Acting White? Rethinking Race in Post-Racial America by Devon Carbado
Event at Harvard Law School, November 25, 2013
A lunchtime talk by author Devon Carbado (HLS ’94), the Honorable Harry Pregerson Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law. With Harvard Law School Professors Lani Guinier and Ronald Sullivan.
In Acting White, Devon Carbado and Mitu Gulati argue that racial judgments are often based not just on skin color, but on how a person conforms to behavior stereotypically associated with a certain race. Specifically, people judge racial minorities on how they "perform" their race. That includes the clothes they wear, how they style their hair, the institutions with which they affiliate, their racial politics, the people they befriend, date or marry, where they live, how they speak, and their outward mannerisms and demeanor. Employing these cues, decision-makers decide not simply whether a person is black but the degree to which she or he is so.