The 2024 Samuel J. Konefsky Memorial Lecture: Understanding Latinx Anti-Blackness Through the Lens of Equality Law

Professor Tanya Katerí Hernández, Archibald R. Murray Professor of Law at Fordham University School of Law and associate director of its Center on Race, Law and Justice, will share insights from her book Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias and the Struggle for Equality. Racial Innocence is the first comprehensive book about anti-Black bias in the U.S. Latino community that unpacks the misconception that Latinos are “exempt” from racism due to their ethnicity and multicultural background. The book challenges preconceived notions of what is racism and bias and demonstrates that it’s possible for a historically marginalized group to experience discrimination and also be discriminatory. Racism is deeply complex, and Hernández exposes “the Latino racial innocence cloak” that often veils Latino complicity in racism. Based on interviews, discrimination case files, and civil rights law, Hernández reveals Latino anti-Black bias in the workplace, the housing market, schools, places of recreation, the criminal justice system, and Latino families. By using the lens of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment equality principle, Latino anti-Blackness is both revealed and provided a path for resistance.

The Konefsky Lecture is an annual event that honors Samuel J. Konefsky, an alumnus who became a professor of constitutional law at Brooklyn College from the 1940s to 1970. President Michelle J. Anderson will deliver opening remarks at this year’s event. Free copies of books Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias and the Struggle for Equality will be distributed.

This event will be livestreamed and and a recording of it housed on the Wolfe Institute’s YouTube Channel.