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The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights
Random House
January 2006
304 pages
ISBN: 0375508201
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Political | Non-Fiction
In this remarkable and elegant work, acclaimed Yale Law
School professor Kenji Yoshino fuses legal manifesto and
poetic memoir to call for a redefinition of civil rights in
our law and culture. Everyone covers. To cover is to downplay a disfavored trait
so as to blend into the mainstream. Because all of us
possess stigmatized attributes, we all encounter pressure to
cover in our daily lives. Given its pervasiveness, we may
experience this pressure to be a simple fact of social life.
Against conventional understanding, Kenji Yoshino argues
that the demand to cover can pose a hidden threat to our
civil rights. Though we have come to some consensus against
penalizing people for differences based on race, sex, sexual
orientation, religion, and disability, we still routinely
deny equal treatment to people who refuse to downplay
differences along these lines. Racial minorities are pressed
to “act white” by changing their names, languages, or
cultural practices. Women are told to “play like men” at
work. Gays are asked not to engage in public displays of
same-sex affection. The devout are instructed to minimize
expressions of faith, and individuals with disabilities are
urged to conceal the paraphernalia that permit them to
function. In a wide-ranging analysis, Yoshino demonstrates
that American civil rights law has generally ignored the
threat posed by these covering demands. With passion and
rigor, he shows that the work of civil rights will not be
complete until it attends to the harms of coerced conformity. At the same time, Yoshino is responsive to the American
exasperation with identity politics, which often seems like
an endless parade of groups asking for state and social
solicitude. He observes that the ubiquity of the covering
demand provides an opportunity to lift civil rights into a
higher, more universal register. Since we all experience the
covering demand, we can all make common cause around a new
civil rights paradigm based on our desire for authenticity–a
desire that brings us together rather than driving us apart. Yoshino’s argument draws deeply on his personal experiences
as a gay Asian American. He follows the Romantics in his
belief that if a human life is described with enough
particularity, the universal will speak through it. The
result is a work that combines one of the most moving
memoirs written in years with a landmark manifesto on the
civil rights of the future.
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