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For some, the idea of a color-blind constitution signals a commonsense ideal of equality and a new "post-racial" American era. For others, it supplies a narrow constitutional vision, which serves to disqualify many of the tools needed to combat persistent racial inequality in the United States. Rather than taking a position either for or against color-blindness, Mark Golub takes issue with the blindness/consciousness dichotomy itself. This book demonstrates howcolor-blind constitutionalism conceals its own race-conscious political commitments in defense of existing racial hierarchy, and renders the pursuit of racial justice as a constitutionally impermissible goal.
List of contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Part I: The Race-Conscious Logic of Color-Blind Constitutionalism
- Chapter 1: Beyond Color-Blindness and Color-Consciousness
- Chapter 2: Constitutive Racism, Redemptive Constitutionalism
- Part II: Color-Blindness Against the Color-Line
- Chapter 3: The Lessons of Plessy
- Chapter 4: The Limits of Brown
- Part III: Color-Blindness After the Color-Line
- Chapter 5: Defending White Rights
- Chapter 6: Is Racial Equality Unconstitutional?
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
About the author
Mark Golub is Associate Professor of Politics and Director of the Legal Studies Program at Scripps College, Claremont, CA. He specializes in critical race theory, constitutional law, and African American political thought. His work focuses on the limits of official anti-racist discourse and the legal construction of racial entitlement.
Summary
More than just a legal doctrine, color-blind constitutionalism has emerged as the defining metaphor of the post-Civil Rights era. Even for those challenging its constitutional authority, the language of color-blindness sets the terms of debate. Critics of color-blind constitutionalism are in this sense captured by the object of their critique. And yet, paradoxically, to enact a color-blind rule actually requires a heightened awareness of race. As such, color-blind constitutionalism represents a particular form of racial consciousness rather than an alternative to it.
Challenging familiar understandings of race, rights, and American law, Is Racial Equality Unconstitutional? explores how current equal protection law renders the pursuit of racial equality constitutionally suspect. Identifying hierarchy rather than equality as an enduring constitutional norm, the book demonstrates how the pursuit of racial equality, historically, has been viewed as a violation of white rights. Arguing against conservative and liberal redemption narratives, both of which imagine racial equality as the perfection of American democracy, Is Racial Equality Unconstitutional? calls instead for a break from the current constitutional order, that it may be re-founded upon principles of racial democracy.
Additional text
Lucidly written and theoretically rich, Is Racial Equality Unconstitutional? upends the assumption that colorblindness represents a disavowal of racial consciousness and awareness. Instead, drawing from a wide range of cases and sites, Golub shows how colorblind 'racial neutrality' has continually fueled white racial advantage. A sober and important book for our times."
- -Daniel Martinez HoSang, Yale University
