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The Promise Of Mancari: Indian Political Rights As Racial Remedy, Addie C. Rolnick

Scholarly Works

In 1974, the Supreme Court declared that an Indian employment preference was based on a "political rather than racial" classification. The Court's framing of Indianness as a political matter and its positioning of "political" and "racial" as opposing concepts has defined the trajectory of federal Indian law and influenced common sense ideas about what it means to be Indian ever since. This oppositional framing has had specific practical consequences, including obscuring the continuing significance of racialization for Indians and concealing the mutually constitutive relationship between Indian racialization and Indian political status. This Article explores the legal roots of the political …