White by Law was published in 1996 to immense critical acclaim, and
established Ian Haney López as one of the most exciting and talented
young minds in the legal academy. The first book to fully explore the
social and specifically legal construction of race, White by Law
inspired a generation of critical race theorists and others interested
in the intersection of race and law in American society. Today, it is
used and cited widely by not only legal scholars but many others
interested in race, ethnicity, culture, politics, gender, and similar
socially fabricated facets of American society.
In the first edition of White by Law, Haney López traced the
reasoning employed by the courts in their efforts to justify the
whiteness of some and the non-whiteness of others, and revealed the
criteria that were used, often arbitrarily, to determine whiteness, and
thus citizenship: skin color, facial features, national origin,
language, culture, ancestry, scientific opinion, and, most importantly,
popular opinion.
Ten years later, Haney López revisits the legal construction of race,
and argues that current race law has spawned a troubling racial ideology
that perpetuates inequality under a new guise: colorblind white
dominance. In a new, original essay written specifically for the 10th
anniversary edition, he explores this racial paradigm and explains how
it contributes to a system of white racial privilege socially and
legally defended by restrictive definitions of what counts as race and
as racism, and what doesn't, in the eyes of the law. The book also
includes a new preface, in which Haney Lopez considers how his own
personal experiences with white racial privilege helped engender White
by Law.