Multiracials and Civil Rights

Mixed-Race Stories of Discrimination

Tanya Katerí Hernández

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781479876754
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Civil Rights in Law
• Index: Law

Narratives of mixed-race people bringing claims of racial discrimination in court, illuminating traditional understandings of civil rights law As the mixed-race population in the United States grows, public fascination with multiracial identity has promoted the belief that racial mixture will destroy racism. However, multiracial people still face discrimination. Many legal scholars hold that this is distinct from the discrimination faced by people of other races, and traditional civil rights laws built on a strict black/white binary need to be reformed to account for cases of discrimination against those identifying as mixed-race. In Multiracials and Civil Rights, Tanya Katerí Hernández debunks this idea, and draws on a plethora of court cases to demonstrate that multiracials face the same types of discrimination as other racial groups. Hernández argues that multiracial people are primarily targeted for discrimination due to their non-whiteness, and shows how the cases highlight the need to support the existing legal structures instead of a new understanding of civil rights law. The legal and political analysis is enriched withHernández's own personal narrative as a mixed-race Afro-Latina. Coming at a time when explicit racism is resurfacing, Hernández’s look at multiracial discrimination cases is essential for fortifying the focus of civil rights law on racial privilege and the lingering legacy of bias against non-whites, and has much to teach us about how to move towards a more egalitarian society.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface: An Afro-Latina’s Experience of Racial Mixture
• 1. Racial Mixture as a Presumed Complication in Antidiscrimination Law
• 2. Multiracial Employment Discrimination
• 3. Multiracial Discrimination in Education
• 4. Multiracial Housing and Public Accommodations Discrimination
• 5. Multiracial Discrimination in the Criminal Justice System
• 6. Personal Racial Identity Equality
• 7. The Way Forward: the Socio-political Race Approach
• Acknowledgments
• Appendix of Selected Cases
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author