Nathaniel R. Jones Center for Race, Gender, and Social JusticeGuest Contributor: Robin Martin, UC Associate Professor
Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters has decided to retry Ray Tensing for the murder Samuel DuBose after a mistrial. As this process unfolds, it is time for UC employees, the city of Cincinnati and universities across this country to revisit the core principles of inquiry and questioning and start blazing a different trail toward justice.
President-elect Trump has announced his intention to name Alabama Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III to the position of Attorney General. This Confederate general namesake couldn’t be a worse fit for the job.
As you probably know by now, former President Reagan nominated Sessions for a federal judgeship in 1985 when he was serving as the U.S. Attorney for Alabama. Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee rejected him after evidence of Sessions’ racism emerged. The Huffington Post, provided excerpts from the hearing, including testimony that: Sessions derided the NAACP and the ACLU as un-American and for “trying to force civil rights down the throats of people trying to put problems behind them”; referred to a white civil rights lawyer as a traitor to his race; and warned the only African American Assistant U.S. Attorney to be careful what he said to white people.
Reagan’s selection of Sessions was all the more problematic given his unsuccessful attempt to prosecute Black civil rights leaders for allegedly engaging in voter fraud just four months earlier.
I had a dream.
On election night, a bright blue map would emanate from my flat screen TV. We’d be elated by news of Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress. From sea to shining sea, the results would repudiate Trump, his hate-filled campaign, and drive a stake in the heart of the Southern strategy of using race to leverage working class white votes.
We know how that turned out. On Wednesday, I could barely bring myself to work. Heart heavy, I felt as if I’d experienced a death.
What’s bugging me now is the attempt to negate the implications of Trump’s bigotry for the outcome. For example, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof says we shouldn’t label Trump supporters as racists: “many are good people who had voted for Obama in the past.” Maybe they’re not, but they supported a racist, sexist xenophobe.
“Hey, Verona.”
In 1990 I was an attorney for the Voting Rights Section of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. Much to my mother’s dismay, I got sent to Mississippi to investigate the political and social environment in Noxubee County. The question was whether minority voters’ rights were in such jeopardy that federal observers were necessary. Among the folks I met was a tiny white woman with cotton-candy hair and matching glasses who couldn’t get my name right and asked me the same question.
Yew behavin’ yur-self?”
My role in this woman’s play was merely to smile and nod. After all, as a government outsider talking to Black voters about their concerns pre-election day, I clearly was not being good girl. Memories of that time, place, and irksome woman came to mind when I learned that federal observers wouldn’t be out in full force this presidential election. Thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder, striking down a key part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which also hobbled the Department of Justice’s ability to enforce the law.
Gavin Grimm’s senior year in high school will be more memorable than most—how many young people are at the heart of Supreme Court litigation regarding the rights of transgender students?
Last year, when he and his mom told Gloucester High School officials about his transition, they agreed to treat him like the boy Gavin always knew he was. But upon getting wind of the situation, the School Board objected. At meetings on the issue, some folks referred to Gavin as a girl or “young lady.” Others went further, for example, calling him a freak. Another likened the young man to a person who believes he’s a dog “and wants to urinate on fire hydrants.” Ultimately, the board voted to prohibit Gavin from using the boys’ room and required the school to provide unisex bathrooms for him, which Metro Weekly reported were repurposed broom closets.
After over twenty years of living in the U.S., Takao Ozawa wanted to become a citizen. He was a family man, well-educated, a churchgoer. There was just one strike against him: he was Japanese.
In October of 1922, when the Supreme Court heard his case, Ozawa v. U.S., our immigration and naturalization laws limited eligibility for citizenship to “free white persons . . . aliens of African nativity, and . . . persons of African descent.” African Americans had only been added fifty-two years earlier in the wake of Reconstruction, when Congress amended the Constitution to make clear that persons born in the U.S. were citizens.
Mr. Ozawa argued, in part, that he was white for purposes of the law, citing legal and ethnographic authorities to support that notion. And, then there was his appearance. As a light-skinned man, Mr. Ozawa suggested his skin color demonstrated that that he was white. But Justice Sutherland, writing for the Court, rejected that notion, saying a test based solely on skin color was “impracticable.”
“I feel like I can break at any moment.”
The woman quoted above is the mother of two boys, who are 13 months apart. One is in third grade; the younger is autistic. She is pregnant and feels “emotionally unfit” to take on the responsibility of another child.“Trapped,” a documentary by Dawn Porter, gives voice to this woman and others for whom the law has made a difficult choice more challenging. Cincinnati Law screens this film Wednesday, October 27 in Room 118.
This post is for all the procrastinators. There was plenty of time to make sure your registration was up to date. But not any more.
Ohio’s deadline is October 11, which is Tuesday. Right. Next week.
In Ohio, if you recently moved, changed your name, or haven’t voted since 2012, you may have be removed from the rolls. To make certain you are registered, check here. If you need to register, the necessary form and instructions on what to do are accessible here. Don’t know where to vote? Click this link to find your polling place.
Kentucky residents can register or update their voting status online. The same is true in Indiana. Twenty-nine other states and the District of Columbia also allow residents the option of registering online. For more information and a chart to find out whether you can sign up, check, or update your registration status online, check out the National Conference of State Legislatures website.
Don’t assume that you’ve got this covered. After all, how are you going to feel when you roll up to the polling place on November 8 only to be turned away?
Just do it.
Take a step toward social justice. Get registered. And vote.
Guest Contributor: Tiffanny Smith, Litigation Attorney, Ohio Justice & Policy Center
October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. We’ve all seen the newspaper articles, social media posts, and awareness events. Is that enough?
More than 10 MILLION people suffer physical abuse at the hands of an intimate partner each year in the U.S.
These days everyone thinks it’s like Viola Davis a la “How to Get Away with Murder” – strutting into court in skin-tight sleeveless suits with a legal entourage of paralegals, investigators and interns.
Hardly.
The female criminal defense attorney’s life is nothing like that. Though I’m all in praise of network television paying homage to our life of solitude; a woman solo practitioner is a rarity.
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