New from Stanford University Press:
Letters of the Law: Race and the Fantasy of Colorblindness in American Law, by
Sora Y. Han (University of California, Irvine). A description from the Press:
One of the hallmark features of the post-civil
rights United States is the reign of colorblindness over national
conversations about race and law. But how, precisely, should we
understand this notion of colorblindness in the face of enduring racial
hierarchy in American society? In
Letters of the Law, Sora Han
argues that colorblindness is a foundational fantasy of law that not
only informs individual and collective ideas of race—but also structures
the imaginative capacities of American legal interpretation. Han
develops a critique of colorblindness by deconstructing the law's
central doctrines on due process, citizenship, equality, punishment and
individual liberty, in order to expose how racial slavery and the
ongoing struggle for abolition continue to haunt the law's reliance on
the fantasy of colorblindness.
Letters of the Law
provides highly original readings of iconic Supreme Court cases on
racial inequality – spanning Japanese internment to affirmative action,
policing to prisoner rights, Jim Crow segregation to sexual freedom.
Han's analysis provides readers with new perspectives on many urgent
social issues of our time, including mass incarceration, educational
segregation, state intrusions on privacy, and neoliberal investments in
citizenship. But more importantly, Han compels readers to reconsider how
the diverse legacies of civil rights reform archived in American law
might be rewritten as a heterogeneous practice of black freedom
struggle.
A few blurbs:
"
Letters of the Law
offers a profoundly engaged and sensitive reading of critical race
theory. It illuminates not only the foundational antagonism of American
law—between racism and equal rights—but also displaces the
widely-accepted notion that racial disproportionality is the 'ur-fact of
racial inequality.' Han has re-instantiated critical race theory as
fundamental to any understanding of the law."
—Fred Moten, UC Riverside
"A stunning inquiry into the racial haunt of the law,
Letters of the Law
is a rare example of that ornery beast we call 'interdisciplinary
scholarship.' In this compelling and beautiful work, Han proves that the
time of slavery is with us still."
—Colin Dayan, Vanderbilt
More information is available
here.
