Law and Race Commons^™

Book Review Of Desegregating Texas Schools: Eisenhower, Shivers, And The Crisis At Mansfield High, Davison M. Douglas

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Guns, Youth Violence, And Social Identity In Inner Cities, Jeffrey Fagan, Deanna L. Wilkinson

Faculty Scholarship

While youth violence has always been a critical part of delinquency, the modern epidemic is marked by high rates of gun violence. Adolescents in cities possess and carry guns on a large scale, guns are often at the scene of youth violence, and guns often are used. Guns play a central role in initiating, sustaining, and elevating the epidemic of youth violence. The demand for guns among youth was fueled by an "ecology of danger," comprising street gangs, expanding drug markets with high intrinsic levels of violence, high rates of adult violence and fatalities, and cultural styles of gun possession …

Playing Race Cards: Constructing A Proactive Defense Of Affirmative Action, Kimberlé W. Crenshaw

Faculty Scholarship

On behalf of the African American Policy Forum ("AAPF"), I am pleased to participate in this symposium as a co-sponsor and contributor. The AAPF, who together with Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) and the Women's Roundtable constitute the Women's Media Initiative, believes that events such as these are critical in efforts to map strategies for intervening in public debates surrounding affirmative action and a host of related issues such as welfare reform, racial profiling, the prison industrial complex, and the concentration of wealth, just to name a few. As one of many organizations that have taken up the defense …

Profile Of The Law Of The Navajo Nation, Bidtah N. Becker, Navajo Nation

Tribal Law Journal

The Navajo Nation is a non-IRA5 tribe and is not governed by a written constitution. The Navajo Nation government consists of a three-branch system. The nation has a six volume, twenty-four title6 code. Title II outlines the administration of tribal affairs, including the executive and legislative branches. Title VII outlines duties of the judiciary. The modern Navajo Nation government is best described as a western / traditional blend of governance.

Race, Gender, And The Law In The Twenty-First Century Workplace: Some Preliminary Observations, Susan P. Sturm

Faculty Scholarship

This article seeks to move beyond the debate between informal and formal legal regulation. Both approaches reflect essential but limited components of a legal regulatory regime. Neither approach adequately responds to the simultaneous challenges of changing organizational structure, racial and gender dynamics, and market-driven demands for flexibility and adaptiveness. The next step requires that we take account of the critiques of formality and informality. This requires embracing the challenge of developing new forms of legal regulation that treat organizational decision makers and incentive structures explicitly as part of the legal regulatory regime. In this view, law consists of a set …

African-Americans, Latinos, And The Construction Of Race: Toward An Epistemic Coalition, George A. Martinez

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Latinos will soon become the largest minority group in the United States. African-Americans may therefore be about to give up political clout to Latinos. This prospect has generated tension between African-Americans and Latinos. Given this background, it is important for Critical Race Theory and Latino Critical Theory to consider the matter of the African-American/Latino relationship. With this in mind, the author discusses two important questions posed by the organizers of this panel: (1) How is the relationship between African-Americans and Latinos affected by the construction of race? and (2) Can Critical Race Theory benefit by a consideration of the race …

The Nations Within: Race, Class, Region And American Lethal Violence, Darnell F. Hawkins

University of Colorado Law Review

No abstract provided.

Borders (En)Gendered: Normativities, Latinas, And A Latcrit Paradigm, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Essay, developed in a prologue and three parts, adopts Latinas'/os' world traveling as a metaphor for Latina/o multidimensionality and as a springboard for LatCrit theorizing. The Prologue is a brief diary entry of unfin de semana viajando mundos - a weekend of actual traveling between New York and Miami; law and familia; profesora and learner; colleague and hija; español and English; norte y sur; normativa and other; indigenous and alien. This abbreviated record of a Latina's life reveals, exposes, and unveils Latinas'/os' daily crossdressing simply by virtue of their latinidad. This Prologue thus serves as a concrete backdrop for …

Indivisible Identities: Culture Clashes, Confused Constructs And Reality Checks, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol

UF Law Faculty Publications

This essay, an expansion of remarks delivered at the LatCrit I Conference -- the first conference ever convened to discuss and explore critical legal thought from a Latina/o perspective -- develops a basis for articulating a LatCrit theory. As the introductory section, "LatCrit: The Voice for Latina/o Narratives" sets out, Latinas/os are a diverse community, whose identity components -- race, sex, ethnicity, language, and sexuality to name a few of the pertinent ones -- are indivisible yet diverse and varied. Such diversity, to date, has not allowed for a cohesive Latina/o theoretical model to be articulated. Rather, it has been …

Note, Moving Ground, Breaking Traditions: Tasha’S Chronicle, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Faculty Scholarship

This Note uses a fictional dialogue to analyze and engage issues concerning stereotypes, stigmas, and affirmative action. It also highlights the importance of role models for students of color and the disparate hiring practices of law firms and legal employers through the conversations and thoughts of its main character, Tasha Crenshaw.

The Future Of Racial Redistricting In Voting: Clark V. Calhoun County, Mississippi., Paul H. Dickerson

In the Public Interest

No abstract provided.

The Liberty Dimension Of Historic And Contemporary Segregation, James W. Nickel

Articles

No abstract provided.

Scenes From The Southside: A Desegregation Drama In Five Acts, Jennifer E. Spreng

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Playing The "Culture Card": Trials In A Mutli-Cultural Democracy, Richard O. Lempert

Articles

As I write, the racial divide in America is said to be greater than at any time in the past 25 years.' Two events are blamed: the O.J. Simpson criminal trial and the Louis Farrakan led "Million Man March." That these events should exacerbate racial division is extraordinary. The Farrakan led march brought together between 400,000 and 800,000 black males to pledge that they would take the kind of responsibility for their actions and their families that white Americans have long argued they should take. The O.J. Simpson trial was more a "who done it" than a racial morality play. …

Playing The "Culture Card": Trials In A Multicultural Democracy, Richard Lempert

Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

The Black Public Sphere And Mainstream Majoritarian Politics, Regina Austin

Vanderbilt Law Review

As a person who pays only passing attention to formal black electoral politics, let alone the Voting Rights Act and the Supreme Court's attempts to decimate it, it is a privilege and a daunting challenge to respond to Professor Karlan's Article, Loss and Redemption: Voting Rights at the Turn of a Century. At the outset, I felt inadequate to the task. My research has largely focused on informal black socioeconomic development and discourse, most of which occurs far from the spotlight of the political mainstream., The only formal politics with which I am concerned occurs primarily at the local, grass- …

The Devil And The One Drop Rule: Racial Categories, African Americans, And The U.S. Census, Christine B. Hickman

Michigan Law Review

For generations, the boundaries of the African-American race have been formed by a rule, informally known as the "one drop rule," which, in its colloquial definition, provides that one drop of Black blood makes a person Black. In more formal, sociological circles, the rule is known as a form of "hypodescent" and its meaning remains basically the same: anyone with a known Black ancestor is considered Black. Over the generations, this rule has not only shaped countless lives, it has created the African-American race as we know it today, and it has defined not just the history of this race …

The Unwelcome Judicial Obligation To Respect Politics In Racial Gerrymandering Remedies, Jeffrey L. Fisher

Michigan Law Review

Like it or not, the attack on "bizarrely" shaped majority-minority electoral districts is now firmly underway. Nearly four years have passed since the Supreme Court first announced in Shaw v. Reno that a state's redistricting plan that is "so extremely irregular on its face that it rationally can be viewed only as an effort to segregate the races for purposes of voting" may violate the Equal Protection Clause. Such a district, the Court held, reinforces racial stereotypes, carries us further from the goal of a political system in which race no longer matters, and "threatens to undermine our system of …

Loss And Redemption: Voting Rights At The Turn Of A Century, Pamela S. Karlan

Vanderbilt Law Review

The year the Voting Rights Act was passed, Langston Hughes published Long View: Negro. "Sighted through the [t]elescope of dreams," Hughes wrote, Emancipation loomed very large:

"But turn the telescope around, Look through the larger end- And wonder why What was so large Becomes so small Again."

We don't really need to wonder why the political side of the First Reconstruction failed; there were so many reasons. One was the exhaustion of the national commitment to ensuring black equality and its replacement by a cynical bipartisan compromise in which black aspirations played no role. Another was the "progressive" belief that …

Foreword: "Racialism" And Reason, Frank I. Michelman

Michigan Law Review

Clueless, I am not; but still I can wonder why I, of all people, was recruited to write a foreword for this symposium - sight unseen, before its component papers had even been submitted. Neither legal representation nor the teaching of it has ever been for me a main activity or focus of scholarly reflection. Although I have written occasionally about race - in defense of busing, on the side of affirmative action - no one could mistake me for a critical race theorist. I am the original-model imperial scholar, as of last report only partially redeemed. "Liberal" is the …

Beyond "Sellouts" And "Race Cards": Black Attorneys And The Straitjacket Of Legal Practice, Margaret M. Russell

Michigan Law Review

For attorneys of color, the concept of "representing race" within the context of everyday legal practice is neither new nor voluntarily learned; at a basic level, it is what we do whenever we enter a courtroom or conference room in the predominantly white legal system of this country.

Legal Narratives, Theraputic Narratives: The Invisibility And Omnipresence Of Race And Gender, Leslie G. Espinoza

Michigan Law Review

My first introduction to Denise Gray was through a form. The intake sheet was dated October 17, 1994. The legal problem was straightforward. My introduction to Denise Gray would come much later. I am a clinical law professor. The clinic, Boston College Legal Assistance Bureau, is known as "LAB." I teach students law by supervising them as they represent, usually for the first time, a real person with real problems.

Vampires Anonymous And Critical Race Practice, Robert A. Williams Jr.

Michigan Law Review

I can only explain what Vampires Anonymous has done for me by telling my story. I know, stories, particularly autobiographical stories, are currently being dissed by some law professors. Raised in an overly obsessive, objectively neutralized cultural style, they are plain and simple Storyhaters. Their middle to upper class parents had money, a home in the burbs, and nice kids who were going to go on from their fancy grade schools and college preparatory gigs to Harvard/Stanford/Yale - all those types of pricey places where law professors usually come from. These kids were raised to be objective, neutral, neutered, fair, …

Representing Race Outside Of Explicitly Racialized Contexts, Naomi R. Cahn

Michigan Law Review

Welfare "as we know it" ended in 1996, a victim of a conservatism that views welfare recipients as lazy and immoral. One aspect of welfare that is, however, unlikely to experience radical change is child support. More vigorous child support enforcement has become an increasingly important component of federal welfare reform bills over the past two decades because of the twin hopes of fiscal and parental responsibility: first, that child support will reimburse welfare costs, and second, that fathers will take more responsibility for their children. Child support programs within the welfare system perpetuate a negative perception of poor people. …

The Underrepresentation Of Minorities In The Legal Profession: A Critical Race Theorist's Perspective, Alex M. Johnson Jr.

Michigan Law Review

Over the last four years, I have taught a course in Critical Race Theory at the University of Virginia School of Law three times. Although each course is different, given the interplay between the teacher and the students and the integration of new developments into the course, there has been one constant subject that the students and I address: Of what import is the development of Critical Race Theory for the legal profession and larger society? Can Critical Race Theory have a positive or any effect for those outside legal academia? This article represents an attempt to explore that question …

Unshackling Black Motherhood, Dorothy E. Roberts

Michigan Law Review

When stories about the prosecutions of women for using drugs during pregnancy first appeared in newspapers in 1989, I immediately suspected that most of the defendants were Black women. Charging someone with a crime for giving birth to a baby seemed to fit into the legacy of devaluing Black mothers. I was so sure of this intuition that I embarked on my first major law review article based on the premise that the prosecutions perpetuated Black women's subordination. My hunch turned out to be right: a memorandum prepared by the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project documented cases brought against pregnant women …

Lynching Ethics: Toward A Theory Of Racialized Defenses, Anthony V. Alfieri

Michigan Law Review

So much depends upon a rope in Mobile, Alabama. To hang Michael Donald, Henry Hays and James "Tiger" Knowles tied up "a piece of nylon rope about twenty feet long, yellow nylon." They borrowed the rope from Frank Cox, Hays's brother-in-law. Cox "went out in the back" of his mother's "boatshed, or something like that, maybe it was in the lodge." He "got a rope," climbed into the front seat of Hays's Buick Wildcat, and handed it to Knowles sitting in the back seat. So much depends upon a noose. Knowles "made a hangman's noose out of the rope," thirteen …

Rodrigo's Thirteenth Chronicle: Legal Formalism And Law's Discontents, Richard Delgado

Michigan Law Review

Professor! You're back! Rodrigo leaped to his feet and shook my hand fervently. "I heard a rumor you might be coming. What good news! Sit down. Did the authorities give you any trouble?"

Afterword: Other Americas, Angela P. Harris

Michigan Law Review

In an article published by Harper's Magazine in July 1991, James Traub, a white journalist, reported that participants on "The Gary Byrd Show," a New York City-based black radio talk show, insisted on attributing nearly every event adversely affecting African Americans to racist conspiracies. Traub titled his article "A CounterReality Grows in Harlem," and he was clearly shocked and dismayed by what he saw as the widespread irrationalism, even paranoia, of Harlem's black residents. His article suggested that the emergence of this counterreality was a measure of the dangerous isolation of certain segments of African America from the rest of …

Critical Race Praxis: Race Theory And Political Lawyering Practice In Post-Civil Rights America, Eric K. Yamamoto

Michigan Law Review

At the end of the twentieth century, the legal status of Chinese Americans in San Francisco's public schools turns on a requested judicial finding that a desegregation order originally designed to dismantle a system subordinating nonwhites now invidiously discriminates against Chinese Americans. Brian Ho, Patrick Wong, and Hilary Chen, plaintiffs in Ho v. San Francisco Unified School District, represent "all [16,000] children of Chinese descent" eligible to attend San Francisco's public schools. Their high-profile suit, filed by small-firm attorneys, challenges the validity of a 1983 judicial consent decree desegregating San Francisco's schools. Approved in response to an NAACP class action …