Reading law oppositionally reveals how contested ideas harden into normalized racial commonsense

Evidence

Bennett Capers begins with this opening statement: … Allow me a critical gesture. More specifically, taking to heart the offer to put forth an Idea, allow me to suggest a way of reading the law. I am not suggesting a reading that is exclusivist. However, I am suggesting a reading that reveals sites of contestation, a reading that is oppositional. What I am suggesting is a way of reading, a reading practice if you will, that attends to the way judicial opinions function as cultural productions that create and recreate race. This method is not only one of interpretation. It requires a prior critical intervention of deconstruction. Moreover, all texts are open to such critical readings: judicial opinions that may have more direct effects on law, briefs, testimony, and evidence that becomes textual. The methods of deconstruction and “reading back” reveal sites of contestation more clearly. They also show how certain ideas that were once contested become assumptions and taken-for-granted background facts that then go unchallenged. Once this happens, these ideas become normalized and commonsensical. These deconstructive methods show the sites and ideas that should be contested but may not be by revealing unarticulated notions that operate like phantoms haunting the text in the background. … I employ the term “read back” because I find it particularly useful as a concept. It suggests the practice of jurors asking for a “read back” of testimony not just so that they can rehear what has already been said, but rehear it within the context of having heard and seen all of the evidence, armed with the tools to ascertain not only what was said, but what was not said. Put differently, I use the term here to suggest a rereading that reads not only contextually, but also critically, sensitive to the stated and the unstated, the revealed and the concealed, and the meaning to be gleaned from both. Equally useful is the term “reading black.” It suggests a reading practice that is not only critical, but particularly attuned to the frequencies and registers of race. Already, I need to make a few clarifications. First, although I deploy the term “reading black,” I do not mean to suggest any racial litmus test for the reader. More specifically, one does not have to be black to read black. Nor does being black necessarily equip one with the skills or desire to read black. Justice Thurgood Marshall, I believe, read black. So did Justice William Brennan. Justice Clarence Thomas, with one or two notable exceptions, generally does not. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 364

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘read back’ and ‘reading black’ as specific oppositional reading practices — a methodological vocabulary the MOC thread could borrow for how subordinate groups reclaim identity narratives.
• XREF: Connects to my MOC reading purpose: the claim that once-contested ideas become taken-for-granted ‘phantoms haunting the text’ mirrors how subordinate-group identity inversion operates — contested history becoming commonsense. — connects to: Reading judicial opinions as cultural productions exposes races’ contested origins — 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; Racialized legal categories are contradictory yet persist as common sense — Sherene Razack, Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims…, 141 (+4 more)
• SEED: The idea that one need not BE a member to ‘read’ a group’s raced reality (Marshall and Brennan both ‘read black’; Thomas generally does not) is a sharp angle for an essay on who can perform identity-inversion work for a group.

Broader Connections

• Reading Black means decoding commonsense assumptions that make legal subordination seem logical. #corroborates (0.90) — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 368
• Commonsense racist assumptions make legal complicity in subordination seem logical #expands (0.85) — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 368
• Racist knowledge enters mainstream as commonsense once crafted by recurring strategies #expands (0.85)
• Racialized legal categories are contradictory yet persist as common sense #expands (0.80) — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 141
• Antiracial colorblindness erases the very vocabulary needed to press racial claims #expands (0.75) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 122