Can We Talk—Really Talk—About Critical Race Theory? What a Game for All Ages Can Teach Us

Authors

• Dan Subotnik, Touro Law School

Abstract

This essay may shock many readers. What it tries to do is look more closely than usual at the underpinnings of American racial discourse in the hope of leaving its readers, by its end, more willing than before to speak openly and listen carefully to people who disagree with them on the fraught subject of race. Wouldn’t many of us academics like to engage in a more open-minded sort of interracial conversation with a greater variety of our peers than we usually do? And yet it never seems to happen. Do any of us, black or white, feel we can speak genuinely freely about race—especially in polite circles? Writing as a contrarian white man, I’d like to try something a bit different that might expand our range. By culling ideas that seem promising from sources that ordinarily have little presence in American legal scholarship, I’d like to invite mainstream as well as heterodox readers to listen and think and talk about some of the issues raised here with as much honesty, and good faith, and, yes, courage as possible. Maybe some of you would even like to respond.

Recommended Citation

Subotnik, Dan (2026) "Can We Talk—Really Talk—About Critical Race Theory? What a Game for All Ages Can Teach Us," Touro Law Review: Vol. 41: No. 1, Article 4.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.tourolaw.edu/lawreview/vol41/iss1/4