Description
Book SynopsisKull provides us with the previously unwritten history of the color-blind liberal ideal that the government take no account of the race of its citizens. For 125 yearsfrom the crusades of the Garrisonian abolitionists to the civil rights legislation of the 1960sthis idea was the constitutional focus of the struggle for racial equality in America.
Trade ReviewAn important contribution to scholarship and to public discussion of the direction of this nation's legal policies regarding race. -- Walter Volkomer * Political Science Quarterly *
Kull has written a brilliant and challenging history of an idea: the theory that the Constitution prohibits the law from ever taking account of race. With exquisite insight, Kull traces this idea from its earliest expression in abolitionist constitutional thought to its displacement today by the competing idea of compensatory racial justice. -- Kenneth Jost * American Bar Association Journal *
Andrew Kull is a scholar, not an advocate. His lawyerly book is thus not a legal brief but a meticulously crafted history of an unfinished argument. What happened to the color-blind ideal? Kull asks. We now have a beautifully constructed answer. No other work explores so brilliantly the series of constitutional cases in which the courts assumed the power to weigh the costs and benefits of race-based policies—from Jim Crow laws to school busing and beyond. [This]…is an indispensable work. -- Abigail Thernstrom, author of
Whose Votes Count? Affirmative Action and Minority Voting Rights[Kull] tells a story... through excellent legal analysis and commentary on legislation, legal arguments, briefs and judicial opinions dating back to the dawn of the Republic in the eighteenth century. -- Johnny J. Butler * Philadelphia Inquirer *
Andrew Kull has provided the most compelling book yet written on the enduring colorblind principle. The basic claim is powerful and direct; the Constitution of the United States forbids racial discrimination at any level of government against any citizen, period. The colorblind principle is one of universal appeal. For every citizen who recoils from government’s endless uses of race to divide, allocate, and dictate their rights or the rights of others by race, this book will provide powerful support for their views. I hope it will be widely read. -- William Van Alstyne, Duke University
Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. A Glorious Liberty Document 2. The Lynn Petition 3. Sumner and Shaw 4. The Reconstruction Amendments of Wendell Phillips 5. The Thirty-Ninth Congress 6. The Judicial Assessment 7. Plessy v. Ferguson 8. Separate but Equal 9. Brown v. Board of Education 10. The Road Not Taken 11. Benign Racial Sorting Notes Index of Cases General Index
