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Bête Noire: How Race-Based Policing Threatens National Security
This Article asserts that race-based policing, enabled and exacerbated by race-blind judicial review, creates an ire with a purpose that promises, especially after September 11, to make us all less safe. The illegitimate marginalization of American citizens aggravates an already alienated population and primes them for cooperation with those who seek to harm the United States. Race-based policing guts the expectation of fair-dealing, legitimacy, and justice in the criminal justice system, creating marginalized populations, especially of African Americans. Lack of judicial redress in the face of such policing irrevocably stains already beleaguered African Americans (and others so policed) as inferior citizens. This, in turn, may actualize a catalyst of cooperative opportunity and vulnerability for those who seek to injure the United States, its institutions, and its people.Foreword, Separate but Unequal: The Status of America’s Public Schools
This Symposium, convened by the Michigan Journal of Race & Law, was designed to address many of the issues raised by Donny Gonzalez, a student at a Washington, D.C. high school, on the subject of poverty and race and its effects on school-aged youth. Bringing together a diverse group of speakers and attracting a broad cross-section of the university and Ann Arbor communities, the Separate but Unequal Symposium addressed a range of issues, including: the ongoing relevance of integration, the role of charter schools and other alternative programs, and promising strategies for achieving greater educational equality. A theme linking these various topics was the question of what students could do to end separate and unequal schools in America.Not Because They are Brown, But Because of Ea*: Why the Good Guys Lost in Rice V. Cayetano, and Why They Didn’t Have to Lose
Part II of this Article therefore reviews the history of Native Hawaiians in the broader context of the history of federal Indian law, focusing on the vacillating congressional policies regarding Indians and how those policies almost always treated Indian tribes as political entities rather than ethnic communities. Part III reviews and analyzes the procedural history of the Rice case and its resolution by the Supreme Court. Part IV concludes with the argument that constitutionally-permissible alternative methodologies exist for accomplishing the same objective of self-determination for Native HawaiiansThe Promise of a Post-Genocide Constitution: Healing Rwandan Spirit Injuries
This Article hopes to extend Critical Race Theory's social construction of race theory by emphasizing ethnicity as well as race. The Rwandans are undoubtedly within the so-called "Black race." Historically, they have also been socially constructed as consisting of different races and ethnicities, even though many scholars and Rwandans do not see ethnic, much less racial, distinctions. Some of these Rwandans who did see such differences participated in the genocide.Redefining American Democracy: Do Alternative Voting Systems Capture the True Meaning of “Representation”?
This Article explores whether alternative voting systems are compatible with the meaning of representation in the United States. Part II begins by examining the role of geographical representation and the effect it has on the ability of individuals and groups of voters to give or withhold their consent. Part III follows this inquiry by assessing the relationship between representatives and constituents under majoritarian and proportional systems to determine the consequences of moving away from geographical representation towards models designed to enhance opportunities for all voters to choose winning candidates. A description of what a "majority" is and when and how it is attained to secure the people's consent then is taken up in Part IV, providing some insight into the extent to which departures from majority rule are consistent with the American conception of representation. This discussion leads into Part V, which evaluates the role of our two-party system and ascertains whether proportional models of representation can cure the perceived defects of winner-take-all elections without undermining the continued stability of our Republic.Vigilante Racism: The De-Americanization of Immigrant America
Sadly, the de-Americanization process is capable of reinventing itself generation after generation. We have seen this exclusionary process aimed at those of Jewish, Asian, Mexican, Haitian, and other descent throughout the nation's history. De-Americanization is not simply xenophobia, because more than fear of foreigners is at work. This is a brand of nativism cloaked in a Euro-centric sense of America that combines hate and racial profiling. Whenever we go through a period of de-Americanization like what is currently happening to South Asians, Arabs, Muslim Americans, and people like Wen Ho Lee-a whole new generation of Americans sees that exclusion and hate is acceptable; that the definition of who is an American can be narrow; that they too have license to profile. Their license is issued when others around them engage in hate and the government chimes in with its own profiling. This is part of the sad process of unconscious and institutionalized racism that haunts our country.Breaking Into The Academy: The 2002-2004 Michigan Journal of Race & Law Guide for Aspiring Law Professors
Guidance for individuals interested in becoming law professors.“I’m Usually the Only Black in My Class”: The Human and Social Costs of Within-School Segregation
The work that has focused on within-school segregation has been most concerned with how this phenomenon limits the educational opportunities and might incur a psychological toll on the mass of Black students who find themselves relegated to lower-ability classrooms in integrated schools. This Article, however, allows us to begin to examine the other side of the coin. It reports on how within-school segregation practices create psychological, social, and educational pressures for those few Black students who have escaped enrollment in the least rigorous courses in their school. More precisely, the Article offers insight into how high achieving Black students in one integrated high school (referred to as Hillside) struggle with being, in most cases, the only Black student in their Advanced Placement courses. Before reporting on the experiences of these high achieving students in Part IV of this Article, Part I provides a brief review of the research literature on desegregation. The review will highlight the degree to which within-school segregation has been featured as a part of this body of work. In Parts II and III, the author then situates these high achievers within the logic of the larger study of which they were a part. Finally, in Part V, the Article concludes with a discussion of how these findings are relevant to the "the hearts and minds" of White Americans and the prospect of creating a more equitable society.Separate But Unequal: The Status of America’s Public Schools
Transcript of the symposium, which took place at the University of Michigan Law School on Saturday, February 9, 2002 in Hutchins Hall.Putting Black Kids into a Trick Bag: Anatomizing the Inner-City Public School Reform
Part I of this Article discusses the history of Brown, and the legal and political barriers that prevented the nation from fulfilling Brown's promise. Part II, will examine the phenomenon of White flight, which resulted from the efforts to implement the court-ordered desegregation of public schools. The political and economic effects of White flight on school reform efforts will also be examined. Part III will provide the reader with possible explanations for why school desegregation failed. The author will argue that the unexpected complexity of the task of desegregation, the lack of a unified direction among the judiciary, and local political entities, as well as beliefs about the effects that school desegregation would have on White children, prevented desegregation efforts from being successful. Part IV will analyze the various alternatives to court-ordered school desegregation that developed as a result to the legal, social and political barriers, which prevented court-ordered desegregation from taking place. Part V briefly surveys the school-reform efforts of four cities. Part VI discusses the role of school finance in relation to student achievement. The property tax, as the major source of funding for public schools, will be examined, as well as the effects of funding disparities between affluent and poor school districts. Part VII follows with a discussion of the use of testing as a method of school reform.