Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights

Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights

A lyrical memoir that identifies the pressure to conform as a hidden threat to our civil rights, drawing on the authorâ€™s life as a gay Asian American man and his career as an acclaimed legal scholar.

â€œ[Kenji] Yoshino offers his personal search for authenticity as an encouragement for everyone to think deeply about the ways in which all of us have covered our true selves. . . . We really do feel newly inspired.â€â€”The New York Times Book Review

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.Â Racial minorities are pressed to â€œact whiteâ€ by changing their names, languages, or cultural practices. Women are told to â€œplay like menâ€ 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.Â Given its pervasiveness, we may experience this pressure to be a simple fact of social life.

Against conventional understanding, Kenji Yoshino argues thatÂ the work ofÂ American civil rights lawÂ will not be complete until it attends to the harms of coerced conformity.Â 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.Â

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 ofÂ coveringÂ 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 authenticityâ€”a desire that brings us together rather than driving us apart.

Praise for Covering

â€œYoshino argues convincingly in this book, part luminous, moving memoir, part cogent, level-headed treatise, that covering is going to become more and more a civil rights issue as the nation (and the nationâ€™s courts) struggle with an increasingly multiethnic America.â€â€”San Francisco Chronicle

â€œ[A] remarkable debut . . . [Yoshinoâ€™s] sense of justice is pragmatic and infectious.â€â€”Time Out New York
Country USA
Brand Random House Trade Paperbacks
Manufacturer Random House Trade Paperbacks
Binding Paperback
ItemPartNumber 0375760210_used
Color Grey
ReleaseDate 2007-02-20
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780375760211

Country	USA
Brand	Random House Trade Paperbacks
Manufacturer	Random House Trade Paperbacks
Binding	Paperback
ItemPartNumber	0375760210_used
Color	Grey
ReleaseDate	2007-02-20
UnitCount	1
EANs	9780375760211

Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights

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