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Full-Text Articles in Law and Race
Dignity Transacted: Emotional Labor And The Racialized Workplace, Lu-In Wang, Zachary W. Brewster
Dignity Transacted: Emotional Labor And The Racialized Workplace, Lu-In Wang, Zachary W. Brewster
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
In interactive customer service encounters, the dignity of the parties becomes the currency of a commercial transaction. Service firms that profit from customer satisfaction place great emphasis on emotional labor, the work that service providers do to make customers feel cared for and esteemed. But performing emotional labor can deny dignity to workers by highlighting their subservience and requiring them to suppress their own emotions in an effort to elevate the status and experiences of their customers. Paradoxically, the burden of performing emotional labor may also impose transactional costs on some customers by facilitating discrimination in service delivery. Drawing on …
Coercive Assimilationism: The Perils Of Muslim Women's Identity Performance In The Workplace, Sahar F. Aziz
Coercive Assimilationism: The Perils Of Muslim Women's Identity Performance In The Workplace, Sahar F. Aziz
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
Should employees have the legal right to “be themselves” at work? Most Americans would answer in the negative because work is a privilege, not an entitlement. But what if being oneself entails behaviors, mannerisms, and values integrally linked to the employee’s gender, race, or religion? And what if the basis for the employer’s workplace rules and professionalism standards rely on negative racial, ethnic or gender stereotypes that disparately impact some employees over others? Currently, Title VII fails to take into account such forms of second-generation discrimination, thereby limiting statutory protections to phenotypical or morphological bases. Drawing on social psychology and …
Categorically Black, White, Or Wrong: 'Misperception Discrimination' And The State Of Title Vii Protection, D. Wendy Greene
Categorically Black, White, Or Wrong: 'Misperception Discrimination' And The State Of Title Vii Protection, D. Wendy Greene
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
This Article exposes an inconspicuous, categorically wrong movement within antidiscrimination law. A band of federal courts have denied Title VII protection to individuals who allege “categorical discrimination”: invidious, differential treatment on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, or sex. Per these courts, a plaintiff who self-identifies as Christian but is misperceived as Muslim cannot assert an actionable claim under Title VII if she suffers an adverse employment action as a result of this misperception and related animus. Though Title VII expressly prohibits discrimination on the basis of religion, courts have held that such a plaintiff’s claim of “misperception …
Have A Job To Get A Job: Disparate Treatment And Disparate Impact Of The 'Currently Employed' Requirement, Jennifer Jolly-Ryan
Have A Job To Get A Job: Disparate Treatment And Disparate Impact Of The 'Currently Employed' Requirement, Jennifer Jolly-Ryan
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
Countless people struggle to find a job in a competitive job market despite possessing solid qualifications. Although the news media reports that job numbers are improving, the problems of unemployment particularly loom for people of color, older workers, and people with disabilities. These groups are often unemployed longer than other job seekers. These groups also suffer the disparate impact of job advertisements that require "current employment" as a prerequisite for hiring. The harsh reality is that the longer a job seeker is unemployed, the closer a job seeker becomes to becoming permanently unemployed. Job advertisements that require "current employment" exacerbate …
Some Women's Work: Domestic Work, Class, Race, Heteropatriarchy, And The Limits Of Legal Reform, Terri Nilliasca
Some Women's Work: Domestic Work, Class, Race, Heteropatriarchy, And The Limits Of Legal Reform, Terri Nilliasca
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
This Note employs Critical Race, feminist, Marxist, and queer theory to analyze the underlying reasons for the exclusion of domestic workers from legal and regulatory systems. The Note begins with a discussion of the role of legal and regulatory systems in upholding and replicating White supremacy within the employer and domestic worker relationship. The Note then goes on to argue that the White, feminist movement's emphasis on access to wage labor further subjugated Black and immigrant domestic workers. Finally, I end with an in-depth legal analysis of New York's Domestic Worker Bill of Rights, the nation's first state law to …
Federal Employer Sanctions As Immigration Federalism, Darcy M. Pottle
Federal Employer Sanctions As Immigration Federalism, Darcy M. Pottle
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
For low-skilled workers in much of the world, U.S. admission policies make illegal immigration the most viable means of entering the country. Low average schooling, which disqualifies many potential immigrants from employment-based visas, and long queues affecting family preference immigration from high-traffic countries, make the admission criteria outlined in the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) prohibitive for most would-be immigrants to the United States. Perhaps due to this failure of immediate legal avenues, many immigrants enter the country illegally. Though many eventually gain legal status, in the meantime they live and work in the United States without documentation. "Illegal …
Addressing Segregation In The Brown Collar Workplace: Toward A Solution For The Inexorable 100%, Leticia M. Saucedo
Addressing Segregation In The Brown Collar Workplace: Toward A Solution For The Inexorable 100%, Leticia M. Saucedo
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Despite public perception to the contrary, segregated workplaces exist in greater number today than ever before, largely because of the influx of newly arrived immigrant workers to low-wage industries throughout the country. Yet existing antidiscrimination frameworks no longer operate adequately to rid workplaces of the segregation that results from targeting immigrant workers. This Article suggests a new anti-discrimination framework to address workplace segregation. The Article reviews how litigants have attempted to rid the workplace of conditions resulting from segregated departments through existing anti-discrimination frameworks. It then suggests a simple, yet powerful, shift in the inferences that can be drawn from …
"Reverse Discrimination" And Higher Education Faculty, Joyce A. Hughes
"Reverse Discrimination" And Higher Education Faculty, Joyce A. Hughes
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
In this Article, the author critiques the use of "reverse discrimination" claims by White plaintiffs to challenge the hiring of Blacks in institutions of higher education. The author argues that "reverse discrimination" is a myth since no such claim is possible when one White candidate is selected over another; assumptions of inferiority are implicit where such a claim is made when a Black candiate is selected over a White candidate. In other words, allowing such a claim, even if ultimately unsuccessful, implies a presumption of superiority on the part of the White candidate. For this reason, the author argues that …
Employer Racial Discrimination: Reviewing The Role Of The Nlrb, Lawrence F. Doppelt
Employer Racial Discrimination: Reviewing The Role Of The Nlrb, Lawrence F. Doppelt
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
The NLRB and various commentators rely upon three basic legal arguments in rejecting this interpretation: first, the EEOC, and not the NLRB, is the sole and proper agency for litigating racial issues; second, employer racial discrimination does not interfere with the protected rights of employees under the Act, and third, it is not, and never was, Congress' intent in passing the Act to bring racial discrimination within its purview. Unquestionably, each of these legal arguments has, or at some time had, surface appeal, and, at one time, considerable force. The great mass of legal commentary supports at least one of …