Critical Themes/Vocab, Pt II Flashcards
Intersectionality
A person’s identity is often complex. A black woman sits at the intersection of woman and black, so that her legal situation is also complex.
Latino Critical Studies (LatCrit)
Splinter movement that applies critical analysis to Latino history and radicalization, immigration, bilingualism, English Only, accent discrimination, and similar issues.
Legal Storytelling/Narrative Analysis
Holds that much of law consists of stories and narratives and that the way to counter the influence of bad ones is to pose a good counterstory.
Legitimation
Civil right breakthroughs produce little lasting gain, are costly to produce, and enable society to become complacent or even blame out groups for their plight.
Microagression
Stunning small encounter with racism, usually unnoticed by members of the majority race
Mindset, Culture, and Presupposition Just as Powerful as Doctrine
The stories, narratives, and mindsets with which we approach racial issues determine outcomes at least as effectively as precedent and legality do.
One can sometimes jar or displace comforting majoritarian stories and myths with counter stories.
Nativism
View that certain groups in the US don’t deserve equal treatment because they’re a suspect group or aren’t citizens.
A movement rampant in the US during the large Euro. immigration years (1890-1920) and recurrent today against Latinos.
Norm Theory
Emerging social science view that holds that our reaction to someone in need is a function of how normal or abnormal his plight seems to us.
Ordinariness of Racism
Racial treatment and categorization are ordinary and usual, not exceptional, thus hard to see (like air).
Principle of the Involuntary Sacrifice
Whenever our society acts to promote racial justice, this entails costs, which are always arranged to be placed on blacks or on lower-income working-class whites.
Property Interest in Whiteness
Idea that white skin and identity are economically valuable.
Public-Private Distinction
Law only operates in the public sector; in the private one, one can be as racist as one likes, an arrangement that makes no sense if one is trying to eradicate racism.
Racial Realism
Holds that racism is a permanent feature of the American landscape, but that we must struggle against it nevertheless.
A position championed by Derrick Bell.
Revisionist History
A classic Critical Theme. Considers history “from below” and rewrites it to emphasize how it looks to, for example, Indian tribes, black farmers struggling to hold onto their land, or Mexican-American haciendados after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
Social Construction of Race
A person’s race isn’t an objective fact, but a social decision by others.
