If Black Americans appreciated the show put on by Critical Race Theorists, there would be boycotts at black colleges and editorials in Black Enterprise magazine.

In earlier essays, I have written about the entertainment value of Critical Race Theory. We can read about space traders that spirit blacks away to foreign galaxies. We can shed a tear for the little girl who fears white playmates at the swimming pool. And we can marvel at the Hunt for Black Identity, an obsession that rivals Ahab’s quest for the Great White Whale.

Where is the popcorn?

Critical Race Theory shares much in common with hip-hop and rap, another entertaining force in black life. Both Critical Race Theory and the rap industry are funded by white institutions. Both movements seek to shock and awe their audiences. Both endeavors are harmful to young black minds. We should not be surprised. Critical Race Theory and rap efforts of, for example, 50 Cent and Snoop Dogg, are descendants of a common ancestor, the minstrel show.

What are minstrel shows, you ask?

Back in the 1800s and early 1900s, minstrel shows allowed white performers in blackface to mock blacks as “stupid, lazy, violent, and lacking in moral character.” The prejudiced could not get enough of these performances. Slave owners loved to see Jim Crow jump. Needless to say, these shows hammered black self-confidence and self-image.

Today, minstrel shows of old are gone.

Instead, we have the entertainment industry funding debased behavior of gangsta rap. Snoop Dogg and 50 Cent will tell you they are "keeping it real" when they depict black youngsters as violent thugs and whores. But if we take Snoop Dogg and 50 Cent at their word, then they are presenting authentic black life. Why are “the biggest consumers of rap music” white men? “Why are 80 percent of all hip-hop music customers white?” Stereotypes sell.

The intellectual cousins of Snoop Dogg and 50 Cent can be found in Critical Race Theory.

Black law schools do not fund Critical Race Theory by and large. Yes, there are a few black critical race theorists at Howard. But by and large, the likes of Harvard, Columbia, New York University, UCLA and other predominantly white law schools fund the teaching salaries and People of Color conferences. The powers that be buy into the stereotypes that black life is a constant struggle for “black liberation,” that blacks are weighed down with societal-imposed identities, that whether I can pass as a black within the black community is a cutting-edge crisis of our legal time. Stereotypes sell.

The entertainment value is compounded because African-Americans are marketed to white faculty members as victims, the woe-begotten descendants of slaves. Mind you, no living child of a slave exists in America today. And yet white faculty members can indulge in the images of black people as broken in spirit. Black faculty at black law schools know better. They are about teaching their charges the law, not law as memoir.

The Critical Race Theory show holds up for an uncomfortable reason.  “Polls of white Americans show that they generally view blacks as less hardworking, less patriotic, and less intelligent than whites.” Critical Race Theory permits private sentiment of white faculty members to come into view. But you can’t allege prejudice because black people are writing about their over-the-top lives.

If Black Americans appreciated the show put on by Critical Race Theorists, there would be boycotts at black colleges, editorials in Black Enterprise magazine, and op-ed pieces in Black Issues in Higher Education. But no one cares because black law professors are a non-factor in black life.

And so the show goes on . . .