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Full-Text Articles in Law and Race
Amending A Racist Constitution, William J. Aceves
Amending A Racist Constitution, William J. Aceves
Faculty Scholarship
Ours is a racist Constitution. Despite its soaring language, it was founded on slavery and a commitment to racial inequality. This vision is etched in the constitutional text, from the notorious Three-Fifths Clause to the equally repugnant Fugitive Slave Clause. And despite the Civil War and the Reconstruction Amendments, the Constitution retains these vestiges of slavery in its fabric. After 230 years, it is time to remove these troubling provisions from the Constitution. This Essay offers a radical departure from prior constitutional practice. Instead of appending yet another amendment that would simply require readers to ignore the offending language, this …
Desnatada: Latina Illumination Of Breastfeeding, Race, And Injustice, Jasmine Gonzales Rose
Desnatada: Latina Illumination Of Breastfeeding, Race, And Injustice, Jasmine Gonzales Rose
Faculty Scholarship
In Skimmed: Breastfeeding, Race, and Injustice, Andrea Freeman brilliantly explains how racism results in lower breastfeeding rates by Black mothers,1 which in turn results in poorer health outcomes--including higher mortality rates--for Black babies.2 She provides four primary reasons for this phenomenon: (1) the history and legacy of slavery, (2) the imposition of racist gender stereotypes on Black women, (3) racially-targeted formula promotion by manufacturers and hospitals, and (4) government benefits and employment policies that obstruct poor people's ability to breastfeed. The first two of these reasons are particularly devastating: the legacy of slavery and misogynoiristic3 stereotypes …
Crisis? Whose Crisis?, Jack M. Beermann
Crisis? Whose Crisis?, Jack M. Beermann
Faculty Scholarship
Every moment in human history can be characterized by someone as “socially and politically charged.” For a large portion of the population of the United States, nearly the entire history of the country has been socially and politically charged, first because they were enslaved and then because they were subjected to discriminatory laws and unequal treatment under what became known as “Jim Crow.” The history of the United States has also been a period of social and political upheaval for American Indians, the people who occupied the territory that became the United States before European settlement. Although both African-Americans and …
Reparations For Slavery And Jim Crow, Its Assumptions And Implications, David B. Lyons
Reparations For Slavery And Jim Crow, Its Assumptions And Implications, David B. Lyons
Faculty Scholarship
This paper develops the case for reparations to African Americans today, based on wrongdoing that began with slavery, that was not repaired by Reconstruction, that was continued in new forms under Jim Crow, and that left a deeply-entrenched legacy of disadvantage despite civil rights reforms of the twentieth century. It reviews relevant aspects of U.S. history and policies since 1607 and lays out the moral considerations that call for a system of reparations far beyond anything yet contemplated by American society. It argues that cash payments, while needed, would not suffice, because slavery and Jim Crow were not just a …
Why Reparations To African Descendants In The United States Are Essential To Democracy, Adjoa A. Aiyetoro
Why Reparations To African Descendants In The United States Are Essential To Democracy, Adjoa A. Aiyetoro
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Can We Talk? How Triggers For Unconscious Racism Strengthen The Importance Of Dialogue, Adjoa A. Aiyetoro
Can We Talk? How Triggers For Unconscious Racism Strengthen The Importance Of Dialogue, Adjoa A. Aiyetoro
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Dangerous Woman: Elizabeth Key's Freedom Suit - Subjecthood And Racialized Identity In Seventheenth Century Colonial Virginia, Taunya Lovell Banks
Dangerous Woman: Elizabeth Key's Freedom Suit - Subjecthood And Racialized Identity In Seventheenth Century Colonial Virginia, Taunya Lovell Banks
Faculty Scholarship
Elizabeth Key, an African-Anglo woman living in seventeenth century colonial Virginia sued for her freedom after being classified as a negro by the overseers of her late master’s estate. Her lawsuit is one of the earliest freedom suits in the English colonies filed by a person with some African ancestry. Elizabeth’s case also highlights those factors that distinguished indenture from life servitude—slavery in the mid-seventeenth century. She succeeds in securing her freedom by crafting three interlinking legal arguments to demonstrate that she was a member of the colonial society in which she lived. Her evidence was her asserted ancestry—English; her …
Introduction Symposium: The Jurisprudence Of Slavery Reparations: Introduction, Keith N. Hylton
Introduction Symposium: The Jurisprudence Of Slavery Reparations: Introduction, Keith N. Hylton
Faculty Scholarship
On April 9th and 10th, 2004, Boston University School of Law sponsored a symposium titled The Jurisprudence of Slavery Reparations. As the principal conference organizers, we are pleased and a bit awestruck to see the symposium contributions published in this issue of the Boston University Law Review. The papers published here - in the first symposium of its kind in a major law review - should serve as an immensely valuable reference on the jurisprudence of reparations
The Annapolis Poll Books Of 1800 And 1804: African American Voting In The Early Republic, David S. Bogen
The Annapolis Poll Books Of 1800 And 1804: African American Voting In The Early Republic, David S. Bogen
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.