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Symposium: Examining Black Citizenship From Reconstruction To Black Lives Matter: Black Citizenship, Dehumanization, And The Fourteenth Amendment, Reginald Oh
ConLawNOW
The fight for full Black citizenship has been in large measure a fight against the systematic dehumanization of African Americans. Dehumanization is the process of treating people as less than human, as subhuman. Denying Blacks full and equal citizenship has gone hand in hand with denying their full humanity. To effectively promote equal citizenship for African Americans, therefore, requires an explicit commitment to ending their dehumanization. This essay examines the concept of dehumanization and its connection to formal, political, civil, and social citizenship. It elaborates on the less familiar idea of social citizenship, entailing the right to have personal relationships …
Symposium: Examining Black Citizenship From Reconstruction To Black Lives Matter: Falling Short Of The Promise Of The Thirteenth Amendment: Time For Change, Michael A. Lawrence
Symposium: Examining Black Citizenship From Reconstruction To Black Lives Matter: Falling Short Of The Promise Of The Thirteenth Amendment: Time For Change, Michael A. Lawrence
ConLawNOW
This Essay seeks to shine additional light on the potential of the underutilized Thirteenth Amendment (as contrasted to the much-litigated Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause) for advancing racial justice and equity. The Essay suggests the Thirteenth Amendment provides strong constitutional basis for an unapologetic embrace of the sorts of new, race-conscious measures that will be necessary to begin to achieve true racial equity in a country that for centuries has erected massive structural barriers to Black opportunity and advancement
Symposium: Examining Black Citizenship From Reconstruction To Black Lives Matter: Rhetoric And Nostalgia In The Criminal Justice Reform Movement, Michael Gentithes
Symposium: Examining Black Citizenship From Reconstruction To Black Lives Matter: Rhetoric And Nostalgia In The Criminal Justice Reform Movement, Michael Gentithes
ConLawNOW
Today’s movement for criminal justice reform and its attendant "defund the police" slogan contain nuanced calls to redirect public funds in ways that will both control crime and support downtrodden neighborhoods. But the language in those calls can easily be misinterpreted. Such poor messaging misleads both the movement’s members and the public in two important ways. First, it repeats many of the mistakes made by protest anthems of the past. For too many Americans enduring today’s all-too-real dystopia, calls to defund sound like calls to anarchy, not arguments for peaceable, sensible reforms. Second, defunding rhetoric contains an element of historical …