 25 January 2019), https://www.smh.com.au/national/scott-morrison-this-is-why-we-celebrate-australia-day-on-january-26-20190125-p50tn8.html.
101.
Joan Cunningham and Yin C. Paradies, ‘Patterns and Correlates of Self-Reported Racial Discrimination Among Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Adults, 2008–09: Analysis of National Survey Data’ (2013) 12(47) International Journal for Equity in Health, 1, 2.
102.
David Mellor, ‘Contemporary Racism in Australia: The Experiences of Aborigines’ (2003) 29(4) Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 474.
103.
Ibid., 482.
104.
Ibid., 483.
105.
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, ‘Australia’s Welfare 2017: In Brief’ (19 October 2017), https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-welfare/australias-welfare-2017-in-brief/contents/indigenous-australians.
106.
Wayne Martin, ‘Unequal Justice for Indigenous Australians’ (2018) 14 The Judicial Review, 35.
107.
Australian Indigenous Doctors Association, Report on the Findings of the 2016 AIDA Member Survey on Bullying, Racism and Lateral Violence in the Workplace (2017), 10.
108.
Ibid., 6.
109.
Glenn D’Cruz, ‘Breaking Bad: The Booing of Adam Goodes and the Politics of the Black Sports Celebrity in Australia’ (2018) 9(1) Celebrity Studies, 131.
110.
Aileen Moreton-Robinson, Talkin’ Up to the White Woman (University of Queensland Press, 2000).
111.
Ibid., 33.
112.
Ibid., xvi.
113.
Ibid., 10.
114.
Ibid., 186.
115.
Aileen Moreton-Robinson, The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty (University of Minnesota Press, 2015), 66.
116.
Ibid.
117.
Ibid., 93.
118.
Ibid., 96.
119.
Ibid., 97.
120.
Debbie Bargallie, Unmasking the Racial Contract: Indigenous Voices on Racism in the Australian Public Service (Aboriginal Studies Press, 2020).
121.
Ibid., 33.
122.
Ibid., 42.
123.
Charles W. Mills, The Racial Contract (Cornell University Press, 1997), 11.
124.
Bargallie (n 120), 92.
125.
Ibid.
126.
Ibid., 96.
127.
Ibid., 105–110.
128.
Ibid., 105.
129.
Cubillo and Gunner v Commonwealth (2000) 174 ALR 97. Janet Ramsley and Elena Marchetti, ‘The Hidden Whiteness of Australian Law: A Case Study’ (2001) 10 Griffith Law Review, 139.
130.
Ibid., 146.
131.
Irene Watson, ‘Power of the Muldarbi, the Road to its Demise’ (1998) 11 Australian Feminist Law Journal, 28.
132.
Hannah McGlade, ‘The Day of the Minstrel Show’ (2005) 6(8) Indigenous Law Bulletin, 16. See also Nicole Watson, ‘Indigenous People in Legal Education: Staring into a Mirror Without Reflection’ (2005) 6(8) Indigenous Law Bulletin, 4.
133.
Marcelle Burns and Jennifer Nielsen ‘Dealing with the “Wicked” Problem of Race and the Law: A Critical Journey for Students (and Academics)’ (2018) 28 Legal Education Review, 1, 2.
134.
Shelley Bielefeld and Fleur Beaupert, ‘Income Management and Intersectionality: Analysing Compulsory Income Management Through the Lenses of Critical Race Theory and Disability Studies (‘Discrit’)’ (2019) 41(3) Sydney Law Review, 327. See also Alison Whittaker, ‘One-Punch Drunk: White Masculinities as a Property Right in New South Wales’ Assault Causing Death Law Reforms’ (2020) Australian Feminist Law Journal, 1.

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Nicole Watson
Present address: Nura Gili Centre for Indigenous Programs, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia

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Watson, N. (2022). Critical Race Theory, Critical Race Feminism and the Stories of Outsiders. In: Aboriginal Women, Law and Critical Race Theory. Palgrave Studies in Race, Ethnicity, Indigeneity and Criminal Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87327-1_2

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87327-1_2
Published: 11 December 2021
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