White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race (Critical America (New York University Paperback))
In this study, narrowly academic yet intriguing, Lopez, who teaches law at the University of Wisconsin, examines early-20th-century cases in which courts sought to determine who qualified as white for the purposes of citizenship and naturalization. His conclusion: whiteness is "a complex, falsely homogenizing term." For example, he shows how courts issued contradictory decisions regarding the whiteness of groups such as Syrians, Armenians and Asian Indians; some followed scientific evidence, while most ultimately relied on "common knowledge," thus finding many reasons?including culture and political sophistication?to reject foreigners who might be Caucasian. This leads the author to argue, a bit thinly, that whites must pursue a "self-deconstructive" race consciousness to pursue racial justice. Thus, whites must recognize the racial aspects of their privileged identity and daily engage in "choosing against Whiteness"; one example would be to resist racist slurs, even to the point of claiming a nonwhite racial identity when hearing them.Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.