Utilizing critical race theory, we can better understand the role that the American legal system and newspapers played in their efforts to maintain the racial status quo prior to the civil rights movement of the 1960s. At the intersection of race, journalism, and libel law, we see a rich vein of case law spawned from newspapers erroneously identifying white people as black. Such racial misidentification prompted a series of libel suits from 1900 to 1957 before the US Supreme Court placed libel law under First Amendment protection in New York Times v. Sullivan. Jim Crow had long been secure in southern newspapers and some errors in racial identification were inevitable. Before Sullivan, it could indeed be libelous when newspapers falsely identified white people as black.

利用批判种族理论，我们可以更好地了解美国法律体系和报纸在努力维持1960年代民权运动之前的种族地位方面所起的作用。在种族，新闻学和诽谤法的交集处，我们看到大量的判例法源于报纸，这些报纸错误地将白人识别为黑人。在1900年至1957年间，这种种族身份的误解引发了一系列诽谤诉讼，之后美国最高法院在纽约时报诉沙利文案中将诽谤法置于第一修正案保护下。吉姆·克劳（Jim Crow）长期以来在南方报纸上都很安全，种族识别中的某些错误是不可避免的。在沙利文之前，当报纸错误地将白人识别为黑人时，的确是诽谤。