Racial Innocence | A conversation with Tanya Hernández and Cathy Albisa

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ABOUT THE BOOK

Racial Innocence will challenge what you thought about racism and bias and demonstrate that it’s possible for a historically marginalized group to experience discrimination and also be discriminatory. Racism is deeply complex, and law professor and comparative race relations expert Tanya Katerí Hernández exposes “the Latino racial innocence cloak” that often veils Latino complicity in racism. As Latinos are the second-largest ethnic group in the US, this revelation is critical to dismantling systemic racism. Basing her work on interviews, discrimination case files, and civil rights law, Hernández reveals Latino anti-Black bias in the workplace, the housing market, schools, places of recreation, the criminal justice system, and Latino families.  By focusing on racism perpetrated by communities outside those of White non-Latino people, Racial Innocence brings to light the many Afro-Latino and African American victims of anti-Blackness at the hands of other people of color. Through exploring the interwoven fabric of discrimination and examining the cause of these issues, we can begin to move toward a more egalitarian society.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tanya Katerí Hernández is an internationally recognized comparative race law expert and a professor of law at Fordham University School of Law, where she teaches anti-discrimination law, comparative employment discrimination, and critical race theory. A Fulbright scholar, Princeton and Rutgers fellow, and former scholar in residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, she specializes in comparative race relations and anti-discrimination law. Hernández is the author of multiple books, including Multiracials and Civil Rights: Mixed-Race Stories of Discrimination and Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias and the Struggle for Equality.

ABOUT OUR CONVERSATION PARTNER

Cathy Albisa is the VP of Institutional and Sectoral Change at RACE Forward where she oversees the Government Alliance on Race and Equity (GARE) and the Federal Initiative on Race and Equity (FIRE).  Race Forward brings systemic analysis and an innovative approach to complex race issues to help people, organizations, institutions and sectors take effective action toward racial equity. She was also the co-founder and former Executive Director of Partners for Dignity & Rights (formally NESRI), a social movement organization that supports community groups across the country in their campaigns for structural change.  She serves on the Human Rights Commission in New York City, and has published on economic and social rights, racial and gender justice, and human rights generally.