From Slave Abuse to Hate Crime: The Criminalization of Racial Violence in American History
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| Anteprima |
This
book explores the complex ways in which political debates and legal
reforms regarding the criminalization of racial violence have shaped the
development of American racial history. Spanning previous campaigns for
criminalizing slave abuse, lynching, and Klan violence and contemporary
debates about the legal response to hate crimes, this book reveals both
continuity and change in terms of the political forces underpinning the
enactment of new laws regarding racial violence in different periods
and of the social and institutional problems that hinder the effective
enforcement of these laws. A thought-provoking analysis of how criminal
law reflects and constructs social norms, this book offers a new
historical and theoretical perspective for analyzing the limits of
current attempts to use criminal legislation as a weapon against racism.
