Cambridge University Press Racial Subordination in Latin America: The Role of the State, Customary Law, and the New Civil Rights Response

There are approximately 150 million people of African descent in Latin America yet Afro-descendants have been consistently marginalized as undesirable elements of the society. Latin America has nevertheless long prided itself on its absence of US-styled state-mandated Jim Crow racial segregation laws. This book disrupts the traditional narrative of Latin America's legally benign racial past by comprehensively examining the existence of customary laws of racial regulation and the historic complicity of Latin American states in erecting and sustaining racial hierarchies. Tanya Katerí Hernández is the first author to consider the salience of the customary law of race regulation for the contemporary development of racial equality laws across the region. Therefore, the book has a particular relevance for the contemporary US racial context in which Jim Crow laws have long been abolished and a 'post-racial' rhetoric undermines the commitment to racial equality laws and policies amidst a backdrop of continued inequality. Review 'Hernández has constructed a well-written accessible analysis of racial subordination that deserves a wide audience in and beyond Latin America, especially among policy makers. Summing up: highly recommended. All readership levels.' C. H. Blake, Choice Book Description This book examines customary laws of racial regulation and the historic complicity of Latin American states in erecting and sustaining racial hierarchies. About the Author Tanya Katerí Hernández is a Professor of Law at Fordham University School of Law, where she teaches comparative employment discrimination, critical race theory, and trusts and estates. She received her AB from Brown University and her JD from Yale Law School, where she served as Note Topics Editor of the Yale Law Journal. Professor Hernández has been awarded a Non-Resident Faculty Fellowship at the Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality for 2011–13. She has previously served as a Law and Public Policy Affairs Fellow at Princeton University, a Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Research on Women at Rutgers University, and as an Independent Scholar in Residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. In 2011, Professor Hernández was named a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, and in 2009 she was elected to the American Law Institute. Hispanic Business magazine selected her as one of the 100 Most Influential Hispanics of 2007. Professor Hernández serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Legal Education, and the Latino Studies Journal published by Palgrave-Macmillian. Professor Hernández's scholarly interest is in the study of comparative race relations and anti-discrimination law, and her work in that area has been published in the California Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal amongst other publications.