One Person, No Vote by
In the book One Person, No Vote, professor Carole Anderson chronicles a related history: the rollbacks to African American participation in the vote since the 2013 Supreme Court decision that eviscerated the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Known as the Shelby ruling, this decision effectively allowed districts with a demonstrated history of racial discrimination to change voting requirements without approval from the Department of Justice.
Call Number: JK1924 .A54 2018ISBN: 9781635571370Publication Date: 2018-12-13
On Account of Race by
An award-winning constitutional law historian examines case-based evidence of the court's longstanding racial bias (often under the guise of "states rights") to reveal how that prejudice has allowed the court to solidify its position as arguably the most powerful branch of the federal government. One promise of democracy is the right of every citizen to vote. And yet, from our founding, strong political forces were determined to limit that right.
Call Number: 9781640093928ISBN: 9781640093928Publication Date: 2020-05-05
Educational Disparities
Silent Covenants by
When the landmark Supreme Court case of Brown vs. Board of Education was handed down in 1954, many civil rights advocates believed that the decision, which declared public school segregation unconstitutional, would become the Holy Grail of racial justice. Fifty years later, despite its legal irrelevance and the racially separate and educationally ineffective state of public schooling for most black children, Brown is still viewed by many as the perfect precedent. Here, Derrick Bell shatters the shining image of this celebrated ruling. He notes that, despite the onerous burdens of segregation, many black schools functioned well and racial bigotry had not rendered blacks a damaged race. He maintains that, given what we now know about the pervasive nature of racism, the Court should have determined instead to rigorously enforce the "equal" component of the "separate but equal" standard. Racial policy, Bell maintains, is made through silent covenants--unspoken convergences of interest and involuntary sacrifices of rights--that ensure that policies conform to priorities set by policy-makers. Blacks and whites are the fortuitous winners or losers in these unspoken agreements. The experience with Brown, Bell urges, should teach us that meaningful progress in the quest for racial justice requires more than the assertion of harms. Strategies must recognize and utilize the interest-convergence factors that strongly influence racial policy decisions. In Silent Covenants, Bell condenses more than four decades of thought and action into a powerful and eye-opening book.
Call Number: KF4155 .B38 2004ISBN: 9780195182477Publication Date: 2005-08-18
Legalized Land Disenfranchisment & Restrictive Covenants in Housing
Dispossession by
Between 1940 and 1974, the number of African American farmers fell from 681,790 to just 45,594--a drop of 93 percent. In his hard-hitting book, historian Pete Daniel analyzes this decline and chronicles black farmers' fierce struggles to remain on the land in the face of discrimination by bureaucrats in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He exposes the shameful fact that at the very moment civil rights laws promised to end discrimination, hundreds of thousands of black farmers lost their hold on the land as they were denied loans, information, and access to the programs essential to survival in a capital-intensive farm structure. More than a matter of neglect of these farmers and their rights, this "passive nullification" consisted of a blizzard of bureaucratic obfuscation, blatant acts of discrimination and cronyism, violence, and intimidation. Dispossession recovers a lost chapter of the black experience in the American South, presenting a counternarrative to the conventional story of the progress achieved by the civil rights movement.
Call Number: eBook HD8039.F32 U626 2013
Saving the Neighborhood: Racially Restrictive Covenants, Law, and Social Norms by
Saving the Neighborhood tells the charged, still controversial story of the rise and fall of racially restrictive covenants in America, and offers rare insight into the ways legal and social norms reinforce one another, acting with pernicious efficacy to codify and perpetuate intolerance. The early 1900s saw an unprecedented migration of African Americans leaving the rural South in search of better work and equal citizenship. In reaction, many white communities instituted property agreements--covenants--designed to limit ownership and residency according to race. Restrictive covenants quickly became a powerful legal guarantor of segregation, their authority facing serious challenge only in 1948, when the Supreme Court declared them legally unenforceable in Shelley v. Kraemer. Although the ruling was a shock to courts that had upheld covenants for decades, it failed to end their influence. In this incisive study, Richard Brooks and Carol Rose unpack why. At root, covenants were social signals. Their greatest use lay in reassuring the white residents that they shared the same goal, while sending a warning to would-be minority entrants: keep out. The authors uncover how loosely knit urban and suburban communities, fearing ethnic mixing or even "tipping," were fair game to a new class of entrepreneurs who catered to their fears while exacerbating the message encoded in covenants: that black residents threatened white property values. Legal racial covenants expressed and bestowed an aura of legitimacy upon the wish of many white neighborhoods to exclude minorities. Sadly for American race relations, their legacy still lingers.
Call Number: eBook 2013
Video: Democracy Now! Conversation on Race and Second Amendment Gun Rights
- “The Second”: Carol Anderson on the Racist Roots of the Constitutional Right to Bear ArmsIn her book, The Second, Emory University professor, Carol Anderson examines the issue of race and the constitutional right to bear arms. The second amendment has been applied unfairly and unequally throughout U.S. history and also in current times. Anderson joins hosts Amy Goodman and Nermeen Shaikh of Democracy Now! to discuss the history of the second amendment and its use as an intended force for arming white people to control Black populations.
Video: VICE News Special Report with Alzo Slade on Heirs Property Land Loss
- VICE News Report: Losing Ground - How Property Law Is Used to Appropriate Black LandThis VICE News special sheds light on the issue of fractional land ownership within African American families and the staggering losses that occur within a multiple heirs property structure. The broadcast exposes racially-biased methods for wealthy buyers to seize family land through the use of sanctioned and predatory legal practices.
Restrictive convenants (continued)
- Research Starter: Restrictive covenants and the Supreme CourtA common practice in Northern and Western cities, restrictive covenants were a prime example of de facto segregation practices.
Gun Rights Inequality: Books
The Second by
From the New York Times bestselling author of White Rage, an unflinching, critical new look at the Second Amendment--and how it has been engineered to deny the rights of African Americans since its inception.
Call Number: KF3941 .A96 2021ISBN: 9781635574258Publication Date: 2021-06-01
Guns, Democracy, and the Insurrectionist Idea by
The Insurrectionist myth has been forged by twisting the facts of the American Revolution and the founding of the United States, the denial of civil rights to African-Americans after the Civil War, and the rise of the Third Reich under Adolf Hitler. Here, Horwitz and Anderson set the record straight.
Call Number: eBook JC599.U5 H626 2009ISBN: 9780472021994Publication Date: 2009-06-30
The Bill of Rights by
The Bill of Rights is a comprehensive survey of all aspects of the U.S. Bill of Rights; from its origins to its role in modern American history. Special attention is given to the organic relationship of the Bill of Rights to the original Constitution and its ongoing interpretation and incorporation by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Call Number: eBook KF4750 .B55 2002ISBN: 9781587650628Publication Date: 2002-05-01
Medical injustices & other civil rights suppression issues
Understanding Health Inequalities and Justice: eBook by
The need for informed analyses of health policy is now greater than ever. The twelve essays in this volume show that public debates routinely bypass complex ethical, sociocultural, historical, and political questions about how we should address ideals of justice and equality in health care. Integrating perspectives from the humanities, social sciences, medicine, and public health, this volume illuminates the relationships between justice and health inequalities to enrich debates. Understanding Health Inequalities and Justice explores three questions: How do scholars approach relations between health inequalities and ideals of justice? When do justice considerations inform solutions to health inequalities, and how do specific health inequalities affect perceptions of injustice? And how can diverse scholarly approaches contribute to better health policy? From addressing patient agency in an inequitable health care environment to examining how scholars of social justice and health care amass evidence, this volume promotes a richer understanding of health and justice and how to achieve both. The contributors are Judith C. Barker, Paula Braveman, Paul Brodwin, Jami Suki Chang, Debra DeBruin, Leslie A. Dubbin, Sarah Horton, Carla C. Keirns, J. Paul Kelleher, Nicholas B. King, Eva Feder Kittay, Joan Liaschenko, Anne Drapkin Lyerly, Mary Faith Marshall, Carolyn Moxley Rouse, Jennifer Prah Ruger, and Janet K. Shim.
