ABSTRACT
Framing race as a master category helps us understand the political, social and legal trajectory of race in America. In the United States, social identities are often set up as a binary—white and other. Understanding race through the lens of social construction rejects the construct of biological or a scientific basis of race. Racial identity lawsuits are rare in the United States today. Race is not the sole manifestation of social identity. Legal scholar Kimberle Crenshaw created the concept “intersectionality” as a way of thinking about social identity and its relationship to power. In the racial prerequisite cases, courts were asked to resolve the ambiguous statutory requirement, who is white, for purposes of naturalization. At best the law in the area of sexual orientation and gender identity can be characterized as being in a state of flux.
