LEGAL PHILOSOPHY (LJU4801) - FINAL PORTFOLIO
ASSIGNMENT 3
QUESTION 1
Critical Race Theory (CRT) is based on approaches; skeptical approach that
... [Show More] inculcates
white privilege and prevalence of hierarchy as the dominant form of social organisation;
race consciousness which views law as not being colour-blind; the role of power,
interpretive turn and intersectionality which looks at the role of storytelling and identity
politics which views race as a social construct which is not natural or biological but
something humans create.
Modiri’s approach, fits very well into the ways in which critical theory generally, and CRT
in particular, look at the problem of race. Modiri asserts that there is a false
consciousness that people have escaped the perceived shackles of race, however, the
advent of constitutional democracy in South Africa has left white supremacy and
coloniality largely undisturbed.1
Constitutional democracy rests on compromised political
foundations and has in the final analysis failed to disrupt the historical dynamics and
afterlives of colonial conquest.
On race consciousness and the role of power Modiri asserts that what has changed is
the physiognomy of white power, which allows a white minority to maintain its
hegemony under the guise of non-racialism,2
while simultaneously placing Black people
at the nadir of the social hierarchy and binding them into perpetual inferiority and
powerlessness.3
Intersectional approach by Modiri is seen when he avers that there are other problems
of inequality, these are; social powers of race, class, and gender.4
The general
unravelling of the constitutional ideal has been instigated in large part by the social
1 Modiri JM "Conquest and constitutionalism: First thoughts on an alternative jurisprudence" 2018
SAJHR 300 – 325 300.
2 Modiri 2018 SAJHR 301.
3 Modiri 2018 SAJHR 304.
4 Modiri 2018 SAJHR 318.
reality of persistent racial and gender stratification and social [Show Less]