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September 29, 2008:
Covering:
The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights by
Kenji Yoshino (Random House Trade Paperbacks) Dr. Rachel
Murphey-Brown of UNC and students discuss this years UNC-Chapel Hill
Freshmen book discussion process.
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.