Race Rights and the Law Blog

I believe that one of the functions of this blog is to share innovative scholarship that addresses race and the law themes.  In that spirit, I want to announce the publication of HIP HOP AND THE LAW, an innovative scholarly collaboration and textbook edited by Professors andré douglas pond cummings, Donald F. Tibbs, and the late Professor Pamela Bridgewater-Toure.   The book features scholars…

        The United States Bureau of the Census (U.S. Census Bureau) plans to test a “Middle Eastern or North African” (MENA) category box for possible inclusion in the 2020 Census. The box – if adopted – will afford Arab Americans, with an estimated population of six million, the unprecedented opportunity to identify as MENA and dis-identify as white if they so choose.   "Make Us Count," a study…

Below is an excerpt from my recent article, "Convert or Die," analyzing the ethnic cleansing of Muslims in the Central African Republic (CAR).  The full article can be read here, at the Al Jazeera English site - http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/08/convert-die-ethnic-cle….  _______________________________ Muslims are only newsworthy when behind the gun, not in front of it. Modern…

The University of Iowa College of Law   Advertisement August 2015     FACULTY POSITIONS               THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA COLLEGE OF LAW anticipates hiring several tenured/tenure track faculty members and clinical faculty members (including a director for field placement program) over the coming year. Our goal is to find outstanding scholars and teachers who can extend the law school’s…

To say that Rachael Dolezal has made headlines would be an understatement.  While Ms. Dolezal has represented herself as African American to her community for decades, she is actually white.  The media firestorm – and the mockery – have been swift. 

Twenty years ago, I was a college junior and a recently appointed columnist for the Duke University Chronicle.  Around that same time - April 19, 1995 to be exact - Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols  bombed the Oklahoma City Federal Building and killed 168 people.   My first column for the Chronicle, "Oklahoma Scapegoat:  Fear Led to the 'Obvious' Conclusion" sought to weigh in on the knee-jerk…

The New York Times recently published a story entitled, “1.5 Million Missing Black Men.” The graphic portrayed how the war on drugs, American policies of mass incarceration and other structural forces, have left these African American men and their communities oppressed in the United States because these men are incarcerated, disabled from full citizenry or deceased.  A purely academic discussion…

Earlier this week, citizens of Baltimore took to the streets.  Their actions were a response to the death of Mr. Freddie Gray.  Mr. Gray died after sustaining injuries while in police custody.  But soon, a video taken during the unrest captured the attention of the media. The video shows Toya Graham, a single mother in Baltimore, running to her only son as he planned to join in the uprising by…

It has been a news-heavy few weeks, so today I want to reach back to April to share a joke I heard.  Rick Hasen on the Election Law Blog posted his annual April Fool's story on April 1.  Under the title "House Republicans to Push Bill Declaring 'End to Racism' in U.S.," he writes:  WaPo: “In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision striking down a key portion of the Voting Rights Act, a group of…

In his opinion piece "Why Reconstruction Matters," historian Eric Foner admonishes us to take the Rconstruction period seriously: Issues that agitate American politics today — access to citizenship and voting rights, the relative powers of the national and state governments, the relationship between political and economic democracy, the proper response to terrorism — all of these are…