Exploring Discrimination

America is undergoing a period of intense social change. Communities, both urban and rural, have recently experienced social turbulence, which at times, has erupted into violence. And these same issues are surfacing at campuses across America. What underlying factors are to blame for these recurring eruptions of discrimination, harassment, prejudice, violence, and hate? And perhaps more importantly, what can we as educators do to prevent them?

Grappling with these difficult but important questions prompted the creation of Exploring Discrimination: Sex, Disability, and Genetic Information. The book aims to encourage educators to teach inclusive courses on sex, disability, and genetic discrimination at their respective institutions to provide opportunities for compassionate engagement and meaningful dialogue at campuses across the country. After all, relations between different groups will continue to deteriorate unless we provide more opportunities for meaningful, open, and honest dialogue about these issues and facilitate compassionate engagement among persons who differ from us. The book aspires to encourage the next generation of student-citizens to embrace and celebrate diversity rather than fear and denigrate difference.

Relying upon case law, statutes, regulations, constitutional provisions, law review articles, social science research, historical accounts, scientific studies, and other sources, this interdisciplinary book explores why and how people discriminate as well as how the law aims to prevent and punish such behavior. Topics of coverage include but are not limited to: identity, eugenics, suffrage, stereotype threat, sex stereotypes, Equal Protection, intersectionality, hate crime, essentialism, microaggression, privilege, unconscious bias, intersectional invisibility, conflict theory, androcentrism, and more. Each chapter ends with a list of provocative questions and thought experiments to invite deeper reflection as well as key takeaway points from the chapter.

Taken together, the book's unique accessibility, interdisciplinary approach, and topical coverage make it versatile enough to use in a law school doctrinal course, upper-level seminar, or practicum extension. Its content is also easily adaptable to college and graduate school courses. Moreover, the book can be used alone, as a supplement to a more traditional casebook, or as one of several books used in a seminar.