By Carl Gutierrez-Jones

The beating of Rodney King, the killing of Amadou Diallo, and the LAPD Rampart Scandal: these events have been interpreted by the courts, the media and the public in dramatically conflicting ways. Critical Race Narratives examines what is at stake in these conflicts and, in so doing, rethinks racial strife in the United States as a highly-charged struggle over different methods of reading and writing. Focusing in particular on the practice and theorization of narrative strategies, Gutiérrez-Jones engages many of the most influential texts in the recent race debates including The Bell Curve, America in Black and White, The Alchemy of Race and Rights, and The Mismeasure of Man. In the process, Critical Race Narratives pursues key questions posed by the texts as they work within, or against, disciplinary expectations: can critical engagements with narrative enable a more democratic dialogue regarding race? what promise does such experimentation hold for working through the traumatic legacy of racism in the United States? Throughout, Critical Race Narratives initiates a timely dialogue between race-focused narrative experiment in scholarly writing and similar work in literary texts and popular culture.

New York; London: NYU Press, 2001.

By Paul Harris

In 1971, Paul Harris pioneered the modern version of the black rage defense when he successfully defended a young black man charged with armed bank robbery. Dubbed one of the most novel criminal defenses in American history by Vanity Fair, the black rage defense is enormously controversial, frequently dismissed as irresponsible, nothing less than a harbinger of anarchy. Consider the firestorm of protest that resulted when the defense for Colin Ferguson, the gunman who murdered numerous passengers on a New York commuter train, claimed it was considering a black rage defense.

In this thought-provoking book, Harris traces the origins of the black rage defense back through American history, recreating numerous dramatic trials along the way. For example, he recounts in vivid detail how Clarence Darrow, defense attorney in the famous Scopes Monkey trial, first introduced the notion of an environmental hardship defense in 1925 while defending a black family who shot into a drunken white mob that had encircled their home.

Emphasizing that the black rage defense must be enlisted responsibly and selectively, Harris skillfully distinguishes between applying an environmental defense and simply blaming society, in the abstract, for individual crimes. If Ferguson had invoked such a defense, in Harris's words, it would have sent a superficial, wrong-headed, blame-everything-on-racism message. Careful not to succumb to easy generalizations, Harris also addresses the possibilities of a white rage defense and the more recent phenomenon of cultural defenses. He illustrates how a person's environment can, and does, affect his or her life and actions, how even the most rational person can become criminally deranged, when bludgeoned into hopelessness by exploitation, racism, and relentless poverty.

New York; London: NYU Press, 1996. 306p.

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Jody David Armour

In this groundbreaking book, "Negrophobia and Reasonable Racism: The Hidden Costs of Being Black in America," author delves deep into the complexities of the Black experience in a country where racism continues to shape social, economic, and political realities. Through meticulous research and powerful personal anecdotes, the author sheds light on the insidious nature of Negrophobia and the concept of "reasonable racism," illustrating the profound impacts these phenomena have on the daily lives of Black individuals and communities. This poignant and thought-provoking work challenges readers to confront uncomfortable truths and reexamine their own perspectives on race and privilege in America.

New York and London. NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS. 1997. 210p.

By Naomi Murakawa

Racial innocence is the practice of securing blamelessness for the death-dealing realities of racial capitalism. This article reviews the legal, social scientific, and reformist mechanisms that maintain the racial innocence of one particular site: the US carceral state. With its routine dehumanization, violence, and stunning levels of racial disparity, the carceral state should be a hard test case for the willful unknowing of obvious devastation. Nonetheless, the law presumes “no racism,” condones racial profiling, and interprets racial disparity in policing and imprisonment as evidence of true racial difference in criminality, not discrimination. Prominent social science research too often mimics these practices, producing research that aids in the collective erasure of racism.

Annu. Rev. Law Soc. Sci. 2019. 15:473–93

Edited by Wa Baile, Mohamed; Dankwa, Serena O.; Naguib, Tarek; Purtschert, Patricia; Schilliger, Sarah

Racist police checks are part of everyday life in Europe. They make it dramatically visible who is not considered a fellow citizen. While much of the dominance society finds this racist practice normal, more and more people are no longer prepared to accept it without resistance. The volume brings together scientific, artistic and activist contributions to the social backgrounds and modes of action of racial profiling and the possibilities of intersectional anti-racist resistance. The focus is on Switzerland, supplemented by perspectives from authors who are familiar with the German context.

Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2019. 337p.