Reading Black means decoding commonsense assumptions that make legal subordination seem logical.

Evidence

Professor Capers suggests that within texts there are underlying assumptions and reliance on commonsense anti-Black ideas. Because they are commonsense, everyone knows them, and they do not have to be stated. The problem for raced groups is that these assumptions make the law’s complicity in their subordination seem entirely logical. What Professor Capers terms “reading Black” is a particular deconstructive move that, in this article, is analogous to distilling the racist tropes and discursive strategies from the text. It is the practice of reading for the underlying armature of inequality, subordination, racism, and racial sexism, homophobia, and more. “Reading Black” renders the anti- Blackness or the erasure of race in the legal text more visible; this article’s method renders any specific racism more visible by showing the similarities in the abstract. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 368

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘reading Black’ as a deconstructive method exposing raced presuppositions embedded in neutral-seeming legal text.
• XREF: Connects to the analytical method of surface/depth decoding used throughout this book and to Hall’s conjunctural approach to racecraft. — connects to: Reading black is a skill detached from the reader’s own race — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 365; Reading law oppositionally reveals how contested ideas harden into normalized racial commonsense — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 364; Commonsense racist assumptions make legal complicity in subordination seem logical — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 368 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Embedded race thinking makes suspension of rights look like law #corroborates (0.82)
• Racialized legal categories are contradictory yet persist as common sense #expands (0.80) — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 141
• Racialized reasoning’s coherence rests on narrative force, not logical sense #qualifies (0.78) — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 138