Racial Culture : A Critique.
Title:
Racial Culture : A Critique.
Author:
Ford, Richard T.
ISBN:
9781400826308
Personal Author:
Physical Description:
1 online resource (200 pages)
Contents:
Contents -- Preface -- PREAMBLE -- Difference Discourse -- Political Philosophy -- Legal Scholarship -- Legalism -- Ideology -- Lexicon -- Overview of the Book -- 1. DIFFERENCE DISCOURSE -- A (Abridged) History of Difference -- The Production of Group Difference as Common Knowledge -- The "Repressive Hypothesis" -- "Diversity": Difference Discourse as Corrupt Détente -- Alan Bakke: Multiculturalist? -- 2. IDENTITIES AS COLLECTIVE ACTION -- Identity as Social Performance -- Free Time -- Recognition of Difference as Protective Custody -- Rights as Public Policy -- Rights-to-Difference Require an Official Account of Group Difference -- Difference Discourse as Social Discipline: Delegitimation and Stereotyping -- Cultural Reservations -- Copyrights-to-Difference: Culture as Property -- Identity Consciousness: Less Is More -- Group Consciousness without Cultural Romanticism -- Culture Distinguished from Status -- Against "Racial Characteristics" -- Status and Immutability -- Intimacy and Identity -- 3. "CULTURAL DISCRIMINATION" -- Why "Cultural Bias" Is Like Death and Taxes -- Background Rules as Cultural Discrimination -- The Inevitability of Discriminatory Laws -- Everyone Can Make a Difference: Difference Discourse as Cultural Zeitgeist -- Difference as an Expensive Taste -- Institutional Cultures -- Institutions, Culture and Intergroup Conflict -- Cosmopolitan Difference -- The Cosmopolitan and the Province: An Ideological Reorientation -- 4. THE ENDS OF ANTI-DISCRIMINATION LAW -- Civil Rights as a Limited Mechanism of Social Justice -- Anti-discrimination Law and Joint Costs -- Doctrinal Reform -- Disparate Treatment -- Disparate Impact -- Rogers Redux: Toward a Pragmatic Approach to Difference -- Alternative Approaches to Group Conflict and Social Injustice -- POSTSCRIPT: BEYOND DIFFERENCE -- Notes -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G.
H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- W -- Y.
Abstract:
What is black culture? Does it have an essence? What do we lose and gain by assuming that it does, and by building our laws accordingly? This bold and provocative book questions the common presumption of political multiculturalism that social categories such as race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality are defined by distinctive cultural practices. Richard Ford argues against law reform proposals that would attempt to apply civil rights protections to "cultural difference." Unlike many criticisms of multiculturalism, which worry about "reverse discrimination" or the erosion of core Western cultural values, the book's argument is primarily focused on the adverse effects of multicultural rhetoric and multicultural rights on their supposed beneficiaries. In clear and compelling prose, Ford argues that multicultural accounts of cultural difference do not accurately describe the practices of social groups. Instead these accounts are prescriptive: they attempt to canonize a narrow, parochial, and contestable set of ideas about appropriate group culture and to discredit more cosmopolitan lifestyles, commitments, and values. The book argues that far from remedying discrimination and status hierarchy, "cultural rights" share the ideological presuppositions, and participate in the discursive and institutional practices, of racism, sexism, and homophobia. Ford offers specific examples in support of this thesis, in diverse contexts such as employment discrimination, affirmative action, and transracial adoption. This is a major contribution to our understanding of today's politics of race, by one of the most distinctive and important young voices in America's legal academy.
Local Note:
Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2017. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.
Genre:
Electronic Access:
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