Being Brown

Sonia Sotomayor and the Latino Question
1. Auflage 2019
ISBN: 978-0-520-30088-0
Verlag: University of California Press

Buch, Englisch, 216 Seiten, Cloth Over Boards, Format (B × H): 140 mm x 210 mm, Gewicht: 363 g

Reihe: American Studies Now: Critical Histories of the Present

Being Brown: Sonia Sotomayor and the Latino Question tells the story of the country’s first Latina Supreme Court Associate Justice’s rise to the pinnacle of American public life at a moment of profound demographic and political transformation. While Sotomayor’s confirmation appeared to signal the greater acceptance and inclusion of Latinos—the nation’s largest “minority majority”—the uncritical embrace of her status as a “possibility model” and icon paradoxically erased the fact that her success was due to civil rights policies and safeguards that no longer existed. 

 

Being Brown analyzes Sotomayor’s story of success and accomplishment, despite seemingly insurmountable odds, in order to ask: What do we lose in democratic practice when we allow symbolic inclusion to supplant the work of meaningful political enfranchisement? In a historical moment of resurgent racism, unrelenting Latino bashing, and previously unimaginable “blood and soil” Nazism, Being Brown explains what we stand to lose when we allow democratic values to be trampled for the sake of political expediency, and demonstrates how understanding “the Latino question” can fortify democratic practice.

 

Being Brown provides the historical vocabulary for understanding why the Latino body politic is central to the country’s future and why Sonia Sotomayor’s biography provides an important window into understanding America, and the country’s largest minority majority, at this historical juncture. In the process, Being Brown counters “alternative facts” with historical precision and ethical clarity to invigorate the best of democratic practice at a historical moment when we need it most.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Lima, Lazaro

Lima, Lázaro

Fachgebiete

• Rechtswissenschaften Allgemeines Verfahrens-, Zivilprozess- und Insolvenzrecht Justizverwaltung, Justizorganisation
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde Minderheiten, Interkulturelle & Multikulturelle Fragen
• Rechtswissenschaften Recht, Rechtswissenschaft Allgemein Rechtspolitik
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte
• Rechtswissenschaften Ausländisches Recht Common Law (UK, USA, Australien u.a.)

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Overview
Introduction. On Being Brown
in the Democratic Commons

Part I. A latina for the nation
1. Sonia Sotomayor and “the Latino Question”
2. Sonia Sotomayor’s Elusive Embrace

Part II. Losing Sonia Sotomayor
3. Sonia Sotomayor, the Mediapheme
4. Sonia Sotomayor and Other States of Debt

Coda. Thinking Otherwise: Sonia Sotomayor and
the Emergence of Latino Legal Thought

Acknowledgments
Notes
Selected Bibliography

Über Autor(innen)

Lázaro Lima is Professor of Latino Studies in the Department of Africana, Puerto Rican, and Latino Studies at Hunter College, CUNY. He is the author of The Latino Body: Crisis Identities in American Literary and Cultural Memory and the coeditor, with Felice Picano, of Ambientes: New Queer Latino Writing.