Like a loaded weapon
Subtitle: the Rehnquist court, Indian rights, and the legal history of racism in America
By: Robert A. Williams, Jr.
Series: Indigenous Americas
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
Published: 2005
Place of publication: Minneapolis, MN
Language: eng
Number of pages: 270
Subjects: Rehnquist, William H., 1924-; United States. Supreme Court; Indians of North America -- Civil rights -- History; Race discrimination -- Law and legislation -- United States -- History; Racism -- United States -- History
Description: Publisher description: Robert A. Williams Jr. boldly exposes the ongoing legal force of the racist language directed at Indians in American society. Fueled by well-known negative racial stereotypes of Indian savagery and cultural inferiority, this language, Williams contends, has functioned "like a loaded weapon" in the Supreme Court's Indian law decisions. Beginning with Chief Justice John Marshall's foundational opinions in the early nineteenth century and continuing today in the judgments of the Rehnquist Court, Williams shows how undeniably racist language and precedent are still used in Indian law to justify the denial of important rights of property, self-government, and cultural survival to Indians. Building on the insights of Malcolm X, Thurgood Marshall, and Frantz Fanon, Williams argues that racist language has been employed by the courts to legalize a uniquely American form of racial dictatorship over Indian tribes by the U.S. government. Williams concludes with a revolutionary proposal for reimagining the rights of American Indians in international law, as well as strategies for compelling the current Supreme Court to confront the racist origins of Indian law and for challenging bigoted ways of talking, thinking, and writing about American Indians.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: "Look, Mom, a baby maid!" : the languages of racism; title: The Supreme Court and the legal history of racism in America; title: "The savage as the wolf" : the founders' language of Indian savagery; title: Indian rights and the Marshall Court; title: The rise of the plenary power doctrine; title: What "every American schoolboy knows" : the language of Indian savagery in Tee-Hit-Ton; title: Rehnquist's language of racism in Oliphant; title: The most Indianophobic Supreme Court Indian law opinion ever; title: The dangers of the twentieth-century Supreme Court's Indian rights decisions; title: Expanding Oliphant's principle of racial discrimination : Nevada v. Hicks; title: The court's schizophrenic approach to Indian rights : United States v. Lara.