As part of their Talking about Books series, the Maastricht University Library asked me to choose a book that has been instrumental for my development as a legal scholar. I decided to talk about the book ‘Critical Race Theory: Key Writings that Formed a Movement’, edited by Kimberlé Crenshaw and others.
This book has been formative for my endeavour to conduct a critical race feminist analysis of EU equality law in my current doctoral research. This book teaches me to challenge conventional legal thinking by demonstrating how the law, rather than being a neutral and objective entity, creates and fosters systems of marginalisation such as racism and sexism. In this video, I read from Cheryl Harris’ essay “Whiteness as Property”, which explores how the intersection of racism and sexism shaped the development of private and family law in the United States of America as the country sought to legislate the bodies of Black women in order to sustain the system of slavery.
You can watch the video here:
NOZIZWE DUBE 