Teaching the Law of Race

Abstract

For too long, scholars have debated the place of race in the legal academy. Clothed in private silence and public quarrel, the debate rises again in the wake of the duly celebrated publication of Race and Races: Cases and Resources for a Diverse America. Situated at the intersection of civil rights, jurisprudential, and interdisciplinary movements, Race and Races provides a sweeping account of race in American law and society. Interest in this account will be keen for those seeking to understand the theory and practice of race in law, and equally important, in lawyering and ethics. Often stymied, advocacy-grounded efforts to grasp the meaning and take the measure of race in action demand the mapping of law and the lawyering process in race cases along the boundaries of racial identity, racialized narrative, and interracial community. Careful mapping enables lawyers and judges to embrace race when relevant and, conversely, to reject it when inapposite. Elsewhere I have argued that these boundaries starkly demarcate the practice of criminal law, particularly the prosecution and defense of racial violence. Beyond the criminal law, however, the scope and depth of racial boundaries lie largely unmarked. Accordingly, the first purpose of this Book Review is to mark the boundary lines of contemporary sociolegal research on race synthesized by the distinguished editors of Race and Races and tested, indeed sometimes traversed, by the accompanying book reviews in this collection. In addition to framing the bright lines of discussion for this rich collection, the second purpose of this Review is to critique the effort by the editors to set down some rough markers surveying the meaning of racial identity, the content of racialized narrative, and the form of race-neutral and race-conscious representation. Race and Races establishes the groundwork for its analysis by tracing the genealogy and multiplicity of race and racism, splicing race to law, citizenship, culture, and society, and finally, adjoining race to legal and social reform. To integrate these themes, the editors formulate certain guiding principles of criticism. Applied to the sociolegal text of race, these rules of reading urge us to make the implicit explicit and to look for the hidden norm (p. 3). Moreover, they direct us to avoid we/they thinking and remember context (p. 3). Further, they steer us toward justice by contemplating benefits and harm (p. 3). Last, they exhort us to trust intuition (p. 3). Against this backdrop of textual construction and criticism, the Review follows the discrete divisions of the casebook: Part I examines the genealogy of race and racism, Part II analyzes the multiplicity of race and racism, Part III considers race, law, and citizenship, Part IV explores race, culture, and society, and Part V assesses race and reform in legal theory and practice.