Tanya Katerí Hernández
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781479830329
- eISBN:
- 9781479840748
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479830329.003.0007
- Subject:
- Law, Human Rights and Immigration
This chapter will first summarize how the book’s review of multiracial discrimination cases reveals the enduring power of white privilege and the continued societal problem with non-whiteness in any ...
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This chapter will first summarize how the book’s review of multiracial discrimination cases reveals the enduring power of white privilege and the continued societal problem with non-whiteness in any form. Specifically, the cases illustrate the perspective that non-whiteness taints rather than the concern that racial mixture itself is worrisome. Yet this insight is lost in the midst of the multiracial-identity scholars’ singular focus on promoting mixed-race identity. Multiracial victims of discrimination will be better served by legal analyses that seek to elucidate the continued operation of white supremacy. Such a focus will also better serve all Equality Law and public policies. But this can only be done by shifting away from a focus on personal individual identity recognition to a focus on group based racial realities. The chapter concludes with a proposal for an explicit “socio-political race” lens for analyzing matters of discrimination rather than the Personal Identity Equality perspective that misapprehends the social significance of race in the assessment of equality problems. The book’s emphasis on a socio-political race perspective meaningfully preserves an individual’s ability to assert a varied personal identity, while providing a more effective tool for addressing racism and pursuing equality.Less
This chapter will first summarize how the book’s review of multiracial discrimination cases reveals the enduring power of white privilege and the continued societal problem with non-whiteness in any form. Specifically, the cases illustrate the perspective that non-whiteness taints rather than the concern that racial mixture itself is worrisome. Yet this insight is lost in the midst of the multiracial-identity scholars’ singular focus on promoting mixed-race identity. Multiracial victims of discrimination will be better served by legal analyses that seek to elucidate the continued operation of white supremacy. Such a focus will also better serve all Equality Law and public policies. But this can only be done by shifting away from a focus on personal individual identity recognition to a focus on group based racial realities. The chapter concludes with a proposal for an explicit “socio-political race” lens for analyzing matters of discrimination rather than the Personal Identity Equality perspective that misapprehends the social significance of race in the assessment of equality problems. The book’s emphasis on a socio-political race perspective meaningfully preserves an individual’s ability to assert a varied personal identity, while providing a more effective tool for addressing racism and pursuing equality.
