Race, Equality, Citizenship, and Belonging: Reading James Baldwin andWong Kim Ark

Abstract

The following essays are part of a collaboration between theJournal of Law and ReligionandPolitical Theology.Editors from both journals selected the two texts interrogated and interpreted here—James Baldwin’s essay “Equal in Paris” and the United States Supreme Court decision in the caseUnited States v. Wong Kim Ark(1898). The purpose of the collaboration was twofold. The first purpose was to see what new interpretations arise when scholars working primarily in law read the essay by Baldwin, who has been a touchstone in much contemporary Black theology, and when scholars working in religious studies read the legal decision inWong Kim Ark, a case in which the Supreme Court extended citizenship to the child of Chinese immigrants who conceived and bore him on American soil. The second purpose was to divide publication between the journals, with each journal publishing three of the six essays, with a view to building bridges between readers of each journal over a topic at the intersection of both law and political theology.