Ian Haney Lopez, a Professor at Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California at Berkeley primarily works in the areas of racial justice and American law. Lopez is also the author of White by Law, The Legal Construction of Race, which presents a critical look at how race has been recognized by law and it’s legal actors such as judges and policy makers throughout history. The author mainly focuses on analyzing prerequisite cases that in affect, have changed the way that race is perceived today. The book particularly focuses on the legal and social construction of whiteness. The legalization and social construction of whiteness means that through the implementation of law and the application and interpretation provided by society, legal
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“There is no core or essential White identity of White race. There are only popular conceptions-in the language of the prerequisite cases, a “common knowledge”-of Whiteness” (p.75). Race indeed, is not based on physical difference, but on what society and the law have deemed defining criterion to separate people into specific segregated groups. The “common knowledge” surrounding race is constructed by what the law and society deem as characteristics that make race. In fact, “the celebration of common knowledge and the repudiation of scientific evidence show that race is a matter not of physical difference, but of what people believe about physical difference” (p.72). The difference is found between what the law creates, and what society acts upon. If the law that is provided in your country supports that idea that one race is more superior than the other, you are bound to also be held under that …show more content…
Lopez’s book comprises what it means to be white in the United States both past and present. The argument presents itself in three ways, through social construction, law as behavioral control, and law as ideology. The author’s emphasis on the role of legal actors additionally adds to his argument towards the legal and social construction of whiteness. The power of the law possesses the range of control to mold those affected by it into whatever those creating it want. The law has and will continue to shape citizenship within the United States, and further construct the race that was never there in the first
“There is no core or essential White identity of White race. There are only popular conceptions-in the language of the prerequisite cases, a “common knowledge”-of Whiteness” (p.75). Race indeed, is not based on physical difference, but on what society and the law have deemed defining criterion to separate people into specific segregated groups. The “common knowledge” surrounding race is constructed by what the law and society deem as characteristics that make race. In fact, “the celebration of common knowledge and the repudiation of scientific evidence show that race is a matter not of physical difference, but of what people believe about physical difference” (p.72). The difference is found between what the law creates, and what society acts upon. If the law that is provided in your country supports that idea that one race is more superior than the other, you are bound to also be held under that …show more content…
Lopez’s book comprises what it means to be white in the United States both past and present. The argument presents itself in three ways, through social construction, law as behavioral control, and law as ideology. The author’s emphasis on the role of legal actors additionally adds to his argument towards the legal and social construction of whiteness. The power of the law possesses the range of control to mold those affected by it into whatever those creating it want. The law has and will continue to shape citizenship within the United States, and further construct the race that was never there in the first