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Can Money Whiten? Exploring Race Practice in Colonial Venezuela and Its Implications for Contemporary Race Discourse
The Gracias al Sacar, a fascinating and seemingly inconceivable practice in eighteenth century colonial Venezuela, allowed certain individuals of mixed Black and White ancestry to purchase "Whiteness" from their King. The author exposes the irony of this system, developed in a society obsessed with "natural" ordering that labeled individuals according to their precise racial ancestry. While recognizing that the Gracias al Sacar provided opportunities for advancement and an avenue for material and social struggle, the author argues that it also justified the persistence of racial hierarchy. The Article concludes that the Gracias al Sacar, along with their present-day implications, undermine an essentialist view of race, revealing the negotiability of race status and its dependence on social and material normsListen
In a traditional law school setting, experiences of students of color, especially Native Americans, are often buried by the discourse of the dominant culture. This piece, a non-traditional work using elements of prose, lyric, monologue, and poetry, weaves strands of legal discourse, commentary, and autobiography into a critical narrative of the experience of legal education from an outsider law student's perspective. The author, a member of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, recounts these vignettes in a voice infused with the history and traditions of Native American oral storytelling.Breaking into the Academy: The 1998-2000 Michigan Journal of Race & Law Guide for Aspiring Law Professors
I was not very far into my law school experience when I realized that my professors had the best job in town-it took me quite a bit longer to discover that I, too, could get in on the deal. Do not misunderstand me-being a law professor is not easy. In fact, when done correctly, the job requires a tremendous amount of intellectual energy, emotional commitment, long hours, and hard work. However, if you enjoy writing, research, public speaking, and developing mentoring relationships, being a law professor could be the career for you. This Article, and the listings of helpful organizations and citations to other articles about law teaching that follow, are intended to help guide the law professor wannabe through the process of applying for a tenuretrack faculty position at a law school.College Admission and Affirmative Action- Consequences and Alternatives
A review of The Shape of the River: Long Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions by Derek Bok & William BowenChicana/Chicano Land Tenure in the Agrarian Domain: On the Edge of a “Naked Knife”
Neither sovereignty nor property rights could forestall American geopolitical expansion in the first half of the nineteenth century. The conflicts that resulted from this clash of doctrine with desire are perhaps most evident in the history of the Chicanas/Chicanos of Texas, California, and the Southwest, who sought to maintain their land and property, as guaranteed by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in the aftermath of the U.S.- Mexico War. Integrating an exploration of case law with political and social histories of the period, the Author explores the sociolegal significance of Chicana/Chicano land dispossession; exposes the racial, economic, and political motivations of the legislators, judges, and attorneys involved; and demonstrates the internal incoherence of land grant doctrine. Focusing on the material relationship of the past to the present, the author seeks to establish linkages between the past roles of law and legal structures in dispossessing Chicanas/Chicanos of their land and their present roles in structuring Chicana/Chicano political and economic subordination in the agricultural sector. The author concludes that the study of Mexican land dispossession suggests both the need to expand the traditional approach to teaching property law as well as the importance of deploying the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and international law in the struggle for racial equity.Perspectives on Affirmative Action / Rethinking Racial Divides: Asian Pacific Americans and the Law
Statements on affirmative action followed by the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association Symposium.Cultivating a Seedling Charter: South Africa’s Court Grows Its Constitution
As South Africa emerges from the vestiges of apartheid, its Constitutional Court struggles to develop a jurisprudence that reflects the lasting ideals of a constitutional democracy. This Article examines the Court's use of international and foreign law in developing a unique form of constitutional jurisprudence. It argues that the Constitutional Court is in the process of developing an innovative form of decision-making that effectively combines domestically derived principles of justice with those developed in the international forum. This Article concludes that reliable methods of adjudication are firmly entrenched in the South African legal system and that its constitutional jurisprudence should serve as a model for other democratic systems.Who is Black Enough For You? An Analysis of Northwestern University Law School’s Struggle Over Minority Faculty Hiring
This Article considers the factors that should be used in hiring a person of color to a faculty position and raises the following questions: Apart from potential teaching ability and scholarly productivity, should faculty appointments committees look to other criteria for candidates of color? Provided that we can still consider the race and ethnicity of prospective candidates of color at private institutions, should faculty appointments committees be concerned about how closely identified a candidate is to an essentialized conception, for instance, of Black persons? Should a faculty hiring committee focus its efforts to hire African Americans on a Black person who has ancestral roots in the American South, whose family has endured Jim Crow racism, who is very dark-skinned, whose family background is impoverished, and who grew up in an all-Black segregated environment? Stated conversely, should a faculty appointments committee hire a Black person who does not meet any of these essentialized characteristics? In confronting these issues, this Article calls. into question conceptions of race within mainstream U.S. society and among African Americans and other communities of colorPolicing Hatred: Police Bias Units and the Construction of Hate Crime
Much of the scholarly debate about hate crime laws focuses on a discussion of their constitutionality under the First Amendment. Part of a larger empirical study of police methods of investigating hate crimes, this Note attempts to shift thinking in this area beyond the existing debate over the constitutionality of hate crime legislation to a discussion of how low-level criminal justice personnel, such as the police, enforce hate crime laws. This Note argues that, since hate crimes are an area in which police have great discretion in enforcing the law, their understanding of the First Amendment and how it relates to their job is important to the impact that hate crime legislation has in the community. Additionally, research on the enforcement of hate crime laws may inspire further investigation of the broad discretion police officers currently possess in all areas of law.An Analysis of the Supreme Court’s Reliance on Racial “Stigma” as a Constitutional Concept in Affirmative Action Cases
The Article's focus is confined to discussions of race-based affirmative action; it does not consider stigmatization arguments in the context of discrimination involving gender or disabilities, for example. Further, the Article's scope is limited to the stigmatization issue as between Whites and African Americans. Although similar issues exist with respect to other ethnic or racial groups, we view the White/African American paradigm as providing the clearest framework for analysis. Moreover, the cases of Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education, joint progenitors of stigmatization as a concept having constitutional significance in interpreting the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, arose within that paradigm and discuss the stigma concept in that context.
