This book examines the anomalous legal status of black Americans and its influence on the formation of American citizenship, the relationship of U.S. to other states, and the government’s conceptualization of its imperial reach and power. The coordinated relationship between U.S. international and domestic interventions helped produce an alienated black American community whose status resembles refugees and stateless persons. This book underscores the substantive legal, social, and political consequences of the state’s persistent misrepresentation of black citizens as aliens an ... More

This book examines the anomalous legal status of black Americans and its influence on the formation of American citizenship, the relationship of U.S. to other states, and the government’s conceptualization of its imperial reach and power. The coordinated relationship between U.S. international and domestic interventions helped produce an alienated black American community whose status resembles refugees and stateless persons. This book underscores the substantive legal, social, and political consequences of the state’s persistent misrepresentation of black citizens as aliens and refugees. Attending to the convergences among refugees, stateless persons, and African Americans, This book exposes the aggressive legal and political dislocations historically confronting black Americans in a new manner, and reveals how the anomalous status of black Americans impacted U.S. empire expansion and black civil rights. Fixed on forms of legal, political and social desubjectivation, dispossession, and violence that collectively transfigure black life and warrant the call for safety, this book illustrates how sanctuary remains perpetually deferred, tragically unsustainable, or simply untenable precisely because blacks continue to occupy something akin to Gerald Neuman’s “anomalous legal zone,” where law is suspended and a new juridical order is effectively produced.