Law and Race Commons^™

Gen Y More Black Corporate Directors, Chaz Brooks

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Corporate diversity has been in the spotlight for decades. Recent efforts have followed years of legal scholarship, arguments on the business rationale for greater diversity, and more recently, the racial unrest during the summer of 2020. Called by some, a “racial reckoning,” the summer of 2020 catalyzed many corporate declarations on the importance of diversity, and more to the point of this article, the necessity of righting the economic disadvantages of Black Americans. This article looks specifically at one intervention by a corporate player following summer 2020, Nasdaq’s volley to increase corporate diversity through required disclosure. This article reviews the …

Panel 1 - Towards Effective Governmental Intervention: Ending Discrimination In The Workplace, Rebecca Salawdeh, Patrick Patterson, Victoria Lipnic, Carol Miaskoff, Hnin Khaing

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

FACILITATOR: Good morning, everyone and welcome to the “Enhancing Antidiscrimination Laws in Education and Employment Symposium”, hosted by the American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law, the American, and the National Institute for Workers’ Rights (“Institute”). And without further ado, let me pass it off to the Institute’s board president, Rebecca Salawdeh

Hair Me Out: Why Discrimination Against Black Hair Is Race Discrimination Under Title Vii, Alexis Boyd

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

In May 2010, Chastity Jones sought employment as a customer service representative at Catastrophe Management Solutions (“CMS”), a claims processing company located in Mobile, Alabama. When asked for an inperson interview, Jones, a Black woman, arrived in a suit and her hair in “short dreadlocks,” or locs, a type of natural hairstyle common in the Black community. Despite being qualified for the position, Jones would later have her offer rescinded because of her hair. CMS claimed that locs “tend to get messy” and violated the “neutral” dress code and hair policy requiring employees to be “professional and business-like.” Therefore, CMS …

How To Get Away With Discrimination: The Use Of Algorithms To Discriminate In The Internet Entertainment Industry, Sumra Wahid

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

In July 2021, Ziggi Tyler posted a video on TikTok, a popular video sharing platform, where he expressed his frustration with being a Black content creator on TikTok. The video showed Ziggi typing phrases such as “Black Lives Matter” or “Black success” into his Marketplace creator bio, which the app would immediately flag as inappropriate content. However, when Ziggi replaced those words with “white supremacy” or “white success,” no inappropriateness warning appeared. Although a TikTok spokesperson responded to the video clarifying that the app had mistakenly flagged phrases without considering word order, Ziggi refused to let an algorithm absolve TikTok …

Panel 4 - Severe Or Pervasive: Towards Empowering Workers, Allegra Fishel, Joe Sellers, Bernice Yeung, Ann Mcginley, Alexis Ronickher

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

FACILITATOR: All right. We’re back and I wanted to introduce our moderator for our panel, Severe or Pervasive: Towards Empowering Workers. We have Ms. Allegra Fishel moderating. Ms. Fishel is a seasoned civil rights advocate and the founder of The Gender Equality Law Center. So, thank you so much for being here and, Ms. Fishel, I turn it over to you.

Panel 5 - The Future Of Employment Law, Karla Gilbride, Geraldine Sumter, Stephen Rich, Marcia Mccormick, Michael Selmi

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

FACILITATOR: All right everyone, welcome to our last panel, “The Future of Employment Law.” I want to quickly introduce our moderator, Karla Gilbride, the co-director of the Access to Justice Project. Karla, you can take it away.

A Critical Jeffersonian Mind For A Community Reinvestment Bind, Chaz Brooks

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 ("CRA") primarily sought to remedy decades of government sanctioned disinvestment in so-called “redlined communities.” Through the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation and later the Federal Housing Administration, the United States of America created from whole cloth a structure that encouraged and subsidized the explosion of homeownership in white American households. Following decades of racialized wealth generation, the United States had a change of heart. Congress determined that financiers needed a gentle push to invest fairly. Additionally, Congress wanted one thing clear in the drafting of this remedy—it must not allocate credit.

This essay considers how …

Foreword Introduction To Symposium: Enhancing Anti-Discrimination Laws In Education And Employment, Susan D. Carle

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

When this Symposium was first conceived in the Summer of 2021, the nation was just emerging from the first phases of the COVID-19 pandemic. This was the beginning of trying to go back to life as normal. Given this reawakening, the Symposium’s planning committee felt the urgency of a need to regroup, rethink, and reassess the state of employment antidiscrimination law. We were not sure where others would be on this possible project, given the newness of the hopeful end to lockdowns and social isolation and return to “normal” concerns. But we quickly found that those who joined the Symposium …

Panel 2 - Unreported Shortcomings Of Title Ix, Lisa Taylor, Leslie Annexstein, Elizabeth Kristein, Natasha Martin, Elizabeth Kristen

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

MODERATOR: Hello, everyone, and welcome to our second panel, Unreported Shortcomings of Title IX. I’m going to start off with a quick introduction of our moderator. Today we have Dean Lisa Taylor who is our Dean for Diversity, Inclusion and Affinity Relations at WCL. She is much beloved by students of the Journal and students of WCL in general. And I know she is going to kick off a great panel. Dean Taylor, it’s all yours.

Reflection On Progress Without Equity: Title Ix K-12 Athletics At Fifty, Elizabeth Kristen

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (“Title IX”) turned fifty this year. Despite tremendous progress for women and girls over the last five decades, the promise of gender equity in athletics remains elusive, especially at the K-12 level. Unlike so many other civil rights laws passed in the 1960s and 1970s, Title IX remains a highly under-litigated and underenforced statute. A basic Westlaw search for “Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964” yields more than 10,000 federal cases. But the same search for “Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972” yields about 2500 cases. Only …

Ensuring The Laws Barring Sexual Harassment Protect The Reticent Victim, Joseph M. Sellers, Aniko R. Schwarcz

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

According to multiple employee surveys, sexual harassment is one of the most underreported forms of abuse in the workplace. There are a number of reasons that reportedly account for this reluctance to complain about sexual harassment. They include the potential shame, embarrassment, and fear that may accompany reports of sexual harassment and the blame and heightened scrutiny of the victim that may be prompted by these complaints. Unlike most other forms of discrimination, where their presence may be inferred from patterns observed in workforce data, sexual harassment is typically undetectable and certainly not actionable unless it is the subject of …

The Battle Over Bostock: Dueling Presidential Administrations & The Need For Consistent And Reliable Lgbt Rights, Regina L. Hillman

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

In the summer of 2020, the Supreme Court released its opinion in the landmark civil rights case, Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia. In the Bostock decision, the Court held that protections from employment discrimination “because of sex” under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (“Title VII”) include discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Prior to the Court’s decision, millions of LGBT employees had no protection from discriminatory treatment based on sexual orientation or gender identity, and discrimination was pervasive.

The Law Of Friends, Ezra Rosser

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

A serious law professor would not write an article about the TV show Friends, but having just written a book and an article, I’m on a “break.” Besides, I’m not that serious a law professor. And Friends is as good a topic as any. For those of us of a certain age—too young to have watched M.A.S.H. when it came out and old enough to remember watching broadcast TV and not just through a streaming service on a device—Friends was and is a big deal. It both captured a particular moment in history and helped make that moment.

Looking back …

Rubber Bullets And The Black Lives Matters Protests, Talia Doumani, Jamil Dakwar

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

#Livingwhileblack: Blackness As Nuisance, Taja-Nia Y. Henderson, Jamila Jefferson-Jones

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Equality Is A Brokered Idea, Robert Tsai

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This essay examines the Supreme Court's stunning decision in the census case, Department of Commerce v. New York. I characterize Chief Justice John Roberts' decision to side with the liberals as an example of pursuing the ends of equality by other means – this time, through the rule of reason. Although the appeal was limited in scope, the stakes for political and racial equality were sky high. In blocking the administration from adding a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, 5 members of the Court found the justification the administration gave to be a pretext. In this instance, that lie …

Acting Differently: How Science On The Social Brain Can Inform Antidiscrimination Law, Susan Carle

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Legal scholars are becoming increasingly interested in how the literature on implicit bias helps explain illegal discrimination. However, these scholars have not yet mined all of the insights that science on the social brain can offer antidiscrimination law. That science, which researchers refer to as social neuroscience, involves a broadly interdisciplinary approach anchored in experimental natural science methodologies. Social neuroscience shows that the brain tends to evaluate others by distinguishing between "us" versus "them" on the basis of often insignificant characteristics, such as how people dress, sing, joke, or otherwise behave. Subtle behavioral markers signal social identity and group membership, …

Building Bridges: Examining Race And Privilege In Community Economic Development: Introductory Overview, Priya Baskaran

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Publicly Charged: A Critical Examination Of Immigration Public Benefit Restrictions, Cori Alonso-Yoder

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Since the early days of the Trump Administration, reports of the President’s controversial and dramatic immigration policies have dominated the news. Yet, despite the intensity of this coverage, an immigration policy with far broader implications for millions of immigrants and their U.S.citizen family members has dodged the same media glare. By expanding the definition of who constitutes a “public charge” under immigration law, the Administration has begun a process to restrict legal immigration and chill the use of welfare benefits around the country. The doctrine of public charge exclusion developed from colonial times and has reemerged in Trump Administration policies …

Why The Legal Strategy Of Exploiting Immigrant Families Should Worry Us All, Jamie Abrams

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This article applies a family law lens to explore the systemic and traumatic effects of modern laws and policies on immigrant families. A family law lens widens the scope of individuals harmed by recent immigration laws and policies to show why all families are affected and harmed by shifts in state power, state action, and state rhetoric. The family law lens reveals a worrisome shift in intentionality that has moved the state from a bystander to family-based immigration trauma to an incendiary agent perpetrating family trauma.

Modern immigration laws and policies are deploying legal and political strategies that intentionally sever …

Racial Purges, Robert Tsai

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

The Economic Justice Imperative For Lawyers In Trump Country, Priya Baskaran

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This article serves as a call to action for rural law schools to meaningfully incorporate economic justice into transactional legal education, and in doing so, train much needed rural advocates, legal experts, and local leaders. Rural areas are continuously portrayed as “Trump Country” in today’s mainstream media coverage, which largely focuses on socio-cultural differences between urban and rural areas. Many rural scholars and activists are troubled by the “Trump Country” label as it masks the structural poverty issues that lead to housing insecurity, water insecurity, poor public health indicators, unemployment, underemployment, troubled public education systems, and environmental degradation impacting both …

Addressing The Lack Of Diversity In The Legal Profession, At The Undergraduate Level, Michael W. Carroll, Troy Romero

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The study and practice of law is among the most respected and well-regarded pursuits; unfortunately, it is also among the least diverse. The persistent and alarming lack of diversity is prevalent in the industry regardless of the culture. In the United States and in Europe, statistics show that lawyers are overwhelmingly comprised by white males, especially in the higher ranks of the profession. Several factors contribute to this lack of diversity, including access to legal professionals and costs associated with pursuing a legal degree. Several strategies have been initiated to increase diversity in the field, including increasing awareness of the …

The Washington Redskins Case And The Search For Dignity, Victoria Phillips

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

INTRODUCTION: For more than sixty years, Native American activists have been involved in discussions and protests over the appropriation and use of tribal references in sports names, logos, and mascots. During this same period, many of these uses have since been changed, driven by civil rights struggles and a growing awareness of the proven social harms and racism inherent in these references. Despite a gradual movement towards abolition and evolving signs of cultural understanding, many mascots invoking Native names and imagery persist today across professional, collegiate, and local school district sports. These mascots and team names, and the trademarks associated …

Stories Of Teaching Race, Gender, And Class: A Narrative, Brenda V. Smith

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This Essay transcribes and discusses Smith's keynote speech at the New England Clinical Conference at Harvard Law School in November, 2015. Smith's speech discusses the intersection between race, gender, and class, highlighting them as sites of vulnerability through a personal storytelling lens. By sharing her individual experiences, Smith hopes to draw attention to insecurities and threats faced by many individuals who refuse to speak out.

Angry Employees: Revisiting Insubordination In Title Vii Cases, Susan Carle, Susan D. Carle

Faculty Collected Scholarship and Works

In too many Title VII cases, employees find themselves thrown out of court because they reacted angrily to reasonable perceptions of employer discrimination. In the race context, supervisors repeatedly call employees the n-word and use other racial epithets, order African American employees to perform work others in the same job classification do not have to do, and impose discipline white employees do not face for the comparable conduct. In the gender context, courts throw out plaintiffs’ cases even where supervisors engage in egregious sexual harassment. Employees who react angrily to such demeaning treatment—by cursing, shouting, refusing an order or leaving …

Stories Of Teaching Race, Gender, And Class: A Narrative, Brenda V. Smith

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This Essay arises out of the keynote speech that I gave at the New England Clinical Conference at Harvard Law School in November 2015. The conference theme was, “Teaching Race, Gender and Class: Learning from Our Students, Communities and Each Other.” The primary planners and hosts for the conference were clinical teachers and programs in the Northeast, but participants came from around the country to talk about the importance of addressing race, gender and class in this moment of black lives mattering. They wanted to talk about the way that these issues of race, gender and class had always been …

The Collapse Of The House That Ruth Built: The Impact Of The Feeder System On Female Judges And The Federal Judiciary, 1970-2014, Alexandra G. Hess

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Brown's Dream Deferred: Lessons On Democracy And Identity From Cooper V. Arron To The School-To-Prison Pipeline, Lia Epperson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

A Perfect Storm -- The Negative Effects Of Felony Voting Laws And The Repeal Of Section 4 Of The Voting Rights Act On Minority Americans, Genevive Saul

The Modern American

No abstract provided.