KING’S DISCOURSE ONLY RE-ENTRENCHES OPPRESSION

KING’S DISCOURSE ONLY RE-ENTRENCHES OPPRESSION

1. INTEGRATION DISEMPOWERS AFRICAN AMERICANS

Malcolm X. A HISTORY OF OUR TIME: READINGS ON A POSTWAR AMERICA, 1999, p. 182.

It’s just like when you’ve got some coffee that’s too black, which means its too strong. What do you do? You integrate it with cream, you make it weak. But if you pour too much cream in it, you wont even know you ever had coffee. It used to be hot, it becomes cool. It used to be strong, it becomes weak. It used to wake you up, now it puts you to sleep. This is what they did with the march on Washington. They joined it. They didn’t integrate it, they infiltrated it. They joined it, became a part o fit, took it over. And as they took it over, it lost its militancy. It ceased to be angry, it ceased to be hot, it ceased to be uncompromising. Why, it even ceased to be a march. It became a picnic, a circus. Nothing but a circus, with clowns and all. . . . No, it was a sellout. It was a takeover.

David Abraham, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Miami, University Connecticut Law Review, Spring 1993, p. 962-63.

Because we have almost no enforceable collective values to generate community, rights talk can generate and build subcommunities in a manner its opponents, including Glendon, fail to appreciate fully. Over the past thirty years especially, rights have been advocated by social movements pursuing causes whose goal is to validate various specific identities or group cultures--race, gender, sexual orientation, age, handicap, family status, and reproductive/fetal status, for example--mostly in the private sphere, rather than common interests or collective solidarities in the political arena. In this sense, rights talk reflects and encourages the liberal tendency to individualize, separate and isolate issues, groups, and their members from each other. From the perspective of core social change, rights talk stymies overarching interconnectedness, while advancing pluralism and even fragmentation.
3. RIGHTS ONLY MASK RACIAL OPPRESSION BY GIVING AN ILLUSION OF PROGRESS

Eric K. Yamamoto, Professor of Law, University of Hawai'i, Michigan Law Review, February, 1997, p. 846.

The first is that even the Court's "progressive" antidiscrimination rulings reflect majoritarian interests. From this view, law and legal process tend primarily to preserve the social and political status quo, n119 and thus antidiscrimination law generates illusions of systemic reordering and long-term racial justice. Society perceives the declaration and occasional enforcement of intentionalist antidiscrimination laws as justice done. n120 This perception enables society's majority to believe in equality while ignoring the limitations of legal justice and the persistence of institutional racism.

KING’S FOCUS ON BLACK/WHITE RACISM IS INSUFFICIENT

1. A BLACK/WHITE DISCURSIVE PARADIGM MARGINALIZES OTHER PEOPLE OF COLOR

Juan F. Perea, Professor of Law, University of Florida College of Law, CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW, October 1997, p. 1219-20.

Given the Black/White paradigm, we would expect to find that much research on race is concerned with understanding the dynamics of the Black and White races and attempting to solve the problems between Blacks and Whites. Within the paradigm, the relevant material facts are facts about Blacks and Whites. In addition, the paradigm dictates that all other racial identities and groups in the United States are best understood through the Black/White binary paradigm. Only a few writers even recognize that they use a Black/White paradigm as the frame of reference through which to understand racial relations. Most writers simply assume the importance and correctness of the paradigm, and leave the reader grasping for whatever significance descriptions of the Black/White relationship have for other people of color. As I shall discuss, because the Black/White binary paradigm is so widely accepted, other racialized groups like Latinos/as, Asian Americans, and Native Americans are often marginalized or ignored altogether. As Kuhn writes, "those that will not fit the box are often not seen at all."

Juan F. Perea, Professor of Law, University of Florida College of Law, CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW, October 1997, p. 1239-40.

After three decades of books on White Racism focusing only on racism against Blacks, one can fairly ask how much anyone understands about racism against Latinos/as and the particular forms that such racism takes? The obvious answer is "not very much." For example, one could study the American Black/White relationship forever and never understand the language and accent discrimination faced by many Latinos/as and Asian Americans. Today Latinos/as can be fired from their jobs merely for speaking Spanish in the workplace, and Asian Americans can be passed over for hire because their accent is not quite right. n117 Despite nominal statutory protection from such discrimination under the "national origin" provisions of Title VII, the courts remain almost uniformly indifferent and find no actionable discrimination in such cases. The reason for this indifference is that such discrimination does not fit the Black/White binary paradigm of race discrimination.
3. WE MUST UNDERSTAND ALL RACIALIZED GROUPS TO STOP ALL RACISM

Juan F. Perea, Professor of Law, University of Florida College of Law, CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW, October 1997, p. 1240.

Redressing the particular forms of discrimination experienced by Latinos/as, Asian Americans, Native Americans and other racialized groups requires very careful inquiry into the particular histories of these groups and the forms of discrimination they have experienced. But recognition of the importance and particularity of groups other than Blacks and Whites requires inquiry well beyond the paradigm, inquiry beyond the current bounds of "normal science" and research. From the point of view of LatCrit studies, then, the issue becomes why there is such a rigid and unyielding commitment to an exclusively Black-White understanding of race that is clearly underinclusive and inaccurate.
4. FOCUS ON BLACK/WHITE DYNAMICS HURTS LEGAL ANALYSIS AND MOVEMENTS

Adrienne D. Davis, Associate Professor of Law at American University, AMERICAN UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW, February, 1996, p. 696.

A focus on the politics of local contests invites an archaeological exploration of historic sites where a black/white paradigm of race was in crisis and vulnerable to correction. In each of these crises, however, the force of the paradigm itself prevailed, reinscribing itself with yet more force in law and the lives of all three groups implicated: African Americans, other groups of color, and whites. An historical assessment of the relationship of other groups of color to a black/white paradigm reveals the paradigm as not only undescriptive and inaccurate, but debilitating for legal analysis, as well as civil rights oriented organizing.