The Shifting Race-Consciousness Matrix and the Multiracial Category Movement: A Critical Reply to Professor Hernandez |
Boston College Third World Law Journal
Volume 20, Issue 2 (May 2000)
pages 231-289
Reginald Leamon Robinson, Professor of Law
Howard University
In this article, the author posits that race as an idea begins with consciousness that reinforces that race is real and immutable. The Multiracial Category Movement can shift our race consciousness away from traditional ways of thinking, talking, and using race. The Movement moves us beyond binary race thinking, and this new thinking shifts the extant race consciousness matrix. It also frees our consciousness so that we can personally and politically acknowledge our biracial and multiracial identities, and it perforce alters the traditional political meaning of race. Legal scholars like Professor Tanya Hernandez argue for the political meaning of race against a remediating balm against the color-blind jurisprudence, weakening of civil right protections, and pigmentocracy. While these new identities can promote color-blind jurisprudence by conservatives and pigmentocracy by those fleeing the oppressive constraints of traditional racial categories, the author argues against Hernandez and for the Movement’s paradigm shifting possibilities.
Read the entire article here.
Tags: Boston College Third World Law Journal, Reginald L. Robinson, Reginald Leamon Robinson, Reginald Robinson, Tanya Hernández, Tanya K. Hernández, Tanya Kateri Hernández