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“Essentially Black”: Legal Theory And The Morality Of Conscious Racial Identity, Kenneth B. Nunn
“Essentially Black”: Legal Theory And The Morality Of Conscious Racial Identity, Kenneth B. Nunn
UF Law Faculty Publications
In philosophy, essentialism involves the claim that everything that exists has a fundamental character or core set of features that makes it what it is. Although this idea developed out of Platonic notions of ideal forms, it has spread beyond philosophy into the social sciences and hard scientific disciplines like mathematics and biology. Since the advent of postmodernism, discussions around essentialism have become controversial. Adherents of postmodern theory argue that social categories, such as gender, race, and sexuality are socially constructed and that essentialist notions of identity, which suggest that identity is static, natural, and unchanging, are theoretically wrong. This …