Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights (Paperback)

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Key Phrases: conversion therapists, covering demands, gay equality, True Self, Asian American, African American (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Seldom has a work of such careful intellectual rigor and fairness been so deeply touching. Yoshino, a law professor at Yale and a gay, Asian-American man, masterfully melds autobiography and legal scholarship in this book, marking a move from more traditional pleas for civil equality to a case for individual autonomy in identity politics. In questioning the phenomenon of "covering," a term used for the coerced hiding of crucial aspects of one's self, Yoshino thrusts the reader into a battlefield of shifting gray areas. Yet, at every step, he anticipates the reader's questions and rebuttals, answering them not only with acute reasoning, but with disarming humility. What emerges is an eloquent, poetic protest against the hidden prejudices embedded in American civil rights legislation—legislation that tacitly apologizes for "immutable" human difference from the white, male, straight norm, rather than defending one's "right to say what one is." Though Yoshino recognizes the law's potential to further (and hinder) liberty's cause, he admits that his "education in law has been an education in its limitations." Hence, by way of his unsparing accounts of self-realization, he reveals that the struggle against oppression lies not solely in fighting an imagined, monolithic state but as much in intimate discourse with the mother, the father and the colleague who constitute that state. As healing as it is polemical, this book has tremendous potential as a touchstone in the struggle for universal human dignity. (Jan. 24)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From The New Yorker

Yoshino's memoir-cum-treatise combines a provocative examination of the current state of civil rights with an account of his experiences as a gay Japanese-American. Arguing that discrimination now targets "the subset of the group that fails to assimilate to mainstream norms," Yoshino describes a phenomenon that he calls "covering": the pressure exerted on racial minorities to "act white," the social acceptance offered to gays as long as they don't "flaunt" their identities, the ways women in the workplace are expected to camouflage their lives as mothers. Exploring the history of civil-rights litigation in the United States, Yoshino concludes that courts have too often focussed on individuals' capacity to assimilate, rather than on the legitimacy of the demand that they do so.
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks (February 20, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375760210
• ISBN-13: 978-0375760211
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #157,218 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

63 of 76 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Simply. revolutionary, January 22, 2006

By	James Hiller (Beaverton, OR) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights (Hardcover)

Revolutionary is not a word that I often or easily apply to the books that I read. Some books, while entertaining, do not adjust my world view or even how I view myself. Some books which set out to adjust my world view or self-preception, don't, because of a wealth of technical jargon or a "so out there" premise that I can't wrap my brain around it. However, some books are written so that they are simply stunning, beautiful, and true, revolutionary; that after you finish them, you see yourself, the world, and your thinking dramatically changed. This is one such book, written by law professor Kenji Yoshino, called "Covering".

"Covering" is essentially a book about Civil Rights, its past, present, and future, and what role the law has played in this epic American struggle. In a stroke of brilliance, Yoshino intertwines his own personal coming-out story in between the pages; in a beautiful and quite amazing blend of memoir and history and jurisprudence.

Yoshino traces the movements of the struggle of civil rights by suggesting there are three phases that groups transverse through to attain their place "at the table". The first, conversion, suggests that the member of the group needs to not be themselves but "convert" to the norm. The second phase, "passing", suggests that we accept ourselves, but do not acknowledge it to others. Finally, after becoming public, "covering" is the phase in which we purposefully steer away from things that are related to our group so as not to fall into stereotypes of our group. Yoshino not only suggests that individuals travel through these phases, which he so wonderfully illustrates with episodes from his own poignant life, but the larger groups as a whole travel through these phases as they seek for identity.

Laced through all of this is Yoshino's passion for law, in which he describes the legal systems ability and inability to grapple with such issues; in places where they have shined and in places where they have fallen down. As a complete legal novice, I found Yoshino quite accessible as he made his arguements. In fact, when I reread this book, I plan to do so with a notebook in hand, ready to take notes as I follow his line of thinking.

And as if the content of the book weren't enough, Yoshino, being a former English major and poet, writes with a painful beauty that is not often seen in the harsh literature of today. He constructs each sentence so eloquently and beautifully, you stop to slow down to inhale the crispness of his words. The moment he realizes he is in love with his friend Brian is one such part; it is complete lexigraphically pure. Of course, a legal professeur, he drops the prose and addresses us more scholarly, but I ached for more of his words, which he gave us so selflessly through the book.

Because of "Covering" I see myself, my country, and my struggle in a new, different, and exciting light. Do not pass up this opportunity. Buy this book today and get ready for your own transformation.

31 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An extraordinary book, January 30, 2006

By	Natasha "Blown away in Illinois" (Carbondale, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights (Hardcover)

In this extraordinary and beautiful book, Kenji Yoshino contends that covering (the term is borrowed from Erving Goffman) is the civil rights issue of our age. Drawing on actual cases, he persuasively illustrates that the courts fail to protect men and women who refuse to "cover," mute, or conceal those aspects of their identities that are socially stigmatized (i.e. their gayness, their status as mothers, their racial identities). If this were all the book did, it would be significant enough. But Yoshino combines his legal and historical arguments with a memoir in which he "uncovers" his various selves--his lawyer self, his gay self, his Asian American self, and his poetic self. In doing so, he empowers his readers to do the same and to think about the connection between living one's own life honestly and the larger project of human emancipation.

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Most Eloquent and Personal Plea for Upholding Individual Civil Liberties, January 31, 2006

By	Ed Uyeshima (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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This review is from: Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights (Hardcover)

In lucid terms that escape the legalese that burdens related books, Yale Law School professor Kenji Yoshino discusses a topic that I never really knew had a formal definition. He describes "covering" as the purposeful act of toning down a "disfavored identity" to fit into the mainstream. Since notions of disfavored identities can get subjective, anyone can cover, whether people are members of ethnic minority groups hiding specific cultural behaviors or even white males hiding less discernible problems such as depression, alcoholism or backgrounds that embarrass them. Consequently, given the pervasiveness of such behavior, covering would seem comparatively innocuous, but Yoshino provides ample evidence that covering is a hidden assault on our civil rights. Moreover, it is becoming more of a civil rights issue as the nation's courts struggle with an increasingly multi-ethnic America.

His penetrating book is a hybrid between a revelatory memoir and a level-headed treatise on the unacceptability of the current legal doctrine around our civil rights. Toward the latter point, Yoshino discusses covering within the broader context of often egregious civil rights injustices. As he explains it, the courts are mired in group-based identity politics and driven by calls for equality. For example, to sue successfully under the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment, a group claiming discrimination has one of two options. First, the group could argue that it has been denied a fundamental right, like the right to vote. Alternatively, it can contend that the law in question employs a suspect classification, i.e., that the law unjustly singles out a particular group. To argue successfully that it has been penalized by a suspect classification, a group must show that its members have historically been victimized and deserve greater protection from the courts. Given these options, Yoshino describes the increasing wariness about identity politics in a country continually spawning new identities. The current legal trend shows the courts to be veering increasingly toward protecting only the immutable aspects of identity.

The legal aspects are surprisingly fascinating in Yoshino's hands, but the more personal parts of his book are the most illuminating, in particular, Yoshino's journey out of the closet. Using his own history as a touch point, he explains the three distinct phases of gay history - conversion, passing, and covering - each defined by various pressures that enforce conformity. During the conversion phase (recreated in films like Todd Haynes's "Far From Heaven" and James Ivory's "Maurice"), gays were pressured to become heterosexual through electro-shock treatments or aversion therapy. During the passing stage, gays were relegated to the closet since mental health professionals were not providing a cure for mainstream acceptance, and having a hidden identity was the only viable way to be tolerated in society. Yoshino contends we are currently in the third phase, covering, where being gay is passively acceptable as long as people offended by it do not have to witness such an alternative lifestyle.

From one perspective, one can consider it progress that covering even occurs even though the religious right still makes an emphatic effort to convert gays or keep them out of jobs that could pass such supposedly deviant behavior to susceptible children. This is where Yoshino's personal struggles to cover inform the book. His bracing honesty is refreshing in showing how coming out is despite the dramatic convention of TV-movies, not a declaration that liberates one in a single moment, but a far more gradual process where defining what it means to be gay becomes even more nebulous within the constant ambiguity around gay legal issues. Yoshino eloquently clarifies how the pervasiveness of societal pressures can waylay a person caught in the crossfire between acceptance and personal liberation.

The best way to make progress, Yoshino concludes, is to move beyond the legal issues. According to Yoshino, civil rights lawsuits should focus on individual rights, which unify all groups around common values. Instead of focusing on marginalized groups clamoring for special status, courts would ideally say that all people have a right to be who they want to be. As a precedent, Yoshino points out the 2003 case, Lawrence vs. Texas, in which the court decriminalized same-sex sodomy not based on equality rights of gays but because it violated the fundamental rights of all people to control what they do in the bedroom. It's a powerful idea which could lead to a new jurisprudence of liberty, but there is a challenging road toward realizing such legislation. One could argue that the unequal treatment of minority groups is what makes us realize what our liberties actually are.

Though he doubts the continuing usefulness of equal protection law, Yoshino might underestimate how much his contentions based on personal freedoms will continue to depend on equality arguments. However, what's exciting about the covering paradigm of civil rights is that it's universal. Yoshino hopes that the direction that courts are moving in is happening in a world where the notion of mainstream is fracturing. In the final analysis, Yoshino dares to put the law aside. He argues that we should leave behind equality doctrine for a new, radical focus on personal liberties that the Supreme Court may be unlikely to pursue beyond Lawrence. He argues that law generally should take a backseat to cultural change. Litigation should give way to conversation to confront covering. This is superb, groundbreaking thinking eloquently presented.