White by Law 10th Anniversary Edition: The Legal Construction of Race (Critical America Series) |  | Author: Ian Lopez
Publisher: NYU Press
Category: Book
List Price: $22.00
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Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 173,700
Format: Deluxe Edition
Media: Paperback
Edition: Revised and Updated
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.7 x 5.9 x 0.8
ISBN: 0814736947
Dewey Decimal Number: 342.730873
EAN: 9780814736944
ASIN: 0814736947
Publication Date: October 1, 2006
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Product Description
Praise for the 1st edition: "Haney López performs a major service for anyone truly interested in understanding contemporary debates over racial and ethnic politics. . . . A sobering and crucial lesson for a society committed to equality and fairness."
—Martha Minow, Harvard Law School "This book is remarkable for sheer information value, but draws its analytic power from the emphasis on whiteness to make sense of racial oppression. . . . Haney López convincingly demonstrates that the US is ideologically white not by accident but by design."
—Choice 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 López considers how his own personal experiences with white racial privilege helped engender White by Law.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Excellent volume September 23, 2009
philosopher (hartford, ct, usa)
This volume does an excellent job of showing how courts grappled with the question of who is white and who is black and the inability of science to provide criteria that were useful to the courts in this endeavor. As for the reviewer who thinks that this book is about blaming the white man for the troubles of Latinos, he/she must have read this book through very distorted lenses. What the volume shows is what happens when a herrenvolk democracy attempts to maintain a system of racial supremacy using a socially constructed notion like race to sort out which folks can be admitted to the dominant race as citizens. The courts find, again and again, that attempting to sort people racially can not be done in any rigorous fashion and they ultimately fall back upon conventional notions of race that simply uphold the herrenvolk status quo--a person is white only if the average white person would recognize him as white.
 quite informative from a legal perspective July 31, 2008
Jeffery Mingo (Homewood, IL USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I doubt if another reviewer even read the book. Yes, much has changed since the plaintiffs discussed here filed their cases, but that is not to say this book doesn't talk about important issues surrounding race, citizenship, and dichotomies that have crucially informed American history.
Here's the gist of it: back in the day, American law said a person had to be white in order to become a citizen. Much of this had to do with keeping Blacks and Native Americans reduced to second-class members of the society. However, other people: South Asians, Middle Easterners, multiracial people, learned of these rules and tried to get courts to deem them white so that they could have full rights.
This book asks important questions about to whom does America give access and to whom does the country deny it. Identity is not just about what you call yourself; it's about what others, especially those in power, allow you to call yourself.
Nowadays, many Americans may see this as a multiracial society. But in the past, America saw itself as white and black. or at least white and non-white. So this book details how other groups who don't necessarily fit into either category tried to be placed in the powerful group. This book touches on how the law and the court system can be slow to deal with societal change but can also be aggressive in reinforcing inequality in the nation.
Since the 1960s, numerous activists and progressives have been writing book about people of color. Since the early 1990s or so, thinkers now have been asking and answering, "But what about whiteness?" This book is, or at least was, an important contribution to the burgeoning field called "Whitenss Studies." Perhaps those readers completely uninterested in the law, history, and ethnic studies would loathe this book, but for those willing to give it a chance and who completely acknowledge that this country was and can be racially oppressive, then they will find this book highly informative.
 It's the White Man's Fault (yaaaaaawn). June 22, 2007
E. Baumgartner (New York, NY)
1 out of 31 found this review helpful
This book may have been relevant 60 years ago, but in a post civil rights era, this book has no merit. It's the same old and tired diatribe "blame the white man for all hispanic's shortcomings". Nonsense. Hispanics are to blame for themselves. If White America is so racist, why is it that Asians excel in this country... usually far beyond whites??? Why do Jews (who are usually white but ethnically different than WASP's) consistently reach the highest levels of leadership, academics, and business? Asians don't need affirmative action or racial quotas, in fact they view such programs as insulting. The simple reason that Asians & Jews excel in the USA and hispanics don't is rooted in a cultural difference - Asians & Jews value education greatly and hispanics don't (refer to Herman Badillo's book on this topic concerning Hispanic's disinterest in education).
This book will go over well with hispanics who practice ethnic politics; it will feed into their self pity and victimization syndrome. Oh how we always love to blame someone else for our shortcomings, in this case the "evil white man". That song and dance is so worn out.
In light of the raging debate over illegal immigration (mostly from Mexico), here is something to ponder... the two ethnic groups who are most hurt by illegal immigration are blacks and Hispanic Americans (ie. legal citizen Hispanics). Illegal aliens take jobs primarily from these two ethnic groups. Further, it's the U.S. middle class that pays for most of the social services which illegal aliens take full advantage of and don't pay for. Most illegal aliens are paid in cash thus they pay no income tax and those who work "on the books" generally earn too little to pay any income tax as they are in the lowest tax bracket (further they engage in identity theft in stealing an American's social security number to satisfy their criminal employer who has hired them). Illegal alien activists commonly like to talk about the "huge" sums of money illegal workers pay into social security which, "they will never get back". The truth is that, 1) About 1/2 of all illegal workers are paid in cash, thus they pay no tax including no SS tax, 2) Those illegal workers who are "on the books" generally earn very little, maybe at most $26,000/year, meaning they pay at most $1500/year in SS tax. In this case, it is true that they ARE contibuting to Social Security and if they are never legalized, they won't see that money. But there is another angle to the equation - it's called EIC, Earned Income Credit, which many illegal workers apply for by using a TIN (Taxpayer Identification Number) or the SS# they are fraudulantly using. EIC is basically free money from the federal gov't, at the expense of the legitimate American taxpayers. EIC in theory is supposed to bring poor people above the poverty level. Trouble is, we all pay for it, even for illegal aliens who apply. Go to any Mexican neighborhood in the USA during tax season and you'll see signs in Spanish (usually in strip malls) that basically say, "Rebate... Free money", they are referring to EIC. Spanish speaking tax preparers are more than happy to give away your money to their illegal alien brethern. Even if an illegal Mexican worker doesn't apply for EIC, they often have lots of babies and each baby costs on average $10,000 in hospital bills, not a dime of which the illegal alien woman pays... you and I pay for it. Don't forget about the free public education that child will get, courtesy of the American tax payer, usually about $9,000/year for each child. Don't forget about WIC, food stamps, federal welfare, housing subsidies, etc. - all free for the taking by illegal aliens with the bill passed onto the American taxpayer.
Regarding property tax?? Of course illegals pay no property tax as the vast majority of them rent.
I would like to see the author of this book write a different book, one which talks about the true victims in the current illegal immigration situation: whites, Jews, and Asians.
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