Racial injustice represents more than lapses in legal compliance but rather a system of marginalization rooted in our history and social habits. In For Equals Only: Race, Equality, and the Equal Protection Clause, Tina Botts sharply analyzes the equal protection clause in the fourteenth amendment in light of our history of racial marginalization to argue that our reliance on it needs to shift towards responding to inequalities as social and historical rather than as simply legal. In doing so, Botts urges us to think about the equal protection clause as intended for addressing disparities in social status and standing rather than as a tool for individual cases of discrimination. For Equals Only arrives at a moment of reinvigorated debates around the role of the state in perpetuating racial injustice and helps clearly articulate what we most need to know about our collective duties to black citizens.

Christopher Lebron, Johns Hopkins University

Liberalism as a political philosophy rests foundationally on the idea of the moral, legal, and political equality of “persons.” But what happens when race and white supremacy make some “persons” in effect more equal than others? In this fascinating and illuminating investigation, Tina Botts demonstrates how the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause has come to be interpreted in such a way as to enshrine rather than challenge the ongoing social inequality of those lesser “persons” racialized as black in the United States.

Charles W. Mills, CUNY Graduate Center

Tina Botts methodically shows how the concepts of biological race and legal equality in use by the US Supreme Court leave out present and past experiences of discrimination against nonwhite people in society. This call for a more comprehensive interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment should spur change and spark reflection among legal scholars, political philosophers, and researchers of race in the United States.

Naomi Zack, Lehman College, CUNY