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The Declining Significance Of Presidential Races?, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Osamudia James Oct 2009

The Declining Significance Of Presidential Races?, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Osamudia James

Faculty Scholarship

This Symposium Essay examines the campaign that led up to the last presidential election to illuminate the complex interplay between race and class within our society. Specifically, it explores how race and class functioned together to disadvantage President Obama in the race to the White House (even as he ultimately won the election). Section II focuses on how Obama’s income, job status, and prestigious education functioned as markers of elitism during the campaign, even as compared to opponents with more elite and wealthier backgrounds, and how these factors were used as tools by his opponents to convince lower-class white voters …


Racist, Robert E. Steinbuch May 2009

Racist, Robert E. Steinbuch

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


A 'Ho New World: Raced And Gendered Insult As Ersatz Carnival And The Corruption Of Freedom Of Expression Norms, Lolita Buckner Inniss Jan 2009

A 'Ho New World: Raced And Gendered Insult As Ersatz Carnival And The Corruption Of Freedom Of Expression Norms, Lolita Buckner Inniss

Publications

Carnivalization, a concept developed by literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin and later employed in broad social and cultural contexts, is the tearing down of social norms, the elimination of boundaries, and the inversion of established hierarchies. It is the world turned upside down. Ersatz carnival is a pernicious, inverted form of carnival, one wherein counter-discourses propounded by outsiders are appropriated by elites and frequently redeployed to silence and exclude those same outsiders. The use of the slur "'ho" by gangsta' rappers in the performance of songs that articulate a vision of urban culture is an example of carnivalization. Thus, when words …


On Account Of Race Or Color: Race As Corporation And The Original Understanding Of Race, Reginald Oh Jan 2009

On Account Of Race Or Color: Race As Corporation And The Original Understanding Of Race, Reginald Oh

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Oh describes this essay as a critique of constitutional and political discourse on "race" and argues that current equal protection doctrine operates under a conception of race that undermines rather than moves forward the goal of achieving racial equality. That understanding defines race solely or primarily as a physical trait or characteristic, and unjustifiably rejects other, more robust notions of race. He argues that the notion of race as physical trait is inconsistent with the historical understanding of race that served as the basis for the Reconstruction Amendments. A careful examination of nineteenth and early twentieth century court decisions, decisions …


A House Divided: The Invisibility Of The Multiracial Family, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Jacob Willig-Onwuachi Jan 2009

A House Divided: The Invisibility Of The Multiracial Family, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Jacob Willig-Onwuachi

Faculty Scholarship

This Article is an invited special projects paper for the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review. It examines how society and law work together to frame the normative ideal of intimate couples and families as both heterosexual and monoracial. This Article sets out to accomplish three goals. First, it examines the daily social privileges of monoracial, heterosexual couples as a means of revealing the invisibility of interracial marriages and families within our society. Specifically, Part II of this Article uses the work of Professor Peggy McIntosh to identify unacknowledged monoracial, heterosexual-couple privileges and list unearned privileges, both social and legal, …