Civil Rights Movements & the Law

This highly-readable primer on Critical Race Theory (CRT) examines the theory's basic commitments, strengths, and weaknesses. In addition to serving as a primary text for graduate and undergraduate Critical Race Theory seminars or courses on Race and the Law, it can also be assigned in courses on Antidiscrimination Law, Civil Rights, and Law and Society. The book can be used by any reader seeking to understand the relationship between constructions of race and the law. The text consists of four Parts. Part I provides a history of CRT. Part II introduces and explores several core concepts in the theory--including institutional/structural racism, implicit bias, microaggressions, racial privilege, the relationship between race and class, and intersectionality. Part III builds on Part II's discussion of intersectionality by exploring the intersection of race with a variety of other characteristics--including sexuality and gender identity, religion, and ability. Part IV analyzes several contemporary issues to which CRT speaks--including racial disparities in health, affirmative action, the criminal justice system, the welfare state, and education.

The white power movement in America wants a revolution. It has declared all-out war against the federal government and its agents, and has carried out--with military precision--an escalating campaign of terror against the American public. Its soldiers are not lone wolves but are highly organized cadres motivated by a coherent and deeply troubling worldview of white supremacy, anticommunism, and apocalypse. In Bring the War Home, Kathleen Belew gives us the first full history of the movement that consolidated in the 1970s and 1980s around a potent sense of betrayal in the Vietnam War and made tragic headlines in the 1995 bombing of Oklahoma City. Returning to an America ripped apart by a war which, in their view, they were not allowed to win, a small but driven group of veterans, active-duty personnel, and civilian supporters concluded that waging war on their own country was justified. They unified people from a variety of militant groups, including Klansmen, neo-Nazis, skinheads, radical tax protestors, and white separatists. The white power movement operated with discipline and clarity, undertaking assassinations, mercenary soldiering, armed robbery, counterfeiting, and weapons trafficking. Its command structure gave women a prominent place in brokering intergroup alliances and bearing future recruits. Belew's disturbing history reveals how war cannot be contained in time and space. In its wake, grievances intensify and violence becomes a logical course of action for some. Bring the War Home argues for awareness of the heightened potential for paramilitarism in a present defined by ongoing war.--

"Ordinary Injustice shows how the legal and judicial system is stacked against Latinos documenting the racial inequities in the system from the time of arrest and incarceration to final disposition and post-conviction experiences. The book chronicles the obstacles and injustices faced a young Latino student with no previous criminal record and how a simple, misdemeanor domestic violence case morphed into a very serious case with multiple felonies, and a life case without the possibility of parole"--

Candice Hammons' journey and the plight of her ancestors will become an exhibit by the African American Museum of Southern Arizona on October 17

Eliminating the terms “race and ethnicity” from the American Bar Association’s law school accreditation rules will hobble longstanding efforts to bring in diverse students and faculty, critics warned in public comments on the proposal.