Short description
This book, by a lawyer and professor of commercial law who is the great-great-granddaughter of a slave and a white southern lawyer, is both an argument for affirming group claims in the legal vocabulary and a description of the seemingly ineluctable status of black people in the US.
Long description
Patricia Williams is a lawyer and a professor of commercial law, the great-great-granddaughter of a slave and a white southern lawyer. Her book is both an argument for affirming group claims in the legal vocabulary and a description of the seemingly ineluctable status of black people in the United States today, whether they be professional men and women or the hungry and desperate.
Review
One of the most invitingly personal, even vulnerable, books I've read...Williams has a knack for keeping you just a bit off balance...Her readings invigorate familiar controversies: If you thought there was nothing new to be said about Howard Beach or Eleanor Bumpurs, Tawana Brawley or Baby M., read Williams on them. But some of the most magical turns of argument flow from far less public events...The law needs a brain...and, even more, a heart and some courage. Certificates won't help. This book just might. -- Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The Nation