Racial Culture: A Critique »

Richard T. Ford is George E. Osborne Professor of Law at Stanford. He has published in numerous legal journals including the "Harvard Law Review" and "Stanford Law Review". His is co-author of "Local Government La"w and "The Legal Geographies Reader"

"This book will shake things up. Racial Culture is elegant, clear, and argumentatively tough. It is a highly incisive intervention in an important domain of anti-discrimination law, social policy, social theory, legal theory, and racial politics."—Janet Halley, Harvard University

"Racial Culture is a brave, disturbing, and important book by a first-class legal scholar. Richard Ford challenges every left and liberal shibboleth about racial justice in contemporary multicultural societies, while arguing relentlessly for racial justice. The final provocation is chilling and inspired, an incomparable articulation of the historical necessity and the historical damage of identity politics."—Wendy Brown, University of California, Berkeley

"This is a race-conscious, anti-racist attack on racial identity politics. There is nothing else like it in the literature. It is provocative in the best sense—provocative of thought—and it opens a new approach to the tired "conversation about race." Certainly one of the most important contributions of the last ten years."—Duncan Kennedy, Harvard Law School

Publishers Weekly

A serious work of legal scholarship about race that's innovative, bracing and funny? Stanford law professor Ford pulls it off in a surprising, rigorous volume that should send academics, legal professionals, civil rights activists and others dedicated to social justice racing for both sides of the barricades. Assembling a small library of case studies and legal research, along with relevant hypothetical scenarios, sophisticated analyses of popular culture and a careful dissection of multiculturalism, Ford makes a bold argument against the liberal emphasis on diversity and cultural rights from a position that is, as he puts it, "deep in the left wing of the palace." Ford argues that attempts to secure legal recognition for cultural difference-an African-American employee's right to wear her hair in cornrows, for instance-result in what he calls a "difference discourse" that is actually counterproductive, forcing minority groups to accept the very stereotypes they were trying to oppose by celebrating diversity. To counter this, Ford argues for greater "cosmopolitanism," wherein we promote "fluidity and movement through and between social distinctions and cultural practices." What keeps Ford's iconoclasm from becoming taxing is his refreshing irreverence: jokes abound about ironic postmodernists, civil rights for dog owners, the Log Cabin Republicans and his own fondness for a good martini. Agree with it or not, this book is an invigorating pleasure for thoughtful readers. (Dec.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.