01:790:373 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Peter Gabel, Critical Race Theory, Patricia J. Williams
6 Apr 2017
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Document Summary
Disagrees with cls on some matters of practical politics. How does the language of law distort the reality of social problems. Law imposes language of privatization for public problems: privatized language cannot address problems of racism or poverty. Language of the law must be challenged. Creation of exclusive categories and de nitional polarities: bright lines and taxonomies. Her argument is phenomenological: how a person experiences the world, first person perspective. Flattens and con nes in absolutes the complexity of meaning inherent in any given problem. Law makes up its own breed of narrower, simpler, but hypnotically powerful rhetorical truths. Purchased as a slave at age 11 by austin miller, a prominent lawyer in tennessee: he then impregnated her, chattel: an article of personal, movable property. Legal language turns a person into property. Legal language continues to objectify human beings. Property is private, but also institutional; racism is social. Racism cannot be addressed via language of privacy.
