Law and Race Commons^™

Mommy Dearest?: Postpartum Psychosis, The American Legal System, And The Criminalization Of Mental Illness, Allison Dopazo

University of Miami Race & Social Justice Law Review

Children are often regarded as the most sacred beings in all of society—appealing to our collective sense of human dignity and protecting the most vulnerable. Mothers fiercely protecting their young children from perceived dangers is ostensibly a natural and moral response. This notion of the loving mother is in stark contrast to filicide, or the act of a parent murdering their child. It is a bedrock principle of the American criminal-justice system that a defendant is not responsible for their actions if the defendant was “laboring under such a defect of reason, from a disease of the mind, as not …

Fanon, Colonial Violence, And Racist Language In Federal American Indian Law, Joubin Khazaie

University of Miami Race & Social Justice Law Review

This Comment will argue that the racist language enshrined in foundational Supreme Court decisions involving Native tribes continuously enacts a form of colonial violence that seeks to preserve a white racial dictatorship. The paper will use Frantz Fanon’s scholarship on colonial violence and the dehumanization of Indigenous people as a framework to understand the history of legalized racism against Indigenous people in the United States. Fanon’s analysis allows us to understand how language is used to dehumanize Native people in order to establish a system of hierarchy that informs the societal roles of the colonizer and the colonized. The paper …

Closing The Gates To Racial Parity: Venture Philanthropy’S Perpetuation Of Racial Disparities In The Educational Sphere, Lauren Silk

University of Miami Race & Social Justice Law Review

In the decades-long rise of neoliberalism, venture philanthropy has emerged as a respected solution towards addressing reforms to public education. Private foundations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have led the charge for education development in the United States. However, the infusion of private donations and adoption of business models to a public good have not improved educational outcomes. This article addresses the role of venture philanthropy in reinforcing racial and economic disparities in educational resources and attainment through the lens of Gates Foundation initiatives. Specifically, the article dissects the role of neoliberalism in crafting education policies through …

Mutual Liberation: The Use And Abuse Of Non–Human Animals By The Carceral State And The Shared Roots Of Oppression, Michael Swistara

University of Miami Race & Social Justice Law Review

The carceral state has used non–human animals as tools to oppress Black, Indigenous, and People of the Global Majority (BIPGM) for centuries. From bloodhounds violently trained by settlers to aid in their genocidal colonial project through the slave dogs that enforced a racial caste system to the modern deployment of police dogs, non–consenting non–human animals have been coopted into the role of agents of oppression. Yet, the same non– human animals are themselves routinely brutalized and oppressed by the carceral state. Police kill several thousands of family’s companion dogs every year in the United States. Law enforcement agencies train animals …

A Cleave Within The Piney Woods: Nacogdoches, Stephen F. Austin State University And How Racial Integration Divided The Town And Gown, Caitlin Hornback

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Stephen F. Austin State University was once the pride and joy of the city of Nacogdoches, Texas. When the Texas State Legislature began to look for a location for their new state normal school, the people of the East Texas town fought to have it built there and the Stephen F. Austin Teacher’s College opened its doors in September 1923 to a proud community. Through the trials and tribulations of early twentieth century events, the school managed to stay afloat and grow in numbers. Dr. Ralph W. Steen became the president of the college in 1958 and he oversaw a …

America’S Race-Based Caste Structure: Its Impact In College And Professional Sports, Timothy Davis

Texas A&M Law Review

Racial inequities in college and professional sports remain prevalent and persistent despite the awareness of such inequities by those with the power to effectuate change. This Article proposes that explanations frequently offered for the slow pace of progress often fail to account for the hierarchy derived from a race-based caste system embedded in American society. Relying on the work of author Isabel Wilkerson, Part II describes major pillars of America’s race-based caste structure. Part III examines how stereotypes of Blacks’ presumed intellectual inferiority and a lack of fitness for leadership roles adversely impact their access to positions of power in …

Champions For Justice 8th Annual, May 6, 2022, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Defund The Police: Snappy Slogan Or A Viable Solution? A Case Study Of Savannah, Georgia, Michayla F. Knox

Honors College Theses

The notion of defunding the police remains a hot-button political topic since the protests of Summer 2020. The forefront of the debate concerns how defunding the police will impact crime rates. Still, the topic has scarcely been investigated empirically. This thesis provides an early examination into the relationship between "defunding the police", reallocating funding, and crime rates in Savannah, Ga. Several experiments are performed to answer three research questions that involve comparing and manipulating the budget provided for policing and the budgets for neighborhood vitality and poverty reduction. The findings show that Savannah allocates significantly more money to the policing …

Black-Owned Beef: Should Black Beef Producers Stake Space In Food Justice?, Shirah Dedman

Journal of Food Law & Policy

While there is growing interest in Black cowboys, the narrative is largely tethered to parades and urban and suburban saddle clubs, much like the fictional movie on Netflix, Concrete Cowboy. Missing from the narrative are today’s real Black cowboys: rural ranchers and farmers raising cattle for beef production and consumption.

Critical Race Theory: Faq, Candace Bond-Theriault

Center for Gender & Sexuality Law

CRT is not a comprehensive theory of law. Instead, it is an invitation to consider the role that law, even “good” civil rights laws, plays in the creation and maintenance of racial injustice.

Diversity’S Distractions Revisited: The Case Of Latinx In Higher Education, Rachel F. Moran

Faculty Scholarship

As the United States Supreme Court considers the future of affirmative action in higher education, this Article reflects on a 2003 essay by Professor Derrick Bell, which provocatively argued that diversity is a distraction from other pressing problems of access to a bachelor’s degree. The Article evaluates his claims with a focus on Latinx students, a rapidly growing segment of the college-going population. Bell believed that diversity is a less compelling justification for the use of race in admissions than corrective justice is. As a result, he predicted persistent litigation over the constitutionality of affirmative action programs. That prediction certainly …

Redressing The Past To Repair The Present: The Role Of Property Law In Creating And Exacerbating Racial Disparities In Wealth And Poverty In Nova Scotia, Melissa Marsman

LLM Theses

For over 200 years African Nova Scotians have been fighting to confirm legal title to the land on which their ancestors were settled. In 2020, the Nova Scotia Supreme Court remarked “the lack of clear title and the segregated nature of their land triggered a cycle of poverty for black families that persisted for generations.” Nova Scotia has a long history of obscure land titles; however, the ensuing cycle of poverty appears to have disproportionately impacted African Nova Scotians. This thesis reframes the African Nova Scotian land titles discourse into a broader understanding about systemic anti-Black racism and White supremacist …

Good For The Goose But Not For The Gander: Biden’S Promise To Appoint A Black Female To The Supreme Court And Title Vii Principles, Michael Conklin

Texas A&M Law Review

The 2022 retirement of Justice Stephen Breyer and President Joe Biden’s promise to exclude all non-Black females from consideration for his replacement has sparked controversy. Some have praised the decision as essential to ensuring diversity on the Court and point out that there are more than enough qualified Black women to select from. And some believe the decision will result in corporate leaders making similar calls for equity in their own companies. Others have criticized the decision, expressing a belief that discriminating on the basis of race and gender is “not a great start in selecting someone sworn to provide …

The Skin, The Law, And Women In The United States From The 1600s To The 1960s, Hannah Knight

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

For a country that has been built on the legacy of freedom and the idea of individual rights, the United States has a history of legalizing oppressive policies and denying rights and freedom based on the color of one’s skin. As scholars take on the issue of Colorism within the American society, this thesis works to examine the origins of white supremacy and its legalization through the institutions of American enslavement and the era of Jim Crow. First examining the portrayal of those of African descent and its connection to white supremacy during the period of enslavement, this thesis relies …

Walking Back The System Trope: Reimagining Incarceration And The State Through A Spatial Theory Approach, Cody Hunter

All Dissertations

This dissertation critiques the systems theory approach to incarceration policy, practice, and research and proposes a rhetorically informed spatial theory approach as an alternative. Offering a non-hierarchical complexity theory as a bridge between systems and space, I then integrate rhetorical listening as a strategy for navigating and operationalizing our proposed spatial theory approach. I then apply our proposed methodology to archival research, focusing on the South Carolina Penitentiary as a case study, and offer two heuretic experiments to explore the range of this methodology for archival research. I also explore potential applications of this rhetorically informed spatial theory approach in …

Toward Evidence-Based Antiracist Policymaking: Problems And Proposals For Better Racial Data Collection And Reporting, Neda Khoshkhoo, Aviva Geiger Schwarz, Luisa Godinez Puig, Caitlin Glass, Geoffrey S. Holtzman, Elaine O. Nsoesie, Jasmine Gonzales Rose

Faculty Scholarship

The study of data concerning racial and ethnic inequities and disparities allows us to better understand experiences of racism, and to see more clearly how and where racism manifests. Studying the effects of racism, in turn, allows us to more easily identify racist policies, so that we can craft antiracist interventions.

Existing race and ethnicity data collection efforts are riddled with gaps and errors, including missing and incomplete data, insufficiently disaggregated data, lack of meaningful longitudinal data, infrequently updated data, non-standardized methodologies, and other problems. These deficiencies significantly hinder evidence-based antiracist policymaking.

This policy report examines the state of racial …

Symposium Transcript

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Gardener's Tale: Confronting Racial Discrimination At The Intersection Of The School-To-Prison Pipeline And Adolescent Health, Sogand Falahatpour

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

Racism is a public health crisis and it is killing Black youth. Systemic racism

in education is a root cause of a long list of inequities faced by Black

youth. These inequities compound over the years and create extreme hurdles

to academic success and, in many cases, are hazardous to overall health.

The school-to-prison pipeline is a severe health equity issue affecting

Black children and adolescents. Racism is a core social determinant of health

that has a profound impact on child and adolescent health. Moreover, health

is not just an individual matter; institutional and structural forces influence

who has access …

Integrating Doctrine And Diversity Speaker Series: Auditing Your Syllabus & Classroom Materials 04-26-2022, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Transcript, Zulene Mayfield, Carol Kazeem, Kearni Warren, Kyle Powis Whyte, Ana Baptista, Jacqui Patterson, Dorcas Gilmore

Panel III: Moving Forward

No abstract provided.