BLACK, WHITE, AND BLUE: BIAS, PROFILING, AND POLICING IN THE AGE OF BLACK LIVES MATTER

The United States has experienced a series of murders at the hands of the police in recent years, from Michael Brown to Tamir Rice to Eric Garner. The brutalization of Black people at the hands of the police is not new, but many are being introduced to the concept of police brutality through the channels of social media. Hashtags like #BlackLivesMatter and #TakeAKnee have revolutionized the conversation about racism and policing, bringing these incidents into mainstream media and common conversation. This movement has led to a deeper discussion on the following questions: (1) Why are Black people viewed as violent by the police?; (2) Why are these murders and acts of brutality being seen so regularly?; and (3) What has the criminalization of communities of color done to damage the public\u27s perception of Black communities? This Article attempts to answer all of these questions, coming to the conclusion that while the police brutality of Black people is not new, our understanding of why these incidents occur has developed into a deeper understanding of the institutional racism behind police brutality

Shadow Works and Shadow Markets: How Privatization of Welfare Services Produces an Alternative Market

The Author attempts to fuse Ivan Illich’s misplaced ideas of gender roles with how privatization of welfare services has legitimized a shadow economy and work through mandated community service jobs. The Article provides a historical perspective of how social services were handled, leading to the current cost/benefit legacy of welfare privatization utilized by the Wisconsin Works program (W-2). Wisconsin’s program requires women recipients to engage in volunteer work, creating a subsidized labor force for private agencies based on the presumption that work, even meaningless and menial tasks, establishes job-readiness for women on welfare. The Author suggests that we need to begin thinking about how to recreate the framework for providing public services. The community service component of W2 and its actual function powerfully demonstrates how W-2 mothers have become a reserve labor force. But at the same time the contours of W-2 make reserve labor status profitable, not for the mothers, but for the sub-contracted agencies. The relationship between W-2 mothers, the status of community service, and the position of sub-contracted agencies have generated a shadow market as a consequence of welfare privatization. The ways in which these women are held captive to a world without work, a world without skill building, and limited ways out become the grounds upon which sub-contracting agencies generate profit. Under the shroud of “cost effectiveness,” private agencies are reaping the financial windfall of “pimping” the state based on their ability to market their skills at converting welfare mothers into low-wage workers

Backsliding: The United States Supreme Court, Shelby County v. Holder and the Dismantling of the Voting Rights Act of 1965

The Supreme Court, having found that certain states received unequal treatment under the Voting Rights Act, struck down the Act’s preclearance provision in its Shelby v. Holder holding. The Author, in an effort to critique the conclusion reached by the Court, argues that these states, historically responsible for obstructing the ability of African-Americans to vote, continue to engage in practices that result in voting irregularities and acts of discrimination in the electoral process. Today, this strategic disenfranchisement rears its head in the form of legislation making voting difficult or impossible for many minority voters, a criminal justice system that targets racial minorities, and a lack of representation for citizens of color in both federal and state offices. The Author argues that without a preclearance requirement, “second generation” barriers to voting—such as the passage of voter ID laws and the dilution of black voting power through gerrymandering—will be constructed. The Author cites statistics on hate crimes based on racial bias, the disproportionate imprisonment of minorities, and the limited representation of African Americans in politics to support the main argument that racial disenfranchisement has persisted into the present day. The Author concludes that while the Voting Rights Act has never addressed all of the strategies used to suppress the black vote, the Supreme Court should still consider them if it wants to consider fully the legacy of slavery and the persistence of racism

Shadow Works and Shadow Markets: How Privatization of Welfare Services Produces an Alternative Market

The Author attempts to fuse Ivan Illich’s misplaced ideas of gender roles with how privatization of welfare services has legitimized a shadow economy and work through mandated community service jobs. The Article provides a historical perspective of how social services were handled, leading to the current cost/benefit legacy of welfare privatization utilized by the Wisconsin Works program (W-2). Wisconsin’s program requires women recipients to engage in volunteer work, creating a subsidized labor force for private agencies based on the presumption that work, even meaningless and menial tasks, establishes job-readiness for women on welfare. The Author suggests that we need to begin thinking about how to recreate the framework for providing public services. The community service component of W2 and its actual function powerfully demonstrates how W-2 mothers have become a reserve labor force. But at the same time the contours of W-2 make reserve labor status profitable, not for the mothers, but for the sub-contracted agencies. The relationship between W-2 mothers, the status of community service, and the position of sub-contracted agencies have generated a shadow market as a consequence of welfare privatization. The ways in which these women are held captive to a world without work, a world without skill building, and limited ways out become the grounds upon which sub-contracting agencies generate profit. Under the shroud of “cost effectiveness,” private agencies are reaping the financial windfall of “pimping” the state based on their ability to market their skills at converting welfare mothers into low-wage workers

In Supreme Judgment of the Poor: The Role of the United States Supreme Court in Welfare Law and Policy

This Article examines the major Supreme Court rulings since the late 1960s that have directly addressed Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), commonly known as welfare. The Supreme Court decided cases, such as King v. Smith, Shapiro v. Thompson, and Goldberg v. Kelly, in favor of welfare recipients. The outcomes of these cases suggest that while the Supreme Court viewed welfare policy as a negotiation between federal and state governments, it reserved a special role for the judicial branch in protecting equal rights. The judicial understanding of the relationship between federal and state government power within welfare policy ranged from “cooperative federalism,” (expanding powers of the national government in areas traditionally left to the states) to fiscal conservatism (privileging state power and proffering a hands-off approach). These conceptual rubrics do not follow a linear narrative nor offer a story of change over time; instead they are competing approaches that can be implemented by the Supreme Court simultaneously. While the historical arch from the Civil Rights Era to the present normally presents a story of expanded liberties and freedoms to the socially disenfranchised, the lens of the Supreme Court welfare decisions narrates a much different story. Instead, we see the devolution of racial liberalism, the intensification and expansion of poverty, and the rise of social conservatism so familiar by the mid-1980s. Here, black women became both the symbolic scapegoat and the site of social policy surveillance. At the apex of this symbolic/social policy convergence were national attacks on the stereotyped “welfare queen” in particular, and any redistribution of national resources to the poor, in general. Part I of this paper examines Supreme Court case law on welfare policy through the lens of the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. Part II surveys the Supreme Court case law on welfare policy through the lens of federalism. Finally, Part III reviews much of the same case law contrasted through the lens of fiscal conservatism. Through these lenses, it is clear that the seemingly value-neutral Supreme Court was not at all immune to the changing political landscape of the nation over the last forty years

SHADOW WORKS AND SHADOW MARKETS: HOW PRIVATIZATION OF WELFARE SERVICES PRODUCES AN ALTERNATIVE MARKET

The Author attempts to fuse Ivan Illich’s misplaced ideas of gender roles with how privatization of welfare services has legitimized a shadow economy and work through mandated community service jobs. The Article provides a historical perspective of how social services were handled, leading to the current cost/benefit legacy of welfare privatization utilized by the Wisconsin Works program (W-2). Wisconsin’s program requires women recipients to engage in volunteer work, creating a subsidized labor force for private agencies based on the presumption that work, even meaningless and menial tasks, establishes job-readiness for women on welfare. The Author suggests that we need to begin thinking about how to recreate the framework for providing public services. The community service component of W2 and its actual function powerfully demonstrates how W-2 mothers have become a reserve labor force. But at the same time the contours of W-2 make reserve labor status profitable, not for the mothers, but for the sub-contracted agencies. The relationship between W-2 mothers, the status of community service, and the position of sub-contracted agencies have generated a shadow market as a consequence of welfare privatization. The ways in which these women are held captive to a world without work, a world without skill building, and limited ways out become the grounds upon which sub-contracting agencies generate profit. Under the shroud of “cost effectiveness,” private agencies are reaping the financial windfall of “pimping” the state based on their ability to market their skills at converting welfare mothers into low-wage workers

SYMPOSIUM: Defining Race: Colorblind Diversity: The Changing Significance of Race in the Post-Bakke Era

In 1954, fifty-eight years after the Plessy v. Ferguson decision, the Supreme Court was afforded another opportunity to reverse the “separate but equal doctrine” in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (Brown I). Brown I was a consolidation of five civil rights cases from the District of Columbia, Delaware, Kansas, Virginia, and South Carolina that attempted to change race relations in America by affording African Americans a piece of the pie. A few other cases soon followed Brown I. In 1963, Goss v. Board of Education of Knoxville proclaimed that any program that structurally appeared to maintain segregation would be held unconstitutional. And in 1964, Griffin v. Prince Edward County School Board announced that pretense integration of black children would also violate the Constitution. Despite the Court’s signature announcement of equality of “Negroes,” Brown I has not completely altered the inequalities of the past. For that reason, race-conscious policies instituted not only by admissions departments in colleges and universities but also in primary and secondary educational institutions are needed to level the playing field. Since Brown I, there have been a number of statutes, court cases and policies that have continued to struggle over the use of race-conscious policies in the goal for racial equality. The Author traces the development of the law and discusses the social context of race and diversity