Law and Race Commons^™

Affirmatively Furthering Health Equity, Mary Crossley

Articles

Pervasive health disparities in the United States undermine both public health and social cohesion. Because of the enormity of the health care sector, government action, standing alone, is limited in its power to remedy health disparities. This Article proposes a novel approach to distributing responsibility for promoting health equity broadly among public and private actors in the health care sector. Specifically, it recommends that the Department of Health and Human Services issue guidance articulating an obligation on the part of all recipients of federal health care funding to act affirmatively to advance health equity. The Fair Housing Act’s requirement that …

Colorblind Capture, Jonathan Feingold

Faculty Scholarship

We are facing two converging waves of racial retrenchment. The first, which arose following the Civil Rights Movement, is nearing a legal milestone. This term or the next, the Supreme Court will prohibit affirmative action in higher education. When it does, the Court will cement decades of conservative jurisprudence that has systematically eroded the right to remedy racial inequality.

The second wave is more recent but no less significant. Following 2020’s global uprising for racial justice, rightwing forces launched a coordinated assault on antiracism itself. The campaign has enjoyed early success. As one measure, GOP officials have passed, proposed or …

Fool Me Once, Shame On You; Fool Me Twice, Shame On You Again: How Disparate Treatment Doctrine Perpetuates Racial Hierarchy, David Simson

Articles & Chapters

Title VII race discrimination doctrine is excessively hostile to workers of color, and many observers agree that it needs to be fixed. Yet comparatively few analyses of the doctrine weave together doctrinal and theoretical insights with systematic empirical findings from social science. This Article looks to Social Dominance Theory—a social psychology theory with a robust body of supporting empirical research—to take on this task and connect judicial interpretation of Title VII to the human tendency to create and maintain group-based hierarchies. In doing so, the Article questions the common view that Title VII race discrimination doctrine is symmetrical, protecting all …

Equal Protection And The Social Sciences Thirty Years After Mccleskey V. Kemp, Destiny Peery, Osagie K. Obasogie

Northwestern University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Free Expression On Campus: Mitigating The Costs Of Contentious Speakers, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

“If you’re afraid to offend, you can’t be honest.”

“If you offend me, I can’t hear what you’re trying to tell me.”

—overheard on campus

The debate over how colleges and universities should respond to contentious guest speakers on campus is not a new one. A quick look back to the early 1990s, among other times, shows commentators squaring off much as they do today about the tensions between protecting free expression and ensuring meaningful equality.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the issues that contested speakers address are also much the same as they have been for several decades – government action …

Post-Racialism And The End Of Strict Scrutiny, David Schraub

Indiana Law Journal

In recent years, a growing social consensus has emerged around the aspiration of a “post-racial” America: one where race is no longer a fault line for social strife or, perhaps, a morally significant trait whatsoever. This ambition, however, lies in tension with the most basic constitutional principle governing our treatment of race in the public sphere: that of “strict scrutiny.” Post-racialism seeks to diminish the salience of race to near negligibility. The strict scrutiny of racial classifications, by contrast, significantly enhances the salience of race by treating it differently from virtually every other personal attribute or characteristic—including hair or eye …

Environmental Racism, Amerian Exceptionalism, And Cold War Human Rights, Carmen G. Gonzalez

Carmen G. Gonzalez

Integrating The "Underclass": Confronting America's Enduring Apartheid, Olatunde C.A. Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton's American Apartheid argues that housing integration has inappropriately disappeared from the national agenda and is critical to remedying the problems of the so-called "underclass." Reviewer Olati Johnson praises the authors' refusal to dichotomize race and class and the roles both play in creating and maintaining housing segregation. However, she argues, Massey and Denton fail to examine critically either the concept of the underclass or the integration ideology they espouse. Specifically, she contends, the authors fail to confront the limits of integration strategies in providing affordable housing or combating the problem of tokenism. Massey and Denton …

Toward A Race-Conscious Pedagogy In Legal Education, Kimberlé W. Crenshaw

Faculty Scholarship

It is both an honor and a pleasure to write the Foreword for this issue of the National Black Law Journal. This project represents the culmination of a joint effort involving the NBLJ, Dean Susan Westerberg Prager and me. The project grew out of discussions that began in the Spring of 1987 in which we explored various ways that the law school could support the production of publishable student material for the Journal. I initially considered sponsoring interested students in independent research projects; however, a high level of student interest, an obvious overlap between proposed student topics, and my …