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Full-Text Articles in Law
Continuing Derrick Bell's Devotion In Creative Action, Angela Mae Kupenda
Continuing Derrick Bell's Devotion In Creative Action, Angela Mae Kupenda
Journal Articles
I remember my first time seeing Derrick Bell in person and hearing him speak, just a few years before he passed away. I was in awe of him for many reasons, but primarily for two reasons. First, I noted from watching him with his devoted students, how mutual was the devotion coming from him—devotion to them as people and as those who would surely carry on his great work of seeking to forge equality in America and beyond. And second, I was in awe of him because of his devotion to the elimination of racism, while at the same time …
Embracing Our First Responder Role As Academics - With Inspiration From Langston Hughes, Angela Mae Kupenda
Embracing Our First Responder Role As Academics - With Inspiration From Langston Hughes, Angela Mae Kupenda
Journal Articles
In the midst of the post-2016 political crisis, our role as academics is that of First Responders. In physical crises, like a fire, First Responders play an important role. They intentionally put themselves in harm’s way to fulfill an overarching purpose of helping others, even at their own risk. They strategically prepare, train, and work for years to prepare for this role in the midst of crisis. As academics who care about equality, we are First Responders.
Equality Lost In Time And Space: Examining The Race/Class Quandary With Personal Pedagogical Lessons From A Course, A Film, A Case, And An Unfinished Movement, Angela Mae Kupenda
Equality Lost In Time And Space: Examining The Race/Class Quandary With Personal Pedagogical Lessons From A Course, A Film, A Case, And An Unfinished Movement, Angela Mae Kupenda
Journal Articles
This essay is both personal and pedagogical. My hope is that it issues a clarion call to legal educators and administrators to choose the pursuit of racial and class equality. I believe that, as law faculty and administrators, we must first address our personal quandaries with race and class before we can effectively address the racial and class implications in our pedagogical or administrative roles in legal education. This essay focuses on race and class and is a clarion call for legal academics and administrators to address ongoing structural racism and classism in our institutions, by starting with our own …
Breaking Cartels To Stymie The Reproduction Of Racism And Breaking Them In Time, Angela Mae Kupenda
Breaking Cartels To Stymie The Reproduction Of Racism And Breaking Them In Time, Angela Mae Kupenda
Journal Articles
Daria Roithmayr’s book, Reproducing Racism: How Everyday Choices Lock in White Advantage, situates the reproduction of racism outside of intentionally inflicted racist acts. She argues that even if racism by individual design ceases, everyday decisions by Whites lock in the many decades’, and even centuries’, of entrenched structures of White advantage. Tracing the history of race in America especially from Jim Crow, Roithmayr illustrates how White advantage was locked in through wealth accumulation protections given Whites and denied Blacks, through the real estate market practices favoring Whites, in educational policies perpetuated through a de jure then a de facto system, …
'Truth And Reconciliation': A Critical Step Toward Eliminating Race And Gender Violations In Tenure Wars, Angela Mae Kupenda, Tamara F. Lawson
'Truth And Reconciliation': A Critical Step Toward Eliminating Race And Gender Violations In Tenure Wars, Angela Mae Kupenda, Tamara F. Lawson
Journal Articles
In this Article, the co-authors confront one of the next generation issues for underrepresented groups in legal education: what happens after tenure victories, especially for the victors in a war wrought with gender and racial inequities? Even if all is fair in love, war, and tenure battles, it remains most troubling when, even in this century, acts of racial and/or gender aggression are targeted at qualified tenure candidates. These violations of the "tenure rules of engagement" based on implicit or explicit racial or gender bias preserve discriminatory practices that impact underrepresented groups and maintain the status quo in the academy …
Challenging Presumed (Im)Morality: A Personal Narrative, Angela Mae Kupenda
Challenging Presumed (Im)Morality: A Personal Narrative, Angela Mae Kupenda
Journal Articles
This narrative essay is about presumptions of (im)morality in academic settings. Such biased presumptions affect our abilities, even as educators, to work together and foster a society built on principles of justice that could help us work, live, and play better together. Learning to understand, work with, live near, and care about others are goals to which many of us would say we aspire. As law professors, we consider collegiality to be one of the factors we use in evaluating candidates for hiring and promotion decisions. However, these evaluations may rest not on the worthiness or respected humanity of others, …
Will The South Rise Again And, If So, In What Form?: Lessons From Latcrit About Resisting The Fear Of Cultural Understanding, Angela Mae Kupenda
Will The South Rise Again And, If So, In What Form?: Lessons From Latcrit About Resisting The Fear Of Cultural Understanding, Angela Mae Kupenda
Journal Articles
Through lessons learned from LatCrit 2013, this essay is hoping to evoke the missing sentiment of understanding and equality by signifying that the south that will rise again will be a south that is transformed, as Dr. Martin Luther King said “into an oasis of freedom and justice,” by moving out of its fears of understanding and moving to a far greater level of cross-cultural understanding.
Reflections On Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections Of Race And Class For Women In Academia Symposium--The Plenary Panel, Maritza I. Reyes, Angela Mae Kupenda, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Stephanie M. Wildman, Adrien K. Wing
Reflections On Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections Of Race And Class For Women In Academia Symposium--The Plenary Panel, Maritza I. Reyes, Angela Mae Kupenda, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Stephanie M. Wildman, Adrien K. Wing
Journal Articles
Presumed Incompetent was produced thanks to the vision and commitment of its editors: Dr. Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, Dr. Yolanda Flores Niemann, Carmen G. González, and Angela P. Harris. This symposium came to fruition because the Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice invited the two law professor editors, Professor Harris and Professor González, to convene a distinguished group of scholars from Canada and the United States to expand and deepen the conversation initiated by the book. The very successful day-long symposium and the publication of the resulting articles were made possible by the resources, time, and dedication provided by …
'May It Please The Court?': A Short Story, Angela Mae Kupenda
'May It Please The Court?': A Short Story, Angela Mae Kupenda
Journal Articles
This story tells a fictional account of a black woman lawyer who is about to try the biggest case of her life. While many black women lawyers seek to express their individuality and bring the best of themselves into their work and lives, conventions and norms about race and gender force them to give huge attention to things that likely matter little in the long run. In this story, we go on a journey of self-discovery with the protagonist, Angel, in hopes that she will be able to please the court in this—her trial of a lifetime.
(Re)Complexioning A Simple Tale: Race, Speech, And Colored Leadership, Angela Mae Kupenda
(Re)Complexioning A Simple Tale: Race, Speech, And Colored Leadership, Angela Mae Kupenda
Journal Articles
Rather than acting as a whitening agent, the law should reflect the natural (re)complexioning of society and adapt to the melting pot that is America. The term "(re)complexioning" is used because the idea that the complexion of America was white at the beginning is false. Prior to the "discovery" of America, native citizens were indeed more deeply complexioned than Whites. Any (re)complexioning of the law since, to reflect the colors of America, then, is just to resort to the recognition of factual premises unjustly rejected when America was usurped from those of color and denied to others of color after …
Negotiating Social Mobility And Critical Citizenship: Institutions At A Crossroads, Michelle D. Deardorff, Angela Mae Kupenda
Negotiating Social Mobility And Critical Citizenship: Institutions At A Crossroads, Michelle D. Deardorff, Angela Mae Kupenda
Journal Articles
A Black law professor who teaches at a predominantly White law school and a White public law professor who teaches at a historically Black university in the same southern, urban community are co-authors of this Article. Here, in this piece, we explore the tension between the goals of our institutions and many other institutions to improve the socioeconomic status of our students with our personal goals of preparing students to challenge societal injustice and to be critical citizens who are willing to challenge a government that engages in abusive actions or is exploitative of its citizenry.
Academic War Strategies For Nonviolent Armies Of One, Angela Mae Kupenda
Academic War Strategies For Nonviolent Armies Of One, Angela Mae Kupenda
Journal Articles
To engage the legal system in necessary critical action, critical actors are required. The law cannot be uprooted, re-sowed, and re-cultivated, unless future legal professionals engage in such action. And for future legal professionals to engage in such action, generally, they must first be engaged in critical thought during their legal educations. Moreover, for such thought to occur, the legal academy must include a diverse group of voices, minds, and experiences to engage with those seeking such a critical education. These critical voices may be in short supply in the academy for multiple reasons. One specific reason, though, is that …
The Struggling Class: Replacing An Insider White Female Middle Class Dream With A Struggling Black Female Reality, Angela Mae Kupenda
The Struggling Class: Replacing An Insider White Female Middle Class Dream With A Struggling Black Female Reality, Angela Mae Kupenda
Journal Articles
“What is the appropriate role of former outsiders who are now on the inside?” I propose that the appropriate role for an outsider who is now an insider, is not to sprawl out on plush, white, crushed velvet sofas, sipping vintage wines or imported teas and nibbling at aged cheese and delicate crackers while enjoying being one among a quota or token few that made it to the inside. Rather, the role of a former outsider is to go to work from the inside to dismantle the house, shrewdly using available tools to remove the nails from the walls, loosening …
The State As Batterer: Learning From Family Law To Address American's Family-Like Racial Dysfunction, Angela Mae Kupenda
The State As Batterer: Learning From Family Law To Address American's Family-Like Racial Dysfunction, Angela Mae Kupenda
Journal Articles
The women's movement for equality bootstrapped to the movement for equality for Blacks. Now the reverse can happen. This Article uses family law and the plight of some battered women, as a lens to address analogous racial conflicts in the broader American family.
Simply Put: How Diversity Benefits Whites And How Whites Can Simply Benefit Diversity, Angela Mae Kupenda
Simply Put: How Diversity Benefits Whites And How Whites Can Simply Benefit Diversity, Angela Mae Kupenda
Journal Articles
Although there are surmountable legal barriers to racial integration in education, fuller integration is possible. But first, whites must see how they benefit from diversity, and, second, whites must take simple steps toward integration that may, in turn, reveal to whites their desire to become more fully integrated. These two steps may help remove the limiting point to true integration.
Book Review, Angela Mae Kupenda
Book Review, Angela Mae Kupenda
Journal Articles
YOUR BLUES AIN’T LIKE MINE is an excellently written, fictionalized account of the lives of several people set in the fifties as a rural Mississippi community reacts to impending school racial desegregation and the killing of a fifteen year old black boy who had the misfortune of speaking French in the direction of a white woman. I’ve used this book to facilitate discussion on issues of race, gender, the law, class, and politics in several of my law school classes such as Race and the Law, Gender and the Law, and Civil Rights.
Seeking Different Treatment, Or Seeking The Same Regard: Remarketing The Transracial Adoption Debate, Angela Mae Kupenda
Seeking Different Treatment, Or Seeking The Same Regard: Remarketing The Transracial Adoption Debate, Angela Mae Kupenda
Journal Articles
The transracial adoption discourse mistakenly has been phrased as a request for black children awaiting adoption to be treated different from white children and to be placed with parents of like race only. This paper urges a remarketing of the transracial adoption debate to reflect a request based on sameness, not difference. The request presented here is not a request for different treatment for black children. Rather, it is for black children to be given the same regard that is given to white children. This request is illustrated with the story of a black couple seeking to adopt healthy, fat …
For White Women: Your Blues Ain't Like Mine, But We All Hide Our Faces And Cry--Literary Illumination For White And Black Sister/Friends, Angela Mae Kupenda
For White Women: Your Blues Ain't Like Mine, But We All Hide Our Faces And Cry--Literary Illumination For White And Black Sister/Friends, Angela Mae Kupenda
Journal Articles
No abstract provided.
Law, Life, And Literature: A Critical Reflection Of Life And Literature To Illuminate How Laws Of Domestic Violence, Race, And Class Bind Black Women Based On Alice Walker's Book The Third Life Of Grange Copeland, Angela Mae Kupenda
Journal Articles
Consider Law, Life and Literature. Which of the three is the most real, honest, and inclusive? Many would answer the law because it takes into consideration all of the facts and circumstances to formulate a clear and consistent rule, and literature is the most unreal, the most fictional of the three. However, that is not accurate. Of the three, literature is actually the most real, honest, and inclusive. It is real because, with brutal honesty, it deals with all of our realities. It is more honest than life, for often in our outer (and even inner) lives we are afraid …
Making Traditional Courses More Inclusive: Confessions Of An African American Female Professor Who Attempted To Crash All The Barriers At Once, Angela Mae Kupenda
Making Traditional Courses More Inclusive: Confessions Of An African American Female Professor Who Attempted To Crash All The Barriers At Once, Angela Mae Kupenda
Journal Articles
"WE MUST DISMANTLE all barriers at once!"' "No, go slow!" These were two of the opposing cries heard during, the civil rights movement. Some thought the only way to eliminate exclusiveness, based on race and gender, was to dismantle all the barriers all at once. Others thought the costs of such change too great and urged for caution and patience. Even in the 1990s, barriers of exclusiveness continue to exist, even in the law school classroom. Here I share my story of how, as a beginning law school professor, I tried to bring change to the law school classroom. I …
Two Parents Are Better Than None: Whether Two Single, African American Adults--Who Are Not In A Traditional Marriage Or A Romantic Or Sexual Relationship With Each Other--Should Be Allowed To Jointly Adopt And Co-Parent African American Children, Angela Mae Kupenda
Journal Articles
This article proposes an additional adoption model to allow joint adoption and co-parenting by single African Americans who are not in a traditional marriage relationship with each other and not in a romantic or sexual relationship with each other. Under this model, for example, two friends, two sisters, two brothers, a sister and a brother, etc., could jointly adopt and co-parent a child. If some new model such as this one is not devised, many single blacks may hesitate to take on the entire adoption responsibility alone. As a result, many black children will continue to go without any parents. …