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Racial Realities -- Unsettling Narratives -- Settler Colonialism -- Land and Indigenous Peoples -- Enslaved Labor and Strategies of Subjugation -- Emancipated? African Americans: Rights and Redundancy -- Others of Color: Inclusions and Exclusions -- Others of Color: Subordination and Manipulation -- Constitutional Protection and the Dynamic of Difference -- International Law and Human Rights -- Decolonization and Self-Determination -- Mapping New Worlds -- Conclusion -- Acknowledgements.

"A distinctly American internationalism" -- Saving civilization : the war on terror -- Civilizing the other : colonial origins of international law -- "A city on a hill" : America as exception -- Establishing the republic : first principles and American identity -- A manifest destiny : colonizing the continent -- American imperial expansion -- Making the world safe for democracy -- The new world order and American hegemony -- Confronting American exceptionalism

Introduction : Inter Armas Silent Leges -- An authority unchallengeable and complete : plenary power over immigrants, American Indians, and external U.S. colonies -- Silencing the constitution : the Japanese American internment and redress -- Military necessity? : the World War II internment of Japanese Latin Americans -- History repeats itself : the racing of Arab Americans as the enemy -- Force trumps law after September 11 : disappearances, detentions, and deportations -- The war on terror : who or what is being protected?

A critical perspective on law and political economy requires an appreciation not only of how race, gender, sexuality, class, national origin, immigrant status, and other aspects of our identities intersect and interact, but also why they do so. Focusing on the United States as a settler colonial state, this essay suggests that the primary markers of identity used to oppress people are themselves the master's tools, i.e., constructs of the colonial project. Building on the late Stokely Carmichael's distinction between the paths of the exploited and the colonized, it argues that remediating status-based injustices will require us to go beyond a redistribution of social goods and resources, or even institutional restructuring, to challenge the paradigm that works to define and contain us—the one that propelled Western colonialism and now permeates not only the United States but legal, economic, and political institutions around the world.

The primacy accorded individual civil and political rights is often touted as one of the United States' greatest achievements. However, mass incarcerations of indefinite duration have occurred consistently throughout US history and have primarily targeted people of color. The dominant narrative insists that the United States is a political democracy and portrays each instance of indefinite detention in exceptionalist terms. This essay argues that the historical patterns of indefinite detention are better explained by recognizing the United States as a settler colonial state whose claimed prerogative to expand its territorial reach and contain/control populations over which it exercises jurisdiction has inevitably resulted in the involuntary inclusion and concomitant exclusion of peoples of color.