The essays in this volume illuminate a central paradox in the post-colonial West: race remains a potent index of social, economic and political inequality even while racial discrimination has become unlawful, even anathema. The standard account of this paradox is that racial discrimination and inequality are unfortunate vestiges of the past, which an enlightened legal system is now engaged in extirpating. These essays reveal a different story: equality law preserves racial inequality even while denouncing it. The authors show how in country after country, legal rules define racism so narrowly and make racial discrimination so difficult to prove that inequality persists despite its symbolic extinction. This ground-breaking volume of English-language essays, aimed at academics and researchers, shows how critical race theory, an analytic approach developed in the United States, can shed light on the workings of race in political-legal systems as diverse as South Africa, New Zealand, France and Latin and South America.

This text, the only criminal law casebook authored by two progressive female law professors of color, provides the reader with both critical race and critical feminist theory perspectives on criminal law while following a traditional format. All of the usual subject areas are covered, but the book is unique in highlighting the cultural context of substantive criminal law. The book seamlessly integrates issues of race, gender, class, and sexual orientation so the teacher who wishes to address such issues does not have to assign supplemental reading assignments in order to do so. The book is also very student-friendly, providing a brief doctrinal overview of the subject matter at the beginning of each chapter.