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Qualitative Inquiry

Rhetorical Revolution: Critical Race

2015, Vol. 21(3) 239249
The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/1077800414557830

of White Democracy qix.sagepub.com

Denise Taliaferro Baszile1

Abstract
Critical race theory (CRT) has fundamentally been about talking back through the production of coutnernarratives
that are, above all else, intended to interrogate and subvert the logic of multiple rationalitieslegal, neoliberal, and
scientific among othersand their role in reinforcing racism under the guise of integration, assimilation, colorblindness,
and more recently post-racialism. To this end, counterstorytelling is CRTs modus operandi. Although the critical race
movement has ushered counterstory center-stage over the past several years, it is important to note that critical race
counterstorytelling has historically been fundamental political strategy in ongoing struggles over the relations of power,
knowledge, and difference in the United States and beyond. In this article, the author situates the emergence of critical
race counterstorytelling within the U.S. abolitionist movement and argues that it played a critical role in challenging the
idea that rationality was the only and/or the best way to practice democracy for the common good. In so doing, critical
race counterstorytelling catalyzes the first movement for social justice in the United States. Calling on this history acts as
a reminder of the revolutionary potential of critical race counterstorytelling as political strategy in current era of post-
racialism.

Keywords
ethnicity and race, critical race theory, counternarrative, methods of inquiry

After more than 20 years on the academic landscape, I still
hear people refer to critical race theory (CRT) as just a
bunch of storytelling, the insinuation being that somehow
stories do not represent legitimate knowledge, that they
have no revolutionary potential. The insinuation always
makes me cringe, primarily because my experience work-
ing in a major market newsroom leads me to believe other-
wise. In the newsroom, stories, particularly stories about
race, always proved to be powerful engines of social and
cultural reproduction and resistance. Certainly, I realize that
there will always be naysayers (Bell, 1995), those who are
wedded above all else to the myth of the rational mind; that
is, they believe without doubt that legitimate knowledge is
objective, neutral, universal, and the most viable path to
Truth for the common good. Never mind the fact that there
is plenty of evidence to the contrary. Knowledge, of course,
is never neutral, which means it is always a story of some
kind, produced by a situated knower. Given the storied
nature of knowledge, it seems implausible to me to suggest
that stories do not matter or they are somehow less signifi-
cant in knowledge production and meaning making than
those things we call facts, data, and evidence. These things,
in fact, cannot survive without being couched in some kind
of narrative. In academia, for instance, we refer to our nar-
ratives as paradigms. CRT, in this respect, is no more or less
about storytelling than any other paradigm. What it is, how-
ever, is far more transparent about its politics of countersto-
rytelling. In this vein, it does not pretend to be neutral,
objective, or apolitical. It embraces the realization that
knowledge comes from thinking and feeling bodies, from
bodies that are raced, gendered, and sexualized among other
subjectivities, from bodies that are located in hierarchical
relations and places of difference. Critical race countersto-
rytelling is an acknowledgment that all of this matters in our
efforts to imagine and work toward justice in a diverse
democracy and in a diverse world. And it is in this way that
critical race counterstorytelling is not just about adding
more perspectives to the proverbial pot, but about funda-
mentally challenging the myth of the rational mind and its
claims to justice for all.
1
Miami University, Oxford, OH, USA
Corresponding Author:
Denise Taliaferro Baszile, Department of Educational Leadership, Miami
University, 210 E. Spring St, Oxford, OH 45056, USA.
Email: taliafda@miamioh.edu
240 Qualitative Inquiry 21(3)
Many people tend to see CRT as simply a set of tenets or
a body of scholarship that puts race at the center of its anal-
ysis. However, such perspectives situate CRT as a stable
project, rather than a dynamic, multifaceted movement
among scholar-activists who challenge the racial logics
inherent in the production of academic knowledge, and its
eventual impact on the lives of marginalized peoples
(Crenshaw, 2011). As a movement, CRT has fundamentally
been about talking back (hooks, 1989) through the pro-
duction of coutnernarratives that are, above all else,
intended to interrogate and subvert the logic of multiple
rationalitieslegal, neoliberal, and scientific among oth-
ersand their role in reinforcing racism under the guise of
integration, assimilation, colorblindness, and, more
recently, post-racialism (Crenshaw, 2011; Valdes & Cho,
2011). To this end, counterstorytelling is CRTs modus
operandi.
Although the critical race movement has ushered coun-
terstory center-stage over the past several years, it is impor-
tant to note that critical race counterstorytelling has
historically been and continues to be fundamental political
strategy in ongoing struggles over the relations of power,
knowledge, and difference in the United States and beyond.
Thus, critical race counterstorytelling, as I use it here, con-
stitutes all work that is intentionally and strategically chal-
lenging the assumptions and logic of stories that ultimately
work to reinforce racial domination at the epistemic, spiri-
tual, and material dimensions of dehumanization.
Marginalized people have always used counterstories to
assert themselves and to resist being completely swallowed
up by the Eurocentric will to dominate. Arguably, it has
been the single most important strategy in ongoing strug-
gles against colonialism, racism, and White supremacy
among other oppressions. Whether reflecting on Fredrick
Douglasss narrative of his life, Rigoberta Menchus testi-
monio, Derrick Bells conversations with Geneva, Linda T.
Smiths Decolonizing Methodologies, Malcolm Xs autobi-
ography or Patricia Williamss (1991) Alchemy of Race and
Rights, one can discern the power and importance of critical
race counterstorytelling as political strategy in struggles for
racial justice. Despite its significance, however, countersto-
rytelling remains relatively under-theorized in critical race
discourse. Certainly, there are important theoretical contri-
butions that have informed our understanding of critical
race counterstorytelling, among them Derrick Bells Whos as a way to avoid rioting, which was a fairly popular politi-
Afraid of Critical Race Theory? Richard Delgados (1989)
Storytelling for Oppositionalists and Others: A Plea for
Narrative, and Daniel Solorazano and Tara Yossos (2002)
Critical Race Methodology: Counter-Storytelling as an
Analytical Framework for Education Research among oth-
ers. And yet many alleys, angles, and avenues of vision
remain unarticulated if not all together unexplored.
What I hope to do in the following pages is to put critical
race counterstorytelling in its rich historical context and
through that context explain how it has played a most criti-
cal role in pushing the United States toward more diverse
and just democratic futures. Specifically, I consider how
critical race counterstorytelling played a key role in the for-
mation of the abolitionist movement, how and why it
worked to disrupt the mainstream common sense of the
time, and how understanding its historical significance
might help us to better understand the revolutionary poten-
tial of critical race counterstory in the present. In addressing
these issues, I hope to emphasize the vital role critical race
counterstorytelling has played in and must continue to play
in challenging racial and other forms of domination, not
simply by offering a different perspective but by interven-
ing on the logic of and faith in rational discourse as the most
viable path to justice.
In the Western Rationality, U.S. Democracy, and Racial
Injustice section, I try to provide some context for under-
standing how Western rationality plays a central role in the
establishment of the United Statess racialized democracy.
In the Black Abolitionism and the Politics of Critical Race
Counterstorytelling section, I draw from several histories
on the abolitionist movement, biographies of key players,
and speeches, pamphlets, and books written by abolition-
ists. Ultimately, I offer a counterstory of the abolitionist
movement by looking specifically at the life-worlds of
Black abolitionists and how their struggle for rhetorical
self-determination gave birth to critical race countersto-
rytelling as an intervention on rationalist discourse. Finally,
in the Critical Race Theorys Revolutionary Potential
section, I suggest that CRTs revolutionary potential lies in
its ability to engage critical race counterstorytelling to con-
tinue the struggle for racial justice in an aggressive neolib-
eral context where post-racialism puts a new spin on the old
rhetoric of racial inequality and injustice.
Western Rationality, U.S. Democracy,
and Racial Injustice
Western rationality has long been understood as the best
way if not the only way to engage in the practice of democ-
racy for the common good (Chabal, 2012; Smith, 1999). In
The Dominion of Voice, Kimberly K. Smith (1999) argues
that during the antebellum period the emerging U.S. democ-
racy embraces an ethic of Enlightenment rationality, mainly
cal strategy during the 18th century. They saw the
Enlightenment modela dispassionate, objective pursuit of
the Truth through rational argumentas the best way to
maintain order and control. However, as Smith goes on to
show, the Enlightenment model embraced a vision of ratio-
nality that came at the expense of passion, interest and elo-
quence and was ultimately undermining the legitimacy of
those institutions that were mobilizing public participation.
Although Smiths argument alludes to the racial and
Baszile 241
gendered dynamics at play during this time, her focus is
more fundamentally on how testimony and other forms of
narrative used by those put on the margins of rational debate
(women and people of color) challenged the assumption
that Enlightenment rationality is the best way to engage
democracy. Though I certainly agree with Smiths argu-
ment, I am specifically interested in a more critical read of
the racial politics inherent in the situation she describes. In
other words, the growing commitment to Enlightenment
rationality was not only about controlling a riotous public
but also indicative of a growing commitment to what Joel
Olson calls a White democracy.
In Addressing the Crisis of Whiteness Joe Kincheloe
and Shirley Steinberg (1998) speak to the conflation of
Whiteness and European rationality:
Whiteness took shape around the notion of rationality of the
European Enlightenment, with its privileged construction of
transcendental white, male, rational subject who operated at
the recesses of power while at the same time giving every
indication that he escaped the confines of time and space. In
this context whiteness was naturalized as a universal entity . . .
Reason in this historical configuration is whitened and human
nature itself is grounded upon this reasoning capacity. (p. 5)
To this end, Whiteness, as they continue to explain,
establishes itself as an authoritative, delimited, and hierar-
chical mode of thought. In subsequent decades, their
encounters with those whom they colonized and enslaved
would be framed in rationalistic terms, with whiteness rep-
resenting orderliness, rationality and self-control and non-
whiteness indicating chaos, irrationality, violence and the
breakdown of self-regulation (Kincheloe & Steinberg,
1998, p. 5). This conflation of Whiteness and rationality
play a central role in the United States, which essentially
becomes a White democracy. In The Abolition of White
Democracy, Olson (2004) argues that U.S. democracy is
a polity ruled in the interests of a white citizenry and
characterized by simultaneous relations of equality and
privilege; equality among whites who are privileged in relation
to those who are not white. The burdens of white citizenship
particularly on the efforts to expand democracyremain with
us today. (p. xv)
Drawing on the critical race scholarship of Cheryl Harris
(1993), Olson explains that Whiteness becomes a primary
marker of democratic citizenship by casting Black people
as the Other. He contends, Black people in the Jacksonian
era were not simply noncitizens but anticitizens. They were
not merely excluded from the social compact, they were the
Other that simultaneously threatened and consolidated it
(Olson, 2004, p. 43). In this vein, the Enlightenments
Rational man becomes the consummate U.S. citizen, mak-
ing White domination concomitant to democracy in the
United States, a democracy, as history shows, relentlessly
committed to maintaining White privilege. Taking his lead
from DuBoiss Black Reconstruction, Olsons thesis ulti-
mately suggests that a diverse democracy, which embraces
freedom and equality for all is hindered mainly by the
depravity of the White political imagination:
The tragic aspect of the white political imagination is not
simply its refusal to consider the possibility of a society where
all races can live together in peace and equality. As the
dominant group the white race is by definition aggressive and
inegalitarian. (As Marx puts it, slavery made whites filibusters
by profession). Further the white political imagination is not
able to recognize that the advancement of whites depends on
the advancement of those who are not white . . . (p. 63)
The only way forward, says Olson, is a participatory
democratic politics that work to abolish Whiteness. The
kind practiced, for instance, within the context of Black
freedom struggles. Following Olsons lead, in the next sec-
tion, I turn specifically to the politics of the Black abolition-
ist movement to illustrate how the radical Black imagination
(Kelley, 2002) embraces critical race counterstorytelling to
call out the depravity of the White political imagination,
which was critical to their movement building activities,
which in turn played a significant role in pushing the coun-
try toward the Civil War and the demise of slaverythe
first nail in the coffin of Whiteness.
Black Abolitionism and the Politics of
Critical Race Counterstorytelling
The struggle to abolish slavery in the United States has a
long and sorted history stemming at least as far back as the
Revolutionary War in 1776 and through the Civil War,
which ended in 1865. Although scholars offer a variety of
classification schemes to explain the multifaceted nature
of the abolitionist movement (Mitchell, 2005; Newman,
2002), most agree that the movement before 1830 differs
significantly from the politics of the movement post-1830
in at least three ways. Prior to 1830, many antislavery
societies advocated gradual emancipation, relied mainly
on legal briefs submitted to the courts and appeals made to
politicians, and typically refused to work alongside
African Americans, who were often denied membership in
antislavery societies. In the 1830s, a new generation of
abolitionists began to push for immediate emancipation of
the enslaved Africans, to make impassioned pleas to the
masses, and to often do this work alongside Black and
White, men and women activists. These changes in focus
and strategy heightened the influence of the abolitionist
movement, making it a force to be reckoned with in the
ongoing debate over slavery (Aptheker, 1989; Nash, 1990;
Newman, 2002).
242 Qualitative Inquiry 21(3)
So what, one might ask, inspired these pivotal changes
in antislavery sentiment and strategy? Although there were
many contributing factors, including the emergence of
print culture and a growing interest in democracy, the pub-
lication of William Lloyd Garrisons Liberator in 1831 is
often considered the most significant event marking the
transition. His call for an immediate end to slavery in the
first edition of the Liberator made Garrisons newspaper
one of the most radical and influential antislavery papers in
circulation at the time (Newman, 2002). Apparently, it also
led many to see Garrison as inspiring a new way forward.
However, many Black abolitionists retorted that assump-
tion. Historian Richard Newman (2002) quotes Reverend
Charles C. Gardner, for instance, a longtime Black aboli-
tionist from Philadelphia proclaiming to the American
Antislavery Society in 1837 that it was actually Black abo-
litionists who inspired Garrison to embrace a message of
immediacy not the other way around. Conveying the
essence of Gardners comments, Newman (2002) writes
As Reverend Charles C. Gardner, a black abolitionists form
Philadelphia, told the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS)
in 1837, let me tell you that when Garrison was a schoolboy,
the people of color in the different parts of the country had
already mobilized to stand against slavery as a crime against
both God and man. Indeed Gardner blasted, although William
Lloyd Garrison has been branded as the individual who . . . set
the blacks hearts afire, black activists instead inspired
Garrison and his white cohorts to attack bondage even more
fiercely. (p. 86)
In his study The Transformation of American
Abolitionism, Newman shows that Black abolitionists, par-
ticularly in large cities like New York, Philadelphia, and
Boston had been working relentlessly for an immediate end
to slavery and for racial equality in the emerging democracy
since the late 18th century.
Thus, despite the fact that many African American aboli-
tionists were often excluded from White abolitionist efforts
prior to 1830, they organized their own societies and pushed
their own petitions before the courts (see Aptheker, 1989;
Nash, 1990; Newman, 2002). Yet when those petitions were
denied, as they often were, African Americans moved
beyond the legitimate confines of legal briefs (rational
argument) and used literary strategies, such as pamphleteer-
ing, which allowed them to challenge proslavery propa-
ganda through commentary, reporting, personal narrative,
poetry, and eventually public speaking and fiction writing
(Newman, 2002). These acts of rhetorical self-determina-
tion (Bacon, 2011) on behalf of Black abolitionists repre-
sent the roots of critical race counterstorytelling.
Black activists bolstered their well-reasoned arguments
with personal experiences, outlaw emotions (Boler,
1999), and religious rhetoric to challenge at least four con-
trolling narratives of the day. First, by using personal
experience and eye witness accounts, Black abolitionists
countered proslavery propaganda that insisted that slaves
were uncivilized beasts of burden who were happy with
their lot in life. Second, by writing, publishing, and circulat-
ing detailed arguments against slavery and the wretched
treatment of free Blacks, the critical race counterstorytell-
ing of Black abolitionists mounted a fierce opposition to the
growing body of racial propaganda, which insisted that all
Blacks were incapable of reason, and as such inferior to
Whites in everyway. Third, Black abolitionists used critical
race counterstorytelling to challenge the rationality of the
Rational man, by exposing the contradictions between slav-
ery and the United Statess sacred doctrines of Christian
goodness, freedom, and equality. Fourth, they also chal-
lenged the common assumption that rationalityas a dis-
passionate presentation of the factswas the best or the
only way to engage a democracy that seeks to embrace free-
dom, equality, and justice for all of its members. Critical
race counterstorytelling played a key role, then, in shifting
the focus of antislavery politics from rational arguments
designed to persuade the liberal mind of the elite to
appeals designed to stir the feelings of the public
(Newman, 2002) and I would argue to build a social move-
ment against slavery and racial injustice.
In the early 19th century, the critical race counterstory-
telling of Black abolitionists gave rise to an active counter-
story culture, which allowed them to develop the common
set of beliefs, behaviors, and strategies to establish the sense
of group identity necessary for turning their antislavery
politics into the abolitionist movement. It is within this con-
text, that two equally influential but distinct examples of
critical race counterstorytelling emerge: David Walkers
Appeal in 1829 and Frederick Douglasss Narrative of the
Life of Frederick Douglass in 1845. Although both texts
represent rigorous challenges to the controlling narratives
of slavery and racial inequality, they are indicative of two
very different kinds of counterstorytelling, one a collective
unmasking (hooks, 1993) and the other an invitation to
understanding; both play critical roles in shaping the aboli-
tionist movement.
In September 1829, longtime antislavery activist, David
Walker, published one of the most incendiary and influen-
tial antislavery pamphlets of its day. Walkers Appeal, in
Four Articles; Together With a Preamble, to the Coloured
Citizens of the World, but in Particular, and Very Expressly,
to Those of the United States of America draws on per-
sonal observations, stories, history, biblical text, and a deep
sense of outrage to offer a passionate argument against slav-
ery and Black inferiority. Reading more like a fiery Sunday
morning sermon (Shelby, 2009), Walkers Appeal (Walker,
1829) emphasizes the brutal and inhumane nature of slav-
ery, calls on all Black peopleenslaved and freeto band
together and fight against slavery not only with words but
also with force, sheds light on the hypocrisy of White
Baszile 243
Christians in maintaining slavery and warns that they will
one day face Gods wrath, forthrightly calls out Thomas
Jeffersons claims in Notes on the State of Virginia about the
inferiority of Black people, and exposes the mission of the
American Colonization Society as a conspiracy to rid the
country of free Blacks such that they will not be an obstacle
to maintaining slavery.
Walkers Appeal can be read in a myriad of waysas reli-
gious text, as an Enlightenment text, and as Black nationalist
text. These are all insightful interpretations, which do not
necessarily conflict with my own read of Walkers Appeal as
an act of collective unmasking. Collective unmasking,
writes Kimberly Nichelle Brown (2010),
means revealing a self that is unfetteredone that is not
governed by the anticipated reactions of white people.
Unmasking can also be equated with the notion of gaining
voicethe act of being empowered to speak out against
injustice, for example. Unmasking on a broader level can also
mean the unveiling of certain truth-claims as fallacies or myths
created in the interest of the status quo. (p. 50)
What made Walkers Appeal standout in 1829 was its
direct and public defense of slave insurrection, which was
apparently notat the timeopenly advocated by most
Black abolitionists. Although such a dangerous act likely
casted him in the eyes of some as an irrational man over-
come with rage, reading Walkers Appeal in relationship to
Denmark Veseys foiled slave rebellion in South Carolina
in1822 allows one to consider his expression of outrage and
his by any means necessary stance, as important rhetorical
strategies intended to build a sense of collective identity
among Black people and to compel them to take up the fight
for freedom and equality as an obligation to God, Self, and
Black humanity.
According to historian Peter Hinks (1997), it is entirely
plausible that Walker was involved in organizing the slave
rebellion with Vesey (who had brought his own freedom a
few years before) and several others including many slaves
who were members of the African Methodist Episcopal
Church, one of the few places in South Carolina where
Black people could congregate without being surveilled.
The plot was foiled when two slaves revealed the plans to
White authorities. Although it is not clear where Vesey was
in 1822, Hinkss archival research suggests that he was def-
initely in South Carolina through 1821. Moreover, Hinks
surmises the connection with Vesey primarily based on the
striking similarities between Veseys rhetoric (as read in the
transcripts of Veseys trial) and Walkers rhetoric, which
both used religion to make an argument not only against
slavery but also for slave rebellion.
I read Walkers Appeal not only as a reflection of his
anger and disappoint with the slaves who betrayed the
Vesey plot but also as an expression of his awareness that a
collective sense of identity among Black people was crucial
to mobilizing them to act against slavery, violently, or oth-
erwise. He commands several important rhetorical strate-
gies to this end. First and foremost, his use of the Bible was
perhaps not only a reflection of his own religious commit-
ments but also a deft understanding that if there were any
book that Black people could galvanize around it was the
Bible, for slaveholders often used the word to subdue their
slaves and Blacks often used the Bible to resist slavery and
to claim a sense of humanity. Drawing from biblical text
allowed Walker to challenge ideas of White supremacy by
recognizing Black and White people as well as free and
enslaved Black people as Gods children. Second, Walker
seems to have also understood that rallying Black people
required forthrightly addressing White people, showing
fearlessness in the face of White authority, calling out not
only the hypocritical White Christians, but calling into
question the integrity and logic of one of the most important
White men in the history of the countryThomas Jefferson.
In a critique of Jeffersons remarks on Black inferiority,
Walker (1829) writes,
See this, my brethren! ! Do you believe that this assertion is
swallowed by millions of the whites? Do you know that Mr.
Jefferson was one of as great characters as ever lived among
the whites? See his writings for the world, and public labours
for the United States of America. Do you believe that the
assertions of such a man will pass away into oblivion
unobserved by his people and the world? If you do you are
much mistaken . . . I am after those who know and feel, that we
are MEN, as well as other people; to them, I say, that unless we
try to refute Mr. Jeffersons arguments respecting us, we will
only establish them. (p. 18)
David Walker (1829) closes his appeal by compelling
Americans (he seems to be talking specifically to White
people at this point) to consider how the institution of slav-
ery, the claim of Black inferiority, and the attempt of the
American Colonization Society to ship African Americans
to Africa are not practices that line up with the rhetoric of
the United States of Americas most sacred document:
See your Declaration Americans! ! ! Do you understand your
own language? Hear your languages, proclaimed to the world,
July 4th, 1776We hold these truths to be self evidentthat
ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL! ! that they are endowed
by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among
these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness! ! Compare
your own language above, extracted from your Declaration of
Independence, with your cruelties and murders inflicted by
your cruel and unmerciful fathers and yourselves on our fathers
and on usmen who have never given your fathers or you the
least provocation! ! ! ! ! ! (p. 85)
A final and insightful point with regard to Walkers rhe-
torical strategy is that some certainly did and will continue
to see it as a rant, but others have clearly noted that if we
244 Qualitative Inquiry 21(3)
are to understand it in its proper historical context, it is
important to recognize not only the content but also the
visual appearance of the text (Dinius, 2011). All of the capi-
talizations, exclamations, italics, and finger pointing, as
cultural studies scholar Marcy Dinius holds, are intended to
help Walkers readers not only visualize his emotions but to
hear his outrage. Dinius (2011) goes on to point out that
given the orality and the illiteracy of the majority of African
Americans (particularly the enslaved) of the day along with
the growing reach of print culture,
Walker sought to collapse the ostensible binaries of voice and
print so that his pamphlet would broadcast his message as
widely as possible, converting print and literacy from means of
control into instruments for advancing the freedom and equality
of the enslaved and free-black populations of the United States.
(p. 57)
Walkers Appeal was immensely influential (Dass,
2011) setting off a flurry of activity among Whites and
Blacks. Several southern states forbade the reading of
Walkers Appeal, put tighter restrictions on free Blacks,
made it illegal to teach slaves to read, and demanded that
Walker be jailed, even killed. Despite the best efforts of the
southern states to put down Walker and his words, the
Appeal was circulated in several states across the South. Of
course, their worse fears were realized in Nat Turners 1831
rebellion and John Browns Raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859
among other slave revolts on land and sea in the years fol-
lowing the publication of the Appeal. In the North, although
many Black abolitionists publicly disagreed with Walkers
stance, his sentiment was carried forward by the likes of
Maria Stewart and Henry Highland Garnett.
Two years after the publication of Walkers Appeal,
William Lloyd Garrison with funds raised mainly by Black
abolitionists published the first edition of the Liberator in
1831 in which he called for an immediate end to slavery:
I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but
is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as
uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to
think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. No! No! Tell a
man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him
to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher;
tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into
which it has fallen;but urge me not to use moderation in a
cause like the present. I am in earnestI will not equivocateI
will not excuseI will not retreat a single inchAND I WILL
BE HEARD. The apathy of the people is enough to make every
statue leap from its pedestal, and to hasten the resurrection of
the dead.
Also in 1831, Garrison publishes sections of Walkers
Appeal (Garrison published a great deal of work by
Black abolitionists) but was critical of Walkers call for
insurrection:
Believing, as we do, that men should never do evil that good
may come, that a good end does not justify wicked means in
the accomplishment of it, and that we ought to suffer, as did our
Lord and his apostles, unresistinglyknowing that vengeance
belongs to God, and he will certainly repay it where it is due . . .
Nevertheless, it is not for the American people, as a nation, to
denounce it as bloody or monstrous. Mr. Walker but pays them
in their own coin, but follows their own creed, but adopts their
own language. We do not preach rebellionno, but submission
and peace.
I thought it interesting in reading the first excerpt that
Garrison takes on a tone quite similar to Walkers and in the
second one he unequivocally denounces Walkers Appeal pri-
marily because it advocates violence. Apparently, others also
assumed a connection because Garrison publishes the com-
ment on Walkers Appeal at the behest of others, who have
presumably either accused him of being aligned with Walker,
or who are anxious for him to clarify his commitment to non-
violence. In either case, it was prudent for Garrison to make
the comment, because part of his mission was to attract not
only more Whites to the cause of antislavery but to a mass
movement against slavery. Certainly, most White abolition-
ists, believing as they did that moral suasion would bring a
peaceful end to slavery, would have balked at violent insur-
rection (clearly, not all felt this way given the Raid on Harpers
Ferry in 1859). In rejecting the violence of Walkers Appeal
and yet making a passionate and unequivocal appeal for an
immediate end to slavery, the Liberator becomes the longest
running, among the most radical, and most influential anti-
slavery newspapers during the abolitionist movement. On the
heels of its first publication, Garrison founded the American
Antislavery Society with Arthur Tappan in 1832. The organi-
zation grows to several chapters with nearly 250,000 mem-
bers, including prominent Black abolitionists like William
Wells Brown and Frederick Douglass.
As African American abolitionists worked more along-
side White abolitionists after the 1830s, they often found
themselves in serious disagreement with their White col-
leagues. In her study of abolitionist rhetoric, Jacqueline
Bacon (2011) argues that White abolitionists consistently
tried to limit the speech of their African American
colleagues:
The racism of white abolitionist and their desire to control
African Americans participation in the movement was
manifested in Whites attempts to limit and manage the
persuasion of their Black colleagues. White antislavery leaders
advised African American abolitionists to narrate facts, while
whites offered explicit arguments. Former slaves were
counseled that in order to be credible they should not appear
too educated or erudite. (pp. 142-143)
The assumptions of the White antislavery leaders, Bacon
argues, was either that their Black colleagues were simply
incapable of making logical arguments or that their White
Baszile 245
audiences were simply incapable of hearing those argu-
ments from Black people. In either case, reasoned argument
was considered the domain of White people, while sharing
experiences was considered to be the work of Black people.
However, many Black abolitionists, including Fredrick
Douglass resisted the attempts of White colleagues to cir-
cumscribe their rhetoric by once again incorporating reason
and defying the rules of rational debate in the public square.
Some laid out reasoned arguments within the context of
their experiences. Some disregarded the unspoken rules of
dispassionate debate and expressed their arguments with
much righteous indignation. Some explicitly called out the
ways in which Whiteness worked to colonize conceptions
of reason. Others offered rational arguments to challenge
assumptions about their abilities, and still others like Maria
Stewart and Sojourner Truth simply showed up despite the
common belief that women were not only incapable of rea-
soning like men but that they should not even be on the
debate floor, especially in front of men (Bacon, 2011;
Newman, 2002; Smith, 1999).
Tired of the efforts of White abolitionists to limit his
speech and to at times question the veracity of his story,
Frederick Douglass publishes his autobiography in 1845. It
quickly becomes the most popular salve narrative of the
movement, selling 30,000 copies by 1860 and packing the
crowdsBlack and Whiteinto venues in the United
States and abroad to hear him speak (Smith, 1999). In the
preface, William Lloyd Garrison reflecting on Douglasss
public speaking abilities writes,
As a public speaker, he excels in pathos, wit, comparison,
imitation, strength of reasoning, and fluency of language.
There is in him that union of head and heart, which is
indispensable to an enlightenment of the heads and a winning
of the hearts of others. (Douglass, 1845, p. viii)
It is with that same union of head and heart that he writes
his narrative, and in so doing rocks the core of not simply
proslavery propaganda, but racial propaganda in general
which all too often questioned the ability of African
Americans capacity for intellect and reasoning. Although
Douglass, like Walker, challenges many of the same
assumptions about slavery and Black inferiority, Narrative
of the Life of Frederick Douglass, intended primarily for a
White audience, reads more like an invitation to under-
standing. The preface written by William Lloyd Garrison
granting credibility to Douglasss story is a clear indication
that the narrative was intended for White readers. By draw-
ing on a detailed account of his physical, intellectual, and
emotional journey from slavery to freedom, Douglasss
counterstory acts as a point of departure from which read-
ers can explore the lived significance of strange affairs and
can consider how their own lives might be situated within
the web of actions and reactions that make up those affairs
(Stone-Mediatore, 2003, p. 63).
Smith (1999) points out that fugitive slave narratives
were a well-established genre long before Douglass pub-
lishes his own narrative, but before 1830 they rarely did
more than account for ones experiences during slavery.
After 1830, Black abolitionists amp up their efforts to use
these narratives as political strategy. By the time Douglass
publishes his in 1845, fugitive slave narratives are more
than adventures, they are also becoming incisive political
critique, all be they paradoxical. They often reflect the
power of Enlightenment reason, as Smith observes, at the
very same time that their form refuses the dispassionate,
objective pursuit of truth held up as rationalist ideals. It is
this conundrum, as we see in Douglasss narrative that
exposes the conflation of Whiteness and rationality and
suggests that ones reasoning is inextricably linked to ones
experiences of the world and the feelings that those experi-
ences generate.
To this end, Douglasss narrative provides plenty of
detail and examples of the brutality and inhumanity of slav-
ery, but he spends most of his pages reflecting on the mean-
ing of his experiences. In the following selection, for
example, Douglass (1845) reflects on how a conversation
between his master and mistress in regard to her teaching
him how to read becomes, for him, a revelatory moment:
Now, said he, if you teach that nigger (speaking of myself)
how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever
unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable,
and of no value to his master. As to himself, it could do him no
good, but a great deal of harm. It would make him discontented
and unhappy. These words sank deep into my heart, stirred up
sentiments within that lay slumbering, and called into existence
an entirely new train of thought. It was a new and special
revelation, explaining dark and mysterious things, with which
my youthful understanding had struggled, but struggled in
vain. I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing
difficultyto wit, the white mans power to enslave the black
man. (p. 29)
In this passage, Douglass paints a picture of a young boy
who is always thinking, always trying earnestly to figure out
the meaning of the seemingly incomprehensible circum-
stances in which he finds himself. In other words, it is not
the slave who lacks a capacity for thinking and feeling, for it
is the institution of slavery that makes no obvious sense.
Throughout his narrative, Douglass is able to cast himself as
the most rational and enlightened human being in the entire
text, while at the same time questioning the rational sense
holding up such an inhumane institution as slavery.
The incomprehensible brutality of slavery is a central
theme in Douglasss work. We see it again when he reflects
on the hopeless religious conversion of his master. Prior to
his conversion, writes Douglass (1845), he relied upon
his own depravity to shield and sustain him in his savage
barbarity; but after his conversion, he found religious
246 Qualitative Inquiry 21(3)
sanction and support for his slaveholding cruelty (p. 67).
In another instance, Douglass says of his mistress who was
once inclined to teach him to read, Slavery proved as inju-
rious to her as it did to me. When I went there, she was a
pious, warm, and tender-hearted woman . . . Slavery soon
proved its ability to divest her of these heavenly qualities
(p. 33). It is in making meaning of these incidents that
Douglass is able to conclude that slavery is so corrupt and
dehumanizing that it can turn even religion to its wicked
ends and good people into cruel and callous people, and to
ignore this fact is to surrender ones self to slaverys evil.
Keeping his narrative focused on this point allows Douglass
to avoid casting White people as inherently problematic,
leaving his White readers plenty of room to use their own
rational capacities to save themselves from the brutal, inhu-
mane, and uncritical clutches of slavery.
Douglass pens his narrative with a sophisticated under-
standing of the power of narrative to do what dispassion-
ate, objective arguments could not do. Narrative reveals the
inextricable links between reason, experience, and emo-
tion, and thus is able to speak in a language that all human
beings (barring some disability) are capable of not only
understanding but engaging as well. Rational argument
was not suited to such a task. Though it was readily framed
as a dispassionate and objective quest for the Truth of
things, the romance of rational argument was used by pow-
erful White men who envisioned a democracy according to
their desires and to fulfill their needs. Rationality, in this
vein, is more a measure of control than it is a noble quest
for truth. Douglass implies as much when he steps to the
podium in Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York in 1852
to give his most noted antislavery speechWhat to the
Slave Is the Fourth of July?
In the years leading up to his July Fourth speech, slavery
was becoming a more contentious issue between the states.
Many abolitionists were enraged by the passing of the
Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which required Northerners to
return runaway slaves to their rightful owners. This
weighed heavily on Douglasss mind, when he delivered his
speech on July 5 at the request of the Ladies Antislavery
Society of Rochester. Again speaking to a largely White
audience, Douglass opens his speech with great humility and
respect for what the occasion must mean to those who are
considered citizens protected by the sacred documents, but
he builds to a scathing critique of Americas unwillingness
to abolish slavery. Once again, he draws on narrative to tell
a disconcerting story of a potentially great nation doomed to
suffer for upholding the most brutal institution known to
man. The narrative is told from three points of view, one
from the perspective of those who fought for and won their
freedom from the British in 1776, another from the perspec-
tive of those who enjoy and protect the freedoms won by
their forefathers, and the other from the perspective of those
whom they have so unjustly enslaved. His critique is also
threefold, as it is directed at the institution of slavery, those
who uphold that institution directly and indirectly, and at the
institutions (Christianity) and forms of deliberation (rational
argument) that do nothing or not enough to bring an end to
slavery. With respect to the belief that rational argument is
the best way forward, Douglass (1852) says,
But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, It is just in
this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to
make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you
argue more, and denounce less; would you persuade more and
rebuke less; your cause would be much more likely to succeed.
But I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued.
What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue?
On what branch of the subject do the people of this country
need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man?
The point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it.
He proceeds by showing how the actions of White peo-
ple suggest that they know all too well that slaves are
humans, equally as capable of feeling, thinking, and behav-
ing in ways that suggest as much. Otherwise, they would
not make laws to discipline and control these capacities in
slaves.
Douglasss speech then and now is celebrated as one of
his best. It was reprinted and circulated throughout aboli-
tionist communities. Many scholars agree that it marks a
shift in Douglasss thinking, for just a few years prior he
broke ties with his longtime colleague William Lloyd
Garrison who had taken the position that the Constitution
was a proslavery document. Although Douglass once agreed
with that point of view, he later sides with another colleague
who argued that slavery was unconstitutional, and thus
keeping open the possibility that the Constitution could be
used to fight against slavery and racial injustice.
Although the end of slavery did come with great vio-
lence and destruction, it was not directly due to slave insur-
rection, and some might say not even do to the efforts of the
abolitionists, as they were such a small group of agitators
facing down a nearly 300-year-old institution. This perspec-
tive suggests that social movements amount to a series of
technical moves in direct cause and effect relationships that,
if they are to be considered successful, result in changing
those things they directly target. Instead, I have tried to read
the abolitionist movement as a bundle narratives (Fine,
2002), more specifically as a bundle of critical race counter-
narratives that worked to bring slaves, free Black people
and White people to the cause of abolition. While this
indeed may not have brought the immediate end to slavery
that the abolitionists called for, it did much to agitate the
already tenuous relationship between the southern and
northern states over slavery; the rhetoric of abolitionists
caused worry, fear, shame, embarrassment, anger, and many
other emotions that were surely present when citizens voted
in Abraham Lincoln and when Southern states began
Baszile 247
seceding from the Union, subsequently kicking off the Civil
War, which did ultimately lead to the demise of slavery.
The roots of critical race counterstorytelling are firmly
grounded in the efforts of Walker, Douglass, and countless
other Black abolitionists, who understood radical change
required first and foremost a rhetorical revolution. They
understood that freedom and equality depended on abolish-
ing slavery and abolishing slavery depended on their ability
to create a collective counternarrative that challenged the
proslavery propaganda as well as assumptions of Black
inferiority. Their active and far-reaching counterstorytelling
drew on personal experience, outlaw emotions, and reli-
gious rhetoric among other strategies to expose the (patho)
logic of White supremacy and to build the collective sense
of identity (however fragile and liminal) necessary for sus-
taining long-term collective action against slavery by a
coalition of Black and White activists. In so doing, they
give us the first movement for social justice in the United
States and a way of thinking about democratic participation,
a way of thinking about a diverse democracy, that is beyond
the rationalas we have come to know it.
CRTs Revolutionary Potential
l have been working toward this article for the last several
years. The idea for it came to me during the first Critical
Race Studies in Education Conference held in Chicago in
2006. During one of the plenary sessions, a senior scholar
and notorious critic of CRT stood and asked us to help him
understand what CRTs revolutionary project was. While a
few of the scholars on the panel responded, the answers
seem not to match the depth of the question. Knowing this
scholar to have some investment in neo-Marxism, I took
him to be asking more specifically, how does CRT address
the problem of capitalism? The problem with that question,
in my opinion, is that it is far too narrow. Certainly, the
problem of capitalism, neoliberalism at present, is far reach-
ing and our efforts to imagine a more just democracy, or
better futures (Mignolo, 2010) are hindered without any
serious consideration of how to rethink the free market
mentality that continues to expand the gap between the
haves and have-nots. No question about it. However, there
is also no reason to believe that capitalism is the only spec-
ter of Western domination, and that with its demise all other
isms will come tumbling to the ground. There is also always
tangled up in the development and progression of capital-
ism the development of rationalism, racism, sexism, and
various other projects of domination, no one more signifi-
cant than the other (the very idea that there must be one
dominant ism to explain domination is in and of itself
reflective of the workings of Western rationality). If we
understand Western domination as a multifaceted, dynamic
and certainly a complex set of interrelated projects, it seems
that all of usMarxists, feminists, crits, postcolonial and
decolonial thinkers, and many othershave something to
contribute to the work of re-imagining democracy or imag-
ining better futures (Mignolo, 2010) beyond democracy.
From this perspective, the pertinent question is not so much
about how CRT addresses the problem of capitalism; it is
rather: How does CRT contribute to the work of re-imagining
better futures?
By looking at the acts of rhetorical self-determination of
Black abolitionists, I have tried to highlight the important
role critical race counterstorytellingin content and
formplayed in eroding the United Statess White democ-
racy and imagining and working toward a more just and
diverse democracy or as Riedner and Mahoney (2008) sug-
gest a democracy-in-difference. I want to re-emphasize
this point, simply by asking youthe readerto imagine
what would have become of (the) United States had the
abolitionist movement not existed? Had slavery gone pub-
licly uncontested? Had legal briefs been the only recourse?
Had the brutal details of slavery, the hypocrisy of Christian
slaveholders and proslavery advocates, and the gulf
between the rhetoric of the Constitution and the actions of
the republicnot been exposed, interrogated, and most
importantly broadcasted through counterstories for and
opened to the public? Had the consciousness of the nation
not been deeply disturbedangered, shamed, embar-
rassed, frightened into war?
The critical race movement is a continuation of the criti-
cal race counterstorytelling first engaged by Black aboli-
tionists and later carried on in the civil rights, Black power,
and various other movements for justice. In Whos Afraid
of Critical Race Theory? Derrick Bell (1995) describes
critical race scholarship as an act of scholarly resistance
intended to lay the groundwork for wide-scale resistance
against racial injustice:
We believe that standards and institutions created by and
fortifying white power ought to be resisted. Decontextualization,
in our view, too often masks unregulatedeven unrecognized
power. We insist, for example, that abstraction, put forth as
rational or objective truth, smuggles the privileged choice
of the privileged to depersonify their claims and then pass them
off as the universal authority and the universal good. To counter
such assumptions, we try to bring to legal scholarship an
experientially grounded, oppositionally expressed, and
transformatively aspirational concern with race and other
socially constructed hierarchies. (p. 900)
CRT acknowledges the onto-epistemological dimen-
sions of racial domination and through critical race coun-
terstorytelling has made a concerted effort to expose and
trouble the conflation of Whiteness and rationality and to
create the sense of group identity necessary for sustained
collective action toward abolishing Whiteness and imagin-
ing a more just democracy. This is no less necessary now
than it was in 1829 or 1989; racial inequality and injustice
248 Qualitative Inquiry 21(3)
continue to manifest in the material conditions of the peo-
ple and continue to be mediated by a number of troubling
discursive practices. In her assessment of the current post-
racial moment, Crenshaw (2011) points out several such
practices that work to reinforce, ignore, and/or rationalize
persistent racial inequality and injustice by using race and/
or denying its relevance as necessary; such practices
include (a) talking about race in a way that courts White
voters without considering what this practice renders
unspeakable, (b) posing a standard of fairness that is based
on the ability of one or few of the disenfranchised many to
meet the standard and as such suggesting that the inability
of others alludes to their individual deficiencies rather than
systemic inequalities, (c) framing social maladiessuch as
inadequate public educationas if they have no racial his-
tory or context, and (d) using racial rhetoric to situate
White people as the new victims of racial injustice. In
essence, post-racialism is itself a dynamic racial narra-
tivea form of rhetoricwhich works to discipline the
thinking and thus the actions of the public.
Thus, the revolutionary potential of the critical race move-
ment lies first and foremost in its ability to understand the
rhetorical nature of racial injustice, and then to disrupt,
expose, and interrogate the rationalitieslegal and other-
wisethat produce, reproduce, and discipline racial logics,
and finally and perhaps most importantly it is incumbent
upon us to do this work not simply within the confines of
academia; we must also engage critical race counterstorytell-
ing as public pedagogy, as movement building, as an attempt
to not only nurture but also galvanize the roots of the grass.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
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Author Biography
Denise Taliaferro Baszile is an associate professor in the
Department of Educational Leadership at Miami University in
Oxford, Ohio. She teaches a variety of courses on curriculum and
critical race studies.