Race Rights and the Law Blog

The Women of Color-Blind Constitution The phrase “history repeats itself” is a popular but false saying. History does not so much engage in repetition in spite of its unlearned mistakes as it reimagines itself by spinning them as well-intended triumphs. So it is during each election season. In 2008 when Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama faced off for the democratic presidential…

Jacques Lacan, Desire, and Alternative Constitution Day  I want to begin by expressing my profound gratitude for being able to participate in this online symposium, and that I appreciate and encourage continued critique of Constitution Day and the United States Constitution for its inability to adequately protect the rights of marginalized peoples, in turn failing to protect even those that on-…

SOCIAL RIGHTS AND THE U.S. CONSTITUTION The founding culture the Nation, produced an unrepentant civil and political rights governing document, United States Constitution.  By design it is not a document which serves human social needs. This is significant considering that most of the rest of the world has some version of social rights embodied in either their constitutive documents, or  treaty…

Why Alternative Constitution Day Thanks to Professor Ellis and the Race and Law Prof Blog for hosting this symposium. Although the original “Constitution Day Proposal” appeared on my [Colin Starger's] blog, the proposal was actually co-written by Professors Peggy Cooper Davis, Aderson Francois, and myself. The basic idea emerged from the process of co-authoring a paper entitled “Beyond the…

I am happy to announce that the Race and the Law Prof Blog will host an online symposium to launch Alternative Constitution Day. The symposium will start this Wednesday, February 3 and run until Friday, February 12. Over these ten days, we will share comments from law professors from across the country on why and how we should celebrate an alternative to the mandated Constitution Day of September…

  This year, the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences (the Academy) nominated twenty actors for Oscars. Of the twenty, none are people of color. The lack of color prompted an Oscar boycott led by Hollywood power couple Jada Pinkett-Smith and Will Smith. I fully support the efforts of The Smiths and others to not just say something about racism in Hollywood, but to do something about it.…

For a while now, I have been giving thought about seeing racism as a memeplex. This way of considering racism may offer a way of understanding ourselves, and thus providing a way of thinking outside of ideology. Philosophers and critical thinkers have been applying meme theory as a way to explain why The deeper point implied in this post is that we should be reflective about why others hold their…

The turn of the year has had me thinking a lot about the past. The long list of issues we've discussed on the blog, from the #BlackLivesMatter movement to the still-recent debates about the Confederate flag, share a common bond. Our understanding of everything from affirmative action to the right to vote is shaped by how we understand the history of race in America. I was reminded of this when I…

Racial ambiguity is an experience that I am intimately familiar with. My actual background is unambiguous: I am South Asian American, with two Asian Indian immigrant parents from the same part of India. Yet, with unfailing regularity, I am misidentified for some group that I do not belong to. Just last week here in Savannah, Georgia, someone asked if I was Italian. When I answered no, she said “…

  This week, in the midst of holiday celebrations, we learned that the grand jury failed to indict the police officer that killed Tamir Rice.   Rice, who was holding a toy gun at the time, was only 12 years old. It seems that of the many stories about race and policing this year, the Rice case has struck a particular nerve. Perhaps it is his young age, the circumstances of his death, or the fact…