Law and Race Commons^™

Underlying Racism Within The Opioid Epidemic, Hannah L.A.S. Wilson

Brigham Young University Prelaw Review

Within the past century, the United States attempted different legal

avenues to address drug abuse. Some of these efforts made access

to drugs punishable and illegal. Others encouraged research to look

at underlying issues of drug abuse and implement those findings.

Within the past fifty years, these laws tended to treat drug addicts

as criminals instead of as persons suffering from a health crisis.

According to the FBI and Uniform Crime Reports, from the 1980’s

to the 2000’s, drug arrests rose by 1.5 million per year, while drug

usage rates stayed the same.3 The severe increase in the criminalization

and …

Disaggregation & Diversity: A Case For Race Conscious Admissions, Connor Oniki

Brigham Young University Prelaw Review

Since its founding, people all over the world have looked towards

America as a land of opportunity. Immigrants viewed it as a place

for fresh starts, new beginnings, and equal chances. However, for

centuries, concrete and subtle barriers have slowed the opportunity

for progress for those who are not in the majority. Throughout America’s

beginnings, lawmakers legalized segregation and discrimination

throughout the country multiple times. The Chinese Exclusion

Act prevented Asian Americans from immigrating to the United

States to pursue opportunities. Jim Crow laws enforced racial segregation

and ensured that though African Americans were no longer

enslaved, they did not …

Reclaiming The Black Personhood: The Power Of The Hip-Hop Narrative In Mainstream Rap, Morgan Klatskin

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

Hip hop, as a cultural phenomenon, leverages rap as a narrative form in periods of acutely visible political unrest in the Black American community to combat pejorative narratives of Black America as revealed in the American criminal justice system’s treatment of Black Americans. Hip-hop themes were prevalent in golden-age rap of the 1980s in response Regan-era war-on-drugs policy, which severely disadvantaged the Black community and devalued the Black personhood. Hip hop used narrative to reclaim the Black personhood while it served to encourage political involvement in the Black community, urging Blacks to participate in rewriting the narrative of Black America. …