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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 …