Colorblind Injustice by J Morgan Kousser

Colorblind Injustice by J Morgan Kousser

Challenging recent trends both in historical scholarship and in Supreme Court decisions on civil rights, J. Morgan Kousser criticizes the Court's ""postmodern equal protection"" and demonstrates that legislative and judicial history still matter for public policy. Offering an original interpretation of the failure of the First Reconstruction (after the Civil War) by comparing it with the relative success of the Second (after World War II), Kousser argues that institutions and institutional rules--not customs, ideas, attitudes, culture, or individual behavior--have been the primary forces shaping American race relations throughout the country's history. Using detailed case studies of redistricting decisions and the tailoring of electoral laws from Los Angeles to the Deep South, he documents how such rules were designed to discriminate against African Americans and Latinos. Kousser contends that far from being colorblind, Shaw v. Reno (1993) and subsequent ""racial gerrymandering"" decisions of the Supreme Court are intensely color-conscious. Far from being conservative, he argues, the five majority justices and their academic supporters are unreconstructed radicals who twist history and ignore current realities. A more balanced view of that history, he insists, dictates a reversal of Shaw and a return to the promise of both Reconstructions. |The first book-length study of the Supreme Court's ""racial gerrymandering"" decisions as well as the first sustained comparison of the First and Second Reconstructions.

J. Morgan Kousser is professor of history and social science at the California Institute of Technology and author of The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishment of the One-Party South, 1880-1910. He has served as an expert witness in nineteen federal voting rights cases.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780807847381
ISBN 10	0807847380
Title	Colorblind Injustice
Author	J Morgan Kousser
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	The University of North Carolina Press
Year published	1999-01-31
Number of pages	608
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.