Tanya K. Hernández
Archibald R. Murray Professor of Law
Curriculum Vitae and Academic Biography
Personal Website
646-312-8786
thernandez@law.fordham.edu
Office: Room 8-137
Faculty Assistant: Diane Pinero, pinero@fordham.edu
Areas of Expertise: Antidiscrimination Law, Comparative Law, Critical Race Theory, Race and Social Justice
Tanya Katerí Hernández is the Archibald R. Murray Professor of Law at Fordham University School of Law, where she teaches Anti-Discrimination Law, Comparative Employment Discrimination, Critical Race Theory, Writing/Righting Race in the Public Sphere, The Science of Implicit Bias and the Law: New Pathways to Social Justice, and Trusts & Wills. She received her A.B. from Brown University, and her J.D. from Yale Law School, where she served as Note Topics Editor of the Yale Law Journal.
Professor Hernández is an internationally recognized comparative race law expert and Fulbright Scholar who has visited at the Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, in Paris and the University of the West Indies Law School, in Trinidad. She has previously served as a Law and Public Policy Affairs Fellow at Princeton University, a Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Research on Women at Rutgers University; a Faculty Fellow at the Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality, and as a Scholar in Residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Professor Hernández is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, the American Law Institute, and the Academia Puertorriqueña de Jurisprudencia y Legislación. Hispanic Business Magazine selected her as one of its annual 100 Most Influential Hispanics and NYC Comptroller Brad Lander awarded her a Commendation for "extraordinary contributions to anti-racism." Professor Hernández serves on the editorial boards of the Revista Brasileira de Direito e Justiça/Brazilian Journal of Law and Justice, and the Latino Studies Journal published by Palgrave-Macmillian Press.
Professor Hernández’s scholarly interest is in the study of comparative race relations and anti-discrimination law, and her work in that area has been published in numerous university law reviews like Cornell, Harvard, N.Y.U., U.C. Berkeley, Yale and in news outlets like the New York Times, among other publications including her books Racial Subordination in Latin America: The Role of the State, Customary Law and the New Civil Rights Response (including Spanish and Portuguese translation editions), Brill Research Perspectives in Comparative Law: Racial Discrimination, and Multiraci
als and Civil Rights: Mixed-Race Stories of Discrimination. Her most recent book from Beacon Press is Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias and The Struggle for Equality, and its Spanish Translation edition, Inocencia Racial: Desenmascarando la antinegritud de los latinos y la lucha por la igualdad. Currently under contract with Beacon Press, is her next book (Under) Counting Blackness Across the Globe: The Civil Rights Crisis of Census Racial Erasure.Education
- Yale Law School, JD 1990
Yale Law Journal, Note Topics Editor - Brown University, AB, Sociology 1986
- Federal University of Bahia, study-abroad program 1985
- Yale Law School, JD 1990
Books
(Under) Counting Blackness Across the Globe: The Civil Rights Crisis of Census Racial Erasure (under contract with Beacon Press).
Inocencia Racial: Desenmascarando la antinegritud de los latinos y la lucha por la igualdad (Beacon Press, 2024), https://www.amazon.com/Inocencia-Racial-Desenmascarando-antinegritud-igualdad/dp/0807020400.
Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias and the Struggle for Equality (Beacon Press, 2022).
Comparative Discrimination Law: Racial Discrimination (Brill 2019).
Multiracials and Civil Rights: Mixed-Race Stories of Discrimination (NYU Press, 2018) https://multiracialsandcivilrights.wordpress.com/.
Subordinação racial no Brasil e na América Latina: o papel do Estado, o Direito Costumeiro e a Nova Resposta dos Direitos Civis (Salvador: Editora UFBA 2017) (Federal University of Bahia Press) Direct link to book here/Leia a obra completa aqui: http://bit.ly/2odC65o
La subordinación racial en Latinoamérica: El papel del Estado, el derecho consuetudinario y la nueva respuesta de los derechos civiles (Siglo del Hombre Editores, Ediciones Uniandes, Colección Nuevo Pensamiento Jurídico, Bogotá Colombia, 2013) (https://libreriasiglo.com/ciencias-juridicas/12329-subordinacion-racial-en-latinoamerica-la.html).
Racial Subordination in Latin America: The Role of the State, Customary Law and the New Civil Rights Response (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2013) (https://sites.google.com/site/racisminlatamerica/)
Book Chapters
"El Derecho a la Igualdad y a la No Discriminación" in "Afrodescendientes e Inclusión Social: Más Equidad, Más Derechos" (forthcoming from the Organization of American States).
"Afro-Latin American Legal Studies," in Routledge Handbook of Afro-Latin American Studies, eds. Bernd Reiter & John Anton Sanchez, (Routledge, 2023) pp 100-109.
"Race, Gender, Class and Public Policies in Latin America and Andean Countries," (co-authored with Gladys Mitchell-Walthour & Mariela Noles Cotito) in The Routledge Handbook of Urban Studies in Latin America and the Caribbean, eds. Jesus M. Gonzalez-Perez, Clara Irazabal & Ruben C. Lois-Gonzalez (Routledge, 2023) pp 561-578.
"Race Discrimination," in Oxford Handbook of Constitutional Law in Latin America, eds. Roberto Gargarella, Conrado Hubner Mendes & Sebatian Guidi (Oxford University Press, 2022) pp 734-743.
"Latino AntiBlack Bias and the Census Categorization of Latinos: Race, Ethnicity, or Other?," in Antiblackness eds. Moon-Kie Jung & Joao H. Costa Vargas (Duke Univ. Press, 2021) pp 283-296.
"Race and The Law in Latin America," in Comparative Racial Politics in Latin America, eds. Kwame Dixon & Ollie A. Johnson, III (Routledge, 2019) pp 271-87.
"Law and Race in Latin America," in Routledge Handbook of Law and Society in Latin America, eds. Tatiana Alfonso, Karina Ansolabehere, and Rachel Sieder (Routledge, 2019) pp 126-137.
"The limits of U.S. racial equality with a Latin American constitutional 'right to work' - a thought experiment," in Constitutionalism in the Americas, eds. Colin Crawford and Daniel Bonilla Maldonado (Edward Elgar pub 2018) pp 258-286.
"Michael Olivas, the Critical Race Theory Lat-Crit Activist Scholar," in Law professor and accidental historian : the scholarship of Michael A. Olivas, 235-242. edited by Ediberto Roman (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2017)
"Afro-Latinos" in Keywords for Latina/o Studies, 7-8 ed. Deborah R. Vargas, Nancy Raquel Mirabal, and Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes (NYU Press 2017)
"Latino - Black Inter-Ethnic Conflict: Segregated Together with "Fair" Housing," in Minority Relations: Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation, 219-49 eds. Greg Robinson & Robert S. Chang (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2016).
"Multiracial in the Workplace: A New Kind of Discrimination?" In Gender, Race and Ethnicity, in the Workplace: Emerging Issues and Enduring Challenges, 3-25 ed. Margaret Foegen Karsten (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2016)
"Making Implicit Bias Research Relevant in Employment Discrimination Cases," in volume Title VII of the Civil Rights Act After 50 Years: Proceedings of the New York University 67th Annual Conference on Labor, 247-272 (LexisNexis Matthew Bender, 2015).
Defending Affirmative Action: An International Legal Response, in vol. 29 Civil Rights Litigation and Attorney Fees Annual Handbook (eds. Steven Saltzman & Cheryl I. Harris 2013).
Afro-Latin@s and the Latino Workplace, in The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States 520-526 (2010 Duke Univ. Press book chapter, Juan Flores & Miriam Jimenez Roman, eds.).
"What Not to Wear" -- Race and Unwelcomeness in Sexual Harassment Law: The Story of Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson, in Women and the Law Stories 277-306 (2010 Foundation Press book chapter, Elizabeth Schneider & Stephanie Wildman eds.).
European Multiculturalism as Compared to Diversity in the United States: A View from the Employment Discrimination Context, in Multiculturalisms: Different Meanings and Perspectives of Multiculturalism in a Global World (2009 Stampfli Press, Barbara Pozzo, ed.).
The Intersectionality of Lived Experience and Anti-Discrimination Empirical Research, in Handbook of Employment Discrimination Research: Rights and Realities 325-335 (Laura Beth Nielsen & Robert L. Nelson eds., 2005 American Bar Foundation & Kluwer Academic Publishing).
Sex in the [Foreign] City: Commodification and the Female Sex Tourist, in Rethinking Commodification: Cases and Readings in Law and Culture 222-242 (Joan Williams & Martha Ertman eds., NYU Press 2005).
The Racism of Sexual Harassment, in Directions in Sexual Harassment Law 479-95 (Catharine MacKinnon & Reva Siegel eds., 2004 Yale Univ. Press).
The Buena Vista Social Club: The Racial Politics of Nostalgia, in Latina/o Popular Culture 61-72 (N.Y.U. Press 2002).
Book Reviews & Other Academic Publications
Book Review of Tristin K. Green's Racial Emotion at Work: Dismantling Discrimination and Building Racial Justice in the Workplace, Anthropos 119 (2024) 648-69.
Book Review Essay, A Balm for Raceless Latinx Reading Injuries, a review of Natasha Alford's American Negra, Sept. 24, 2024, at https://www.latinxproject.
nyu.edu/intervenxions/natasha- s-alford-ameican-negra Book Review Essay, The celebration of interracial intimacy racial mixture as the cure for racism – A Critical View, Balkinization Blog book review of Solangel Maldonado's The Architecture of Desire: How the Law Shapes Interracial Intimacy and Perpetuates Inequality, July 16, 2024, at https://balkin.blogspot.
com/2024/07/the-celebration- .of-interracial-intimacy.html Essay, James Baldwin and Latino Racial Innocence, Balkinization Blog Author Response to Book Symposium, Dec. 19, 2022, at https://balkin.blogspot.
com/2022/12/james-baldwin-and- .latino-racial.html Book Review, Black and Indigenous Resistance in the Americas: From Multiculturalism to Racist Backlash / Edited by Juliet Hooker, 44 Ethnic and Racial Studies 1429 (2021).
Book Review, Puerto Rican Hispanophilia and Puerto Rican Hispanophiles in the early twenty-first century, 19 Latino Studies Journal 128 (2021).
In remembrance of Anani Dzidzienyo (1941–2020), 19 Latino Studies Journal 1 (2021).
Book Review, White Latino Privilege: Caribbean Latino Perspectives in the Second Decade of the 21st Century (Gabriel Haslip-Viera, ed.), 17 Latino Studies Journal 281 (2019)
Oxford University Press Encyclopedia of Latinos and Latinas in the United States, 2d edition (forthcoming 2014) entries Mendez v. Westminster (1,000 words); Afro-Latinos (2,000 words), Affirmative Action (1,500 words), Jim Crow (500 words), and Mestizaje/Racial Mixture (1,000 words).
Greenwood Press Encyclopedia of Latino Issues Today, (forthcoming 2014)“Racially Mixed Latinos – Issues of Identity” (1,500 word entry).
Book Review Essay "The Legal Challenges of Diversity," 63(4) Journal of Legal Education 740-44 (2014)
Cengage Learning Inc. Encyclopedia of Race and Racism, 2d edition, (2013) “Discrimination: Constitutional Provisions, Legislation, and Jurisprudence” (5,000 word entry).
Book Review of Mark Goodale’s “The Dilemmas of Modernity: Bolivian Encounters with Law and Liberalism,” 35 Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 252-253 (2010)..
Book Review of Edward E. Telles' “Race in Another America: The Significance of Skin color in Brazil,” Diverse Education October 19, 2006.
News Publications & Blog Posts
The Hill Op Ed, "The new census racial categories 'erase' Afro Latinos," April 3, 2024 (link - https://thehill.com/opinion/
4572410-the-new-census-racial- categories-erase-afro-latinos/ ). Intervenxions Op Ed, "The Latinx Census Racial Category Debate and How to UNITE Latinx Across Racial Differences," April 6, 2023 (link - https://www.latinxproject.
nyu.edu/intervenxions/the- ).latinx-census-racial-category- debate-and-how-to-unite- latinx-across-racial- differences TheGrio Op Ed, "The new census proposal may likely undercount Black people by ignoring Afro-Latinos. We can't let that happen," Mar. 16, 2023 (link - https://thegrio.com/2023/03/
16/the-new-census-proposal- ).may-likely-undercount-black- people-by-ignoring-afro- latinos-we-cant-let-that- happen/ Latinx Talk, “Why I wrote Racial Innocence,” Feb. 27, 2023 (link - https://latinxtalk.org/2023/
02/27/interview-with-tanya- ).kateri-hernandez-author-of- racial-innocence/ TIME Magazine Op Ed, "We Need to Talk About the Cloak of Racial Innocence in the Latino Community," Nov. 1, 2022 (link - https://time.com/6225626/
racial-innocence-afro-latino- ).community/ Intervenxions, “The Myth of Latino Racial Innocence,” Sept. 20, 2022, (link - https://www.latinxproject.
nyu.edu/intervenxions/an- ).interview-with-tanya-kateri- hernandez NY Daily News Op Ed, "Let's be blunt: Latinos can be racist too," Sept. 25, 2022, (link - https://www.nydailynews.com/
opinion/ny-oped-latinos-can- ).be-racist-too-20220925- abtyjiantvhupkvwtrpzemn3r4- story.html Black Agenda Report, BAR Book Forum on Racial Innocence, Aug. 17, 2022 (link - https://www.
blackagendareport.com/bar- ).book-forum-tanya-kateri- hernandezs-book-racial- innocence Latino Rebels Opinion, "The Magical Transformation of White Latinos into Multiracial Latinos," Dec. 1, 2021, (link - https://www.latinorebels.
com/2021/12/01/ ).multiraciallatinos/ Race and the Law Prof Blog, "Cleaning House for the 4th of July and the Fireworks of Anti-anti racism," July 4, 2021, (link - https://lawprofessors.
typepad.com/racelawprof/2021/ ).07/cleaning-house-for-the-4th- of-july.html NY Daily News Op Ed, "Being Mixed-Race in the Age of #BLM," June 12, 2021 (link - https://www.nydailynews.com/
opinion/ny-oped-being-mixed- ).race-in-the-age-of-blm- 20210612- no4ose7ionhvvguxun6awrxq6y- story.html Al Dia Opinion, "The Afro-Latino Story of Latino Anti-Blackness," Feb. 19, 2020, (link - https://aldianews.com/en/
articles/politics/opinion/ ).afro-latino-story-latino-anti- blackness/57664 Medium.com, "Do We Still Need Constitutional Equal Protections in a Growing Multiracial World," July 9, 2018 (link -- https://medium.com/@
professortkh/do-we-still-need- constitutional-equal- protection-in-a-growing- multiracial-world-645fb4d80560 ). The Baltimore Sun, "Frederick Douglass: a 'multi-racial' trailblazer," Feb. 9, 2018 (link https://www.
baltimoresun.com/opinion/op- ).ed/bs-ed-op-0209-douglass- race-20180208-story.html "Latino Anti-Black Bias and the Census Categorization of Latinos," NiLP Report on Latino Politics and Policy, Dec. 5, 2017 (link -- http://myemail.
constantcontact.com/NiLP- Report--Latino-Anti-Black- Bias-and-the-Census.html?soid= 1101040629095&aid=RDiCHoR2550) . New York Law Journal, "What Emerging Multiracial Plaintiff Cases Suggest about Employment Discrimination Law," Nov. 3, 2017 (link -- https://www.law.com/
newyorklawjournal/sites/ ).newyorklawjournal/2017/11/03/ what-the-emerging-multiracial- plaintiff-cases-suggest-about- discrimination-law/ "Free Speech on Campus" -- Columbia University Awakening Democracy Roundtable, One Speaker's Postscript, Nov. 2, 2017 (link -- https://universitylife.
columbia.edu/AOD-Free-Speech- ).Professor-Hernandez Huffington Post, "What the "Loving Day' 50th Anniversary Celebrations of the Loving v. Virginia Court Decision Really Need -- A Challenge to Ongoing White Supremacy," June 11, 2017 (link - http://www.huffingtonpost.
com/entry/ )593b4961e4b094fa859f1878 Huffington Post, "Interracial Marriage and Latino/a Racial Identity," May 19, 2017 (link -- Interracial Marriage and Latino/a Racial Identity)
New York Daily News Op Ed, "Mixed marriages, stubborn racial bias: Discrimination persists for the nonwhite," December 9, 2016 (http://www.nydailynews.
com/opinion/mixed-marriages- stubborn-racial-bias-article- 1.2903674) U.S. Catholic Magazine Feb 2015 issue, "Affirmative Action: A major requirement." (http://www.uscatholic.org/
february2015 ) Why affirmative action should be a major requirement for collegesNACLA Report on the Americas Winter 2014/2015 Issue, "Revealing the Race-Based Realities of Workforce Exclusion"
Revealing the Race-Based Realities of Workforce Exclusion
New York Times, Room for Debate "'Stereotype Threat' Is Not Easily Countered" April 27, 2014
Americas Quarterly, August 01, 2013, "Affirmative Action in the Americas:The hemisphere-wide drive to make equality a human right" http://www.
americasquarterly.org/ affirmative-action-in-the- americas New York Times, Room for Debate "A Watered-down Vision of Equality," June 26, 2013
SALT Law Blog, Latino/a Law Professors Respond to Inappropriate Race Fallacy, June 27, 2013, http://www.saltlaw.org/blog/
The National Law Journal, June 25, 2013, "What to Celebrate and Lament About the Fisher Decision," http://www.law.
com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp? id=1202608481155&What_to_ Celebrate_and_Lament_About_ the_Fisher_Decision Articles
Can CRT Save DEI:? Workplace Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in the Shadow of Anti-Affirmative Action, 71 UCLA Law Review Discourse 282 (2024), https://www.uclalawreview.org/can-crt-save-dei/.
Beyond Implicit Bias, 153 Daedalus 276 (Winter 2024), https://direct.mit.edu/daed/article/153/1/276/119936/Beyond-Implicit-Bias
Is There a “Mulatto Escape Hatch” Out of Racism?: A Reflection on Multiracial Exceptionalism During a Time of #BlackLivesMatter, 34 Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development 65 (2021).
Revitlizando o Significado da Diversidade Por Justiça Racial Na Educação, (Revitalizing the Meaning of Diversity for Racial Justice in Education) 31 Rev. Fac. Educ. 23 (2019), https://periodicos.unemat.br/index.php/ppgedu/article/view/3850.
Latin American Racial Equality Law as Criminal Law, 14 Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies Journal, 348 (2019).
Symposium Remarks, "Advocacy in Ideas: Legal Education and Social Movements," 36.1 Columbia Journal of Gender and Law 40- 60 (2018).
Racially-Mixed Personal Identity Equality, 15 Law, Culture and the Humanities 1-11 (2017) http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1743872117699894.
Envisioning the United States in the Latin American myth of ‘racial democracy mestizaje,’ 11(2) Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies (2016) 189-205 http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/TaBy7SYJShc8jCfnhxUd/full
Colorism and the Law in Latin America -Global Perspectives on Colorism Conference Remarks, 14 Wash. U. Global Stud. L. Rev. 683-693 (2015).
One Path for 'Post-Racial' Employment Discrimination Cases -- The Implicit Association Test Research as Social Framework Evidence, 32 Journal of Law & Inequality 307-44 (2014) http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2327133.
Sotomayor’s Supreme Court Race Jurisprudence: “Fidelity to the Law,” Yale L.J. Forum (Mar. 24, 2014), http://yalelawjournal.org/forum/sotomayors-supreme-court-race-jurisprudence.
The Value of Intersectional Comparative Analysis to the ‘Post-Racial’ Future of Critical Race Theory: A Brazil – U.S. Comparative Case Study, 43 Ct. L. Rev. 1407-1437 (2011) available at http://uconn.lawreviewnetwork.com/files/documents/Hernandez.pdf.
Hate Speech and the Language of Racism in Latin America: A Lens for Reconsidering Global Hate Speech Restrictions and Legislation Models, 32 U. Penn. J. Int'l Law 805-841 (2011) (http://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1103&context=jil).
Employment Discrimination in the Ethnically Diverse Workplace, Judges J., vol. 49, no. 4, Fall 2010, at 33.
Latinos at Work: When Color Discrimination Involves More Than Color, in Shades of Difference: Why Skin Color Matters 236-244 (2009 Stanford Univ. Press book chapter, Evelyn Nakano Glenn, ed.) available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1646946.
Latino Inter-Ethnic Employment Discrimination and the “Diversity” Defense, 42 Harvard Civil Rights Civil Liberties Law Review 259-316 (2007) (lead article of issue 2) (available at http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/crcl/vol42_2/CRCL422.pdf).
Latino Anti-Black Violence in Los Angeles: Not “Made in the USA,” 13 Harvard Journal African American Public Policy 37-40 (2007).