Antiracism, Cultural Competency & Civil Rights

Trauma-Informed Law According to the authors of Trauma-Informed Law: A Primer for Lawyers Resilience and Healing,  “a key concept for trauma-informed lawyering is the shift that has occurred, …

Metaracism: How Systemic Racism Devastates Black Lives--and How We Break Free-review

"Explores the surprising and complicated legacy of the brilliant strategist of the civil rights movement - Bayard Rustin"--

California sheriff’s deputies fatally shot a teenager with autism who was holding a gardening tool over the weekend, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department and a family attorney said.

The Purpose The Mansfield Rule is a structured certification process designed to ensure all talent at participating law firms and legal departments have a fair and equal opportunity to advance into leadership. Mansfield is focused on broadening the talent pool for consideration, including those historically underrepresented in the legal profession, to facilitate transparent leadership pathways.  Read More...

The DEI Podcast at Notre Dame Law School explores concepts of diversity, equity, inclusion, culture, belonging, and justice as they arise in law and key social and cultural issues. The podcast is hosted by Max Gaston, Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Notre Dame Law School.

In this edition of Behind the Bindings, discover tools that you can use for researching Black history in the Law Journal Library!

Lloyd Lionel Gaines applied to the University of Missouri School of Law in 1936. Despite an outstanding scholastic record, Gaines was denied admission based solely on the grounds that Missouri’s Constitution called for “separate education of the races.” Because Missouri had no public law school that admitted Black applications, state law required the state to pay Gaines’ tuition at public universities in Iowa, Kansas or Nebraska. Attorneys from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) identified Gaines’ case as a good vehicle to begin the incremental process of challenging the ignominious precedent of “separate but equal” established in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. Together, they sued the University of Missouri seeking an order granting him admission to its Law School.

February marks the beginning of Black History Month, a time dedicated to recognizing and celebrating the profound contributions of African Americans throughout history. This annual observance serves as a crucial reminder of the struggles, triumphs, and enduring resilience of the Black community.

This panel discusses how we have reached this point as a nation, how to recognize antisemitism when we see it, and how to combat it.

"Our Hidden Conversations is a unique compilation of stories, richly reported essays, and photographs providing a window into America during a tumultuous era. This powerful book offers an honest, if sometimes uncomfortable, conversation about race and identity, permitting us to eavesdrop on deep-seated thoughts, private discussions, and long submerged memories."--

"Through the stories of five American families, a masterful and timely exploration of how hope, history, and racial denial collide in the suburbs and their schools Outside Atlanta, a middle-class Black family faces off with a school system seemingly bent on punishing their teenage son. North of Dallas, a conservative white family relocates to an affluent suburban enclave, but can't escape the changes sweeping the country. On Chicago's North Shore, a multiracial mom throws herself into an ultra-progressive challenge to the town's liberal status quo. In Compton, California, whose suburban roots are now barely recognizable, undocumented Hispanic parents place their gifted son's future in the hands of educators at a remarkable elementary school. And outside Pittsburgh, a Black mother buys a home on the same street where the author grew up, then confronts the destructive legacy left behind by white families like his. Education journalist Benjamin Herold's ability to braid these compelling human stories together with local and national history makes Disillusioned an astonishing reading experience, along with an urgent argument that America's suburbs and their schools are locked into a destructive cycle that has brought the country to a point of crisis. For generations, white families have reaped the benefits of massive federal investment in suburbia, then moved on as social and political infrastructure began to fail, leaving the mostly Black and brown families who follow to clean up the ensuing mess. Now, though, the suburbs are caught between rapidly shifting demographics and the reality that endless expansion is no longer feasible. Forced to confront truths that their communities were built to avoid, everyday suburban families find themselves at the center of the nation's most pressing debates: How do we repair America's divided communities? How do we build a future for all our children? In exploring these questions, Herold pulls back the curtain on suburban public schools and school boards, which he persuasively argues are the new ground zero in the fight for the country's future. Herold brings together research on the effects of racism on everyone with empathetic portrayals of families of wildly different backgrounds and perspectives. Nothing short of a journalistic masterpiece, Disillusioned brings readers face-to-face with the roots of America's discontent. Then, alongside the Black mother from his old neighborhood, who contributes a powerful epilogue to the book, Herold offers a hopeful path toward renewal"--

"In the current period of social and political unrest, conversations about identity are becoming more frequent and more difficult. On subjects like critical race theory, gender equity in the workplace, and LGBTQ-inclusive classrooms, many of us are understandably fearful of saying the wrong thing. That fear can sometimes prevent us from speaking up at all, depriving people from marginalized groups of support and stalling progress toward a more just and inclusive society. Kenji Yoshino and David Glasgow, founders of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging at NYU School of Law, are here to show potential allies that these conversations don't have to be so overwhelming. Through stories drawn from contexts as varied as social media posts, dinner party conversations, and workplace disputes, they offer seven user-friendly principles that teach skills such as how to avoid common conversational pitfalls, engage in respectful disagreement, offer authentic apologies, and better support people in our lives who experience bias"--

A revelatory assessment of workplace inequality in high-status jobs that focuses on a new explanation for a pernicious problem: racial discomfort. America's elite law firms, investment banks, and management consulting firms are known for grueling hours, low odds of promotion, and personnel practices that push out any employees who don't advance. While most people who begin their careers in these institutions leave within several years, work there is especially difficult for Black professionals, who exit more quickly and receive far fewer promotions than their White counterparts, hitting a "Black ceiling." Sociologist and law professor Kevin Woodson knows firsthand what life at a top law firm feels like as a Black man. Examining the experiences of more than one hundred Black professionals at prestigious firms, Woodson discovers that their biggest obstacle in the workplace isn't explicit bias but racial discomfort, or the unease Black employees feel in workplaces that are steeped in Whiteness. He identifies two types of racial discomfort: social alienation, the isolation stemming from the cultural exclusion Black professionals experience in White spaces, and stigma anxiety, the trepidation they feel over the risk of discriminatory treatment. While racial discomfort is caused by America's segregated social structures, it can exist even in the absence of racial discrimination, which highlights the inadequacy of the unconscious bias training now prevalent in corporate workplaces. Firms must do more than prevent discrimination, Woodson explains, outlining the steps that firms and Black professionals can take to ease racial discomfort. Offering a new perspective on a pressing social issue, The Black Ceiling is a vital resource for leaders at preeminent firms, Black professionals and students, managers within mostly White organizations, and anyone committed to cultivating diverse workplaces.

As we strive for a more equitable and inclusive future, how can we foster the well-being and potential of every individual, regardless of their ethnic or racial background?

This riveting blend of on-the-ground reporting and sweeping social and architectural history discusses the decision to close Rikers Island and what it will really mean for reformists, justice architects, abolitionists, city government officials, prison guards and the incarcerated themselves.

"Not White Enough is a legal and political history of anti-Asian bigotry, beginning with the California Gold Rush and ending with the infamous Supreme Court decision that upheld the imprisonment without trial of more than 100,000 innocent Americans on the spurious grounds of national security. The book demonstrates how law and politics bled into each other for decades to enable two-tiered justice, brushing aside Constitutional guarantees of equality under law. Not White Enough examines each of the key Supreme Court decisions-Wong Kim Ark, Ozawa, and Thind, for example-as expressions of political will and not simply jurisprudence. The author chronicles the political history of racism that made Japanese internment almost inevitable, including the key role San Francisco mayors James D. Phelan and Eugene Schmitz, political boss Abe Ruef, and California attorney general Ulysses Webb played in instigating, for political convenience, some of the most egregious anti-Asian legislation"--

"In the Japanese American relocation camps of World War II, internees could, on any given day, be both clients and victims of their assigned War Relocation Authority lawyers. The morally ambiguous remit of these attorneys was wide and often contradictory, including overseeing the day-to-day administration of the camps, settling internal disputes between inmates, managing conflict between detainees and their government captors, and providing legal representation for prisoners outside of the camps. In re-creating the daily lives of these WRA attorneys, Eric L. Muller seeks to capture historical subjects as three-dimensional, flawed human beings"--

"#MeToo. Black Lives Matter. Decriminalize Drugs. No More Stolen Sisters. Stop Stranger Attacks. Do we need more cops or to defund police? Harm reduction or treatment? Tougher sentences or prison abolition? The debate about Canada's criminal justice system has rarely been so polarized. This book brings the stories of survivors and offenders alike to the forefront to help us understand why the criminal justice system is facing such an existential crisis. Benjamin Perrin draws on his expertise as a lawyer, former top criminal justice advisor to the prime minister, and law clerk at the Supreme Court of Canada to investigate the criminal justice system itself. He critiques the system from a trauma-informed perspective, examining its treatment of victims of crime, Indigenous people and Black Canadians, people with substance use and mental health disorders, and people experiencing homelessness, poverty, and unemployment. Perrin also shares insights from others on the frontlines, including prosecutors and defence lawyers, police chiefs, Indigenous leaders, victim support workers, corrections officers, public health experts, gang outreach workers, prisoner and victims' rights advocates, criminologists, psychologists, and leading trauma experts. Bringing forward the voices of marginalized people, along with their stories of survival and resilience, Indictment shows that a better way is possible."--

"From the critically acclaimed author of High-risers comes a groundbreaking and honest investigation into the crisis of the American criminal justice system-through the lens of parole. Perfect for fans of Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow and Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy The United States, alone, locks up a quarter of the world's incarcerated people. And yet apart from cliches-paying a debt to society; you do the crime, you do the time-there is little sense collectively in America what constitutes retribution or atonement. We don't actually know why we punish. Ben Austen's powerful exploration offers a behind-the-scenes look at the process of parole. Told through the portraits of two men imprisoned for murder, and the parole board that holds their freedom in the balance, Austen's unflinching storytelling forces us to reckon with some of the most profound questions underlying the country's values around crime and punishment. What must someone who commits a terrible act do to get a second chance? What does incarceration seek to accomplish? An illuminating work of narrative nonfiction, Correction challenges us to consider for ourselves why and who we punish-and how we might find a way out of an era of mass imprisonment"--

Lawmakers investigating Harvard University’s response to antisemitism are demanding the Ivy League school turn over a treasure trove of documents in two weeks.

"Tip of the Spear boldly and compellingly argues that prisons are a domain of hidden warfare within US borders. Orisanmi Burton explores what he terms the Long Attica Revolt, a criminalized tradition of Black radicalism that propelled rebellions in New York prisons during the 1970s. The reaction to this revolt illuminates what Burton calls prison pacification: the coordinated tactics of violence, isolation, sexual terror, propaganda, reform, and white supremacist science and technology that state actors use to eliminate Black resistance within and beyond prison walls. Burton goes beyond the state records that other histories have relied on for the story of Attica and expands that archive, drawing on oral history and applying Black radical theory in ways that center the intellectual and political goals of the incarcerated people who led the struggle. Packed with little-known insights from the prison movement, the Black Panther Party, and the Black Liberation Army, Tip of the Spear promises to transform our understanding of prisons-not only as sites of race war and class war, of counterinsurgency and genocide, but also as sources of defiant Black life, revolutionary consciousness, and abolitionist possibility"--

"From the highest-ranking whistleblower in the history of the NYPD, a political memoir that exposes the brokenness of policing from both outside and inside the system During the workday, Edwin Raymond is on the beat as a ranked lieutenant in the New York Police Department. When the uniform comes off, he takes on a very different role: the lead plaintiff in the largest-ever civil rights lawsuit against the very police force he serves. This is the true story of one of our country's most important whistleblowers against police injustice, told in his own words. Raised in a poverty-stricken, largely immigrant neighborhood in Brooklyn and driven toward law enforcement by the hope of being a positive influence in his community, Raymond quickly learned that the problem with policing is a lot deeper than merely "a few bad apples"--the entire mechanism is set up to ensure that racial profiling is rewarded, and there are weighty consequences for cops who don't play along. Offering a rare, often shocking view of American policing through the eyes of an insider to the system, Raymond pulls back the curtain on the many injustices woven into the NYPD's training, data, and practices--all of which have been repackaged and repurposed by police departments across America. At once revelatory and galvanizing, An Inconvenient Cop is a whistleblower account unlike any other--a book that courageously bears witness to and exposes institutional violence, all while presenting a vision of radical hope, making the case for a world in which the police's responsibility is to the people, not to their arrest numbers" --

Chauvin was stabbed and seriously injured by another inmate inside a federal prison in Tucson, Ariz., according to officials.

"David Theo Goldberg analyzes the claims expressed in the attacks on critical race theory (CRT). He punctures the demonization of CRT, uncovering who is orchestrating it, funding the assault, and distributing the message. The book illustrates the enduring nature of structural racism, even as a conservative insistence on colorblindness serves to silence the possibility of doing anything about it. Goldberg exposes the political aims and effects of the vitriolic attacks. The upshot of CRT's targeting, he argues, has been to unleash racisms anew and to stymie any attempt to fight them, all with the aim of protecting white minority rule" --

Since the early 1960s, incarcerated Muslims have used legal action to establish their rights to religious freedom behind bars and improve the conditions of their incarceration. Inspired by Islamic principles of justice and equality, these efforts have played a critical role in safeguarding the civil rights not only of imprisoned Muslims but of all those confined to carceral settings. In this sweeping book����-the first to examine this history in depth-SpearIt writes a missing chapter in the history of Islam in America while illuminating new perspectives on the role of religious expression and experience in the courtroom.

"From acclaimed columnist and political commentator Michael Harriot, a searingly smart and bitingly hilarious retelling of American history that corrects the record and showcases the perspectives and experiences of Black Americans. America's backstory is a whitewashed mythology implanted in our collective memory. It is the story of the pilgrims on the Mayflower building a new nation. It is George Washington's cherry tree and Abraham Lincoln's log cabin. It is the fantastic tale of slaves that spontaneously teleported themselves here with nothing but strong backs and negro spirituals. It is a sugarcoated legend based on an almost true story. It should come as no surprise that the dominant narrative of American history is blighted with errors and oversights--after all, history books were written by white men with their perspectives at the forefront. It could even be said that the devaluation and erasure of the Black experience is as American as apple pie. In Black AF History, Michael Harriot presents a more accurate version of American history. Combining unapologetically provocative storytelling with meticulous research based on primary sources as well as the work of pioneering Black historians, scholars, and journalists, Harriot removes the white sugarcoating from the American story, placing Black people squarely at the center. With incisive wit, Harriot speaks hilarious truth to oppressive power, subverting conventional historical narratives with little-known stories about the experiences of Black Americans. From the African Americans who arrived before 1619 to the unenslavable bandit who inspired America's first police force, this long overdue corrective provides a revealing look into our past that is as urgent as it is necessary. For too long, we have refused to acknowledge that American history is white history. Not this one. This history is Black AF"--

"In Black Hollywood, photographer Carell Augustus has enlisted Black celebrities and performers from all areas of entertainment to recreate iconic scenes from classic Hollywood movies, television, and other media. The images illuminate the role of race in Hollywood history by re-imagining classic films with Black actors, renewing readers' appreciation of the past while celebrating the hottest Black stars of today and inspiring the artists of the future. More than a book about pop culture, film history, or race, Black Hollywood is truly an inspirational artistic homage to our greatest blockbuster movies and the actors who brought them to life"--