Multi-racials and Civil Rights: Mixed-Race Stories of Discrimination

The law prohibiting discrimination sits within the constitutions of many legal systems around the world. This law traditionally focuses on individual actions and behaviour. Hernandez speaks to the conference theme of public law in a time of change by articulating the new challenges which anti-discrimination law must tackle, and how it must change – or not change – if it is to do so effectively. She focuses in her book on the elevation by policy makers and legislators of a new category of ‘mixed-race’ victims of discrimination. She considers whether this apparent extension of the protection from discrimination is in fact a retrenchment from the fight against discrimination, and the consequences of this. Hernandez writes in the American context but her questions are not limited to the USA. Readers from the United Kingdom, Brazil and the United States. will comment upon how anti-discrimination law should respond to these new challenges.