Category: Immigration

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Civil Rights economic justice Immigration LGBTQ Rights religious freedom Supreme Court

Gays, Bans, and Unions: The Supreme Court’s Eventful Summer

Nikita Srivastava (’19)

2018.06.04_SCOTUS_Rally,_Masterpiece_Cake_Case,_Washington,_DC_USA_02750_(41662234545)The Summer of 2018 gave Americans unpredictable weather, new celebrity romances, and, of course, a lot of Supreme Court decisions. After months of waiting, the Supreme Court released three opinions that will greatly effect American History. These are the major cases that caught American’s attention: Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, Trump v, Hawaii, and Janus v. American Federation of State County, and Municipal Employees.

The Supreme Court of the United States in Masterpiece v. Colorado ruled 7-2 in favor of the Colorado Baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple. However, the Court made a narrow decision leaving room open for a larger question: whether businesses can discriminate against gay individuals based on the rights protected in the First Amendment.

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Feminism Immigration Intersectionality lawyers legal profession student leaders

The Annual Immigration Panel

Guest Contributors: Gibran Pena-Porras (’19) and Natalia Trotter (’19)
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Gibran Pena-Porras, Professor Yolanda Vazquez, Julie LeMaster, Deifilia Diaz , and Natalia Trotter.

The University of Cincinnati College of Law’s Latino Law Student Association (LLSA) and UC Law Women (UCLW) student organizations had the pleasure of hosting an immigration panel with guests Professor Yolanda Vazquez, from the University of Cincinnati College of Law, Attorney Julie LeMaster from the Immigrant and Refugee Law Center, and Attorney Deifilia Diaz from the Law Offices of Valencia and Diaz. The different focal areas of immigration law that each of these panelists work with every day provided for a lively and diverse discussion of current immigration issues.

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Civil Rights Critical Race Theory Immigration Race Discrimination Second Look

A Second Look

Here are some items that caught our eye:

2370_regUniversity of Dayton Sociology Professor Dr. Jamie Longazel recently published  Undocumented Fears, which examines immigration and the racialization that occurs in small towns. Berkeley Law Prof. Ian Haney Lopez says

Jamie Longazel brings into sharp focus the anti-Latino racism at the heart of national politics today. Even as we as a society struggle to build solidarity across racial divisions, powerful forces seek advantage in tearing us farther apart. The concentrated focus of Undocumented Fears helps us understand not only why this occurs but also how we might help replace fear with friendship, social division with a sense of shared humanity.

Looking for the next binge-worthy program?  Netflix’s Dear White People is absolutely dearwhitepeoplerelevant and important. And, it’s being renewed for second season!

Speaking of television, BBC just announced that 13 is the charm–the next Dr. Who will be a woman.

 

Does it ever appear that racial vigilantes — for example, George Zimmerman, the man who killed Trayvon Martin–are presumed innocent?  Race and the Law Prof Blog takes on that topic.

And, in the “can’t wait!” category:  

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Director Ava Duvernay’s A Wrinkle in Time hits theaters March 9, 2018!  Can’t come soon enough. maxresdefault

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Critical Race Theory Immigration Race Discrimination

The Long Shadow of Race and the Legal Challenges to the Muslim Ban

nicholas espiritu headshot

By Guest Contributor, Nicholas Espiritu

By issuing a new travel ban reportedly framed to address constitutional concerns and avoid protests, the Trump Administration seeks to hit the “reset” button.  But, this executive order’s new language can’t hide the fact that it’s targeting Muslims, not terrorism.

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Immigration Race Discrimination

We’ve Been Here Before!

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Guest Contributor: Earl Morris II, UC Africana Studies Professor

On November 8, 2016 Donald J. Trump was elected the 45th President of the United States of America. Many Americans greeted this fact with trepidation Trump’s presidential campaign garnered the favor of groups including, but not limited to, the Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Nazis and other White supremacists. Trump became their candidate of choice because of his divisive rhetoric on such groups as Muslims, Mexican Americans, and African Americans. In the aftermath of an election where he won the Electoral College but lost the popular vote by nearly three million, this nation has witnessed a surge in hate crimes.

Trump’s shocking win dismayed not only by the groups mentioned above, but also by many academics experiencing unease and anxiety from campus environments altered in new, troubling ways since the election.  Conservative groups have launched an aggressive aggressive campaign that encourages college students to “out” liberal/progressive faculty. Essentially, encouraging and promoting a “hit list” of “unpatriotic” faculty, which places the lives of many faculty engaged in social justice work, whether in the class or via research, in jeopardy.

While events surrounding the 2016 presidential election are causing some to literally fear for the lives and livelihood of themselves and their family and friends, I would be remiss if I did not remind you that, “we’ve been here before!” What I suggest in this brief essay is that contemporary academics can learn from Black Sociology, or Jim Crow sociology, how to navigate this current era of “Trumperica.”

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Gender-based discrimination Immigration Race Discrimination

Calling it Like it is

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Corrine Yu

Guest Contributor: Corrine Yu, Managing Policy Director, Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

Let’s take a quiz. The “alt-right” is:

  1. A new Spotify playlist.
  2. A keystroke shortcut (like Control-Alt-Delete).
  3. A movement that includes and is heavily shaped by white supremacists, anti-Semites, anti-Muslims, nativist, and other extremists.

The correct answer, of course, is “c”. Since the election, a number of news organizations, including the Associated Press and The Washington Post, have sought to clarify the use of “alt-right” or “alternative right.” NonProfit Quarterly wrote a piece on this, as did The New York Times.

As the NonProfit Quarterly piece notes, following the publication of its profile of Richard Spencer, The Washington Post received thousands of comments protesting the description of the white nationalist, white supremacist movement that Spencer says he leads as “alt-right.”

The New York Times had its own case study, which involved its article on the man whom President-elect Trump wants as his chief strategist in the White House—Stephen Bannon. As the executive chairman of Breitbart LLC, Bannon turned the website Breitbart.com into bb-logo-highreswhat he described as “the platform for the alt-right.” Times readers tweeted their complaints, as well as emailed the newspaper’s public editor, about the article’s use of the term “populist” to describe Bannon, which seemed to normalize his views.

Nothing is “normal” about the “alt-right” or what it stands for.

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Immigration Race Discrimination

“Free White Persons”: Constructing US Citizenship

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.” 

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