Crawling out of Fear and the Ruins of an Empire: Queer, Black, and Native Intimacies, Laws of Creation and Futures of Care

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Crawling out of Fear and the Ruins of an Empire: Queer, Black, and Native Intimacies, Laws of Creation and Futures of Care
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34 YALE JOURNAL OF LAW & FEMINISM, 176-245 (2023)

This article connects racialized violence to the United States’ formation and persistence, which has historically used race as the baseline historical indicator for injury and reparation. To do so, it reflects upon how a law that predicates equality upon the principle of sameness is sustained by the relational order and invites readers to consider whether shifting relationship values and forms can foster the possibility of laws that encourage principles of collective togetherness. First, it unpacks the rulings in Lawrence and Obergefell to establish the idealized and fictional public/private divide. It then further explores the national value of privatized dependencies that simultaneously defines the American family and alienates the racialized public. Finally, the article traces how colonialists deployed forms of romanticized relationships and their value structures to justify the desecration of Native cultures, ultimately contending that the contemporary version of this relational order is that of white supremacy, not equality.