Wilson on the Legal Foundations of White Supremacy @Erika_K_Wilson

Erika K. Wilson, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, College of Law, has published The Legal Foundations of White Supremacy, 11 DePaul Journal for Social Justice 1 (2018). From the introduction:

The election of former President Barack Obama, the country’s first African-American president, temporarily changed the discourse around race in America. Despite America’s sordid racial history, President Obama’s election was hailed as evidence that race was no longer a salient factor in meting out opportunities—that the country was finally “post-racial.” Indeed, some even went so far as to suggest that his election signified “the gradual erosion of ‘whiteness’ as the touchstone of what it means to be American.” Recent events have upended this “post-racial” narrative. In the wake of the racially charged election of Donald J. Trump and the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, race generally and white supremacy specifically are again taking center stage. For many, the reemergence of the kind of overt manifestations of white supremacy that were unveiled in Charlottesville was particularly jarring. It forced many people to grapple with the reality that white supremacy, a phenomenon that many believed had been relegated to a historical footnote, still exists and is stronger than ever. Yet those such as myself who examine race critically have long been aware that the fissures caused by race generally and white supremacy specifically, never went anywhere, notwithstanding the election of the country’s first self-identified African-American president. Race generally and white supremacy specifically are embedded into the framework of most American social institutions. As a result, now more than ever, it is imperative that we critically examine all forms and manifestations of white supremacy. This paper focuses on a very important part of white supremacy — the legal foundations of white supremacy. The central thesis of this paper is that American law has historically played a vital role in constructing white supremacy. While America has eliminated overt race-conscious laws that favor whites, the law continues to play a critical role in maintaining white supremacy today. Unless and until we commit to understanding the history of the law in constructing white supremacy and the ways in which modern iterations of law continue to perpetuate white supremacy, white supremacy will remain an enduring feature of American society.

Download the article via the link given.

Ayres on Claudia Rankine's "Citizen": Documenting and Protesting America's Halting March Toward Racial Justice and Equality @TAMULawSchool

Susan Ayres, Texas A&M University School of Law, is publishing Claudia Rankine's 'Citizen': Documenting and Protesting America's Halting March Toward Racial Justice and Equality in the Alabama Civil Rights & Civil Liberties Law Review. Here is the abstract.

After the first election of President Barak Obama in 2008, there was a sense that the United States had reached a post-racial phase in its history. That sentiment was relatively short-lived, because by 2013, when Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, it was clear that President Obama’s election was not transformative. More recently, during the presidential campaign and after the election of President Donald Trump in 2016, undisguised racism in the United States has reared its ugly head. Activists such as the Reverend Al Sharpton have been outspoken in their criticism of President Trump. Sharpton has claimed, “Everything King fought so tirelessly for is under attack once again.” Similarly, poet and activist Claudia Rankine considers the Trump Administration to be “about the primacy of whiteness,” and that as citizens, we must discuss and confront the concept of white privilege which undergirds our society. Rankine does this in Citizen, a multi-genre work that documents racist microaggressions and macroaggressions. In this article Citizen is analyzed using the tools of critical race theory and rhetoric for its potential to effect change in the fight for racial justice and equality.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

2017 Constitutional Law Symposium at Drake University Law School, April 8, 2017 @DrakeLawSchool

From the mailbox:

Save the Date

The 2017 Constitutional Law Symposium, “President Obama’s Constitutional Law Legacy” will be held on Saturday, April 8, 2017 from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.  The symposium is sponsored by Drake University Law School’s Constitutional Law Center.

Speakers include: 

·       Taunya Lovell Banks, Jacob A. France Professor of Equality, Francis King Carey School of Law, University of Maryland

·       John Eastman, Henry Salvatori Professor of Law & Community Service, Dale E. Fowler School of Law, Chapman University

·       Reva Siegel, Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Professor of Law, Yale Law School

·       Ilya Somin, Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University

 

Moderators: 

Mark Kende, Director of Constitutional Law Center, James Madison Chair in Constitutional Law, Professor of Law

Miguel Schor, Professor of Law

 

For  more information, go to http://www.drake.edu/law/clinics-centers/conlaw/events/

 

CLE credit will be available.

Thank you to the law firm of Dorsey & Whitney for its  sponsorship, and to Congressman Neal Smith for his support.

 

The Symposium will be held at Drake University in Cartwright Hall, Room 213  (2621 Carpenter Avenue, Des Moines, IA  50311) .

 

 

Backwards and In High Heels

People have been tweeting that "backwards and high heels" line from President Obama's speech about Hillary Clinton last night with tremendous gusto, and no wonder: it's a great line. I've thought so for years. It sends so many signals. It conjures up competence, elegance, confidence, style, accomplishment, delicacy, poise, some understatement (always good--a smart woman never outshines the man what brung her).

Ginger and Fred danced together so well, and when we watch those old films and see them perform we are lost once more in a world in which two people manuever together, each with his or her own set of steps, but meshing them so brilliantly that the result is perfection. Whether the dance is entertainment or political (and in this particular election year I sometimes wonder if there's a difference), the partners engaged in such a perfect performance can be a joy to watch or the solution to a problem. The woman and the man appear to be equals, and in cases like this one, given the difficulty of the task, the woman could argue that she is his superior, given some disadvantages that she has. After all, she has to follow his lead (backwards), even though he does give her some direction, and she must follow his lead gracefully (in heels). He should handle her body skillfully but if he doesn''t, she cannot betray her discomfort.

But would she make such argument? Would it be "worth" her while--think about all the justifications we already hear for the pay gap, which is already difficult to overcome without a lawsuit.  Better perhaps to move into the position of the leader, if that's what it is. Besides, POTUS is one position for which the salary is the same for all incumbents.

The line fit President Obama's message so well; I suspect few people (perhaps none given the commentary I've seen) have wondered where he got it. Well, I believe it actually comes from cartoonist Bob Thaves, who drew the wonderful strip Frank & Ernest, and he wrote the line specifically in 1982 about Fred Astaire, with that comparison to Mr. Astaire's longtime partner Ginger Rogers.  The entire line reads:

Sure he was great, but don't forget Ginger Rogers did everything he did backwards...and in high heels!

Ms. Rogers herself has quoted the line on her website.  The meaning is obvious: Mr. Astaire was a wonderful dancer, but we tend to forget while we watch him that Ms. Rogers matches him step for step, and in that famous sequence in Shall We Dance? skate for skate.  Twirl, leap, chasse, jete, over and around. Backwards and in high heels (or on wheels). Equality on the dance floor. Equality finally, perhaps, in the political arena.

Obama's Campaign Rhetoric

K. C. Morrison, Timothy Fair, and Aaron Rollins, all of Mississippi State University, have published Expanding the Myth of the American Republic: The Campaign Rhetoric of Barack Obama as an NCOBPS 43rd Meeting Paper. Here is the abstract.

This research is based on the analysis of presidential campaign speeches of Barack Obama to understand how he used rhetoric to create favorable opinion in a majority white voting constituency. Our argument is that Obama used rhetoric in a way that appropriated patriotic and multicultural elements associated with the American republic to redefine the myth of national identity. Speeches are analyzed in a variety of settings from which we are able to generate a set of clear and recurring patterns that compose a refashioned mythology.

The full text is not available from SSRN. 

The Black Corporate Bar and the Rise of Barack Obama

David B. Wilkins, Harvard Law School, has published The New Social Engineers in the Age of Obama: Black Corporate Lawyers and the Making of the First Black President. Here is the abstract.

In this article, I document the connection between the election of the nation’s first black president and the fledgling, but nevertheless important, creation of a new black "corporate" bar. Specifically, I argue that the new generation of black lawyers who moved into important positions of power and responsibility in corporate America since the mid-1960s played a critical role in opening the door for an Obama presidency – and that understanding the experiences and attitudes of these new "social engineers" is critical to understanding the President's approach to integrating his obligations as leader of all of the people and his expressed commitment to improving the lives of black people in the first decades of the twentieth century.

My argument proceeds in four parts. Part I documents the important role that Houston’s and Marshall’s original social engineers played in paving the way for Obama. As the President frequently acknowledges, he stands on the shoulders of these giants who quite literally laid the groundwork for his success. Indeed, before running for the Illinois State Senate in 1996 Obama’s career was eerily reminiscent of the great social engineer Wiley Branton for whom the Symposium at Howard Law School where this article appears is named. But for all of his connections to the original social engineers, it was a new generation of black lawyers who actually propelled Obama’s meteoric rise from the Illinois State Senate to the U.S. Senate, and eventually to the presidency. Part II charts the rise of this new generation and explains both their connections to, and differences from, the prior generation of social engineers. Although much has rightly been made of the theme of generational change in Obama’s ascendance, many have mischaracterized both the formative experiences and the commitments of what I will refer to as the Brown generation of black lawyers who came of age in the years following that historic decision. Using original interview data and other sources, I document these experiences and commitments and demonstrate how this generation’s unique status as black professionals with role-related obligations that are separate from, and potentially in opposition to, their continuing commitment to use their positions in corporate America to advance the cause of racial justice both drew this new black legal elite to Obama, and in turn, shaped the way in which the President has responded to similar tensions between his role as president and his desire to use the powers of his office to improve the plight of black Americans.

Part III explores these tensions by examining how Obama has attempted to use the office of the presidency to advance the cause of racial justice. In each of the three major avenues through which he has pursued this goal – using the "bully pulpit" to assist traditional civil rights organizations and to inspire individual responsibility and high aspirations among blacks generally, placing talented black professionals in important positions in his administration, and, most importantly, promising to improve the lives of black Americans through a combination of vigorous enforcement of anti-discrimination laws and a series of new race-neutral social programs targeting areas of particular concern to blacks – the President has employed strategies also employed by the Brown generation. Not surprisingly, many of the same problems that the nation’s first black corporate lawyers encountered when they attempted to negotiate the complex and sometimes conflicting demands of the "equal opportunity" and "social justice" legacies of the Brown decision have also come to haunt the nation’s first black President as he has engaged in an even more public balancing act between his obligation (and right) to be the president of all the people and his commitment to use his office to improve the lives of black people in this country. Part IV closes by briefly examining how the election of the first black president presents unique opportunities – but also poses unique challenges – for this country’s still fragile black bar.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.