One of the hallmark features of the post-civil rights United States is
the reign of colorblindness over national conversations about race and
law. But how, precisely, should we understand this notion of
colorblindness in the face of enduring racial hierarchy in American
society? In Letters of the Law, Sora Y. Han argues that colorblindness
is a foundational fantasy of law that not only informs individual and
collective ideas of race, but also structures the imaginative capacities
of American legal interpretation. Han develops a critique of
colorblindness by deconstructing the law's central doctrines on due
process, citizenship, equality, punishment and individual liberty, in
order to expose how racial slavery and the ongoing struggle for
abolition continue to haunt the law's reliance on the fantasy of
colorblindness.
Letters of the Law provides highly original readings of iconic Supreme
Court cases on racial inequality-spanning Japanese internment to
affirmative action, policing to prisoner rights, Jim Crow segregation to
sexual freedom. Han's analysis provides readers with new perspectives on
many urgent social issues of our time, including mass incarceration,
educational segregation, state intrusions on privacy, and neoliberal
investments in citizenship. But more importantly, Han compels readers to
reconsider how the diverse legacies of civil rights reform archived in
American law might be rewritten as a heterogeneous practice of black
freedom struggle.
