Abstract

The contemporary public debate about racial issues in the U.S. has increasingly revolved around a single question: can race ever serve as a defensible basis for public policymaking in a constitutional democracy? Critical Race Theory (CRT) has sought an alternative to the dominant normative framework in a reconsideration of the radical political tradition of the race consciousness. This tradition has opened up the interpretative field of contemporary race studies, and allowed a rethinking of the connections among law, race and politics.