"Changing the Rules: Some Preliminary Thoughts on Doctrinal Reform, Indeterminacy and Whiteness"

In each of the past three years I have published a law review article proposing a fundamental change in some aspect of race discrimination doctrine. I These articles are congruent with some aspects of Critical Race Theory, in that they describe existing doctrine as deeply (though perhaps unconsciously) racist, they adopt radical racial redistribution as the benchmark for adequate doctrine, and they advocate race-conscious means of achieving racial justice. At the same time, my work has been classified as part of an emerging literature labeled Critical White Studies, because I locate these projects of doctrinal reform within the larger context of a search for an antiracist white self-identity. Each of these taxonomic characterizations carries with it an implicit theoretical challenge, to which this essay attempts to respond. Proposals for doctrinal reform are a prominent feature of the Critical Race literature.2 Indeed, this aspect of Critical Race scholarship might seem unremarkable from a mainstream perspective, given that arguments for change in legal doctrine are the bread and butter of law review publications generally. The inherently conservative nature of legal scholarship,