Legal Feminism and the Post-Racism Fantasy

Abstract

In 1993, the Canadian Journal of Women and the Law published a special issue on racism in an effort to “shift paradigms” in feminist legal scholarship in Canada. This article examines scholarship published in the journal since that time to evaluate to what extent this aspiration has been realized. Although some progress has been made, feminist theorizing around racism and colonialism is not being undertaken as a matter of course. Rather, this theorizing is pursued most often when an issue has obvious significance to racialized women. The author explores why feminists, and white feminists in particular, still do not regularly integrate the impact of racism and colonialism into their writing and the potential consequences of this choice. She argues that ignoring the role of racism and colonialism in legal scholarship perpetuates systems of domination, which feminism should be aggressively dismantling and thus impedes the feminist project. The author ultimately questions whether theorizing without meaningful analysis of the role of racism, colonialism, and other sites of oppression can still be considered feminist.

Keywords: racism, race, critical race theory, feminism, feminist, legal scholarship, white women