The Servants and Mrs. Rawlings: Martha Mickens and African American Life at Cross Creek

The year is about 1940. It is evening at Cross Creek, the home of author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, a simple wood-frame house set among working orange groves near Hawthorne in North Central Florida. An unknown photographer is documenting an evening of dining and entertainment for Rawlings and a group of her friends, who like the author are white people of means and accomplishment. One photograph focuses on three African American women who are standing in a row and singing, their eyes cast upward, accompanied by a man on the harmonica. A second man leans on the head of a guitar, and the guests, in the foreground, listen attentively. The performers are all Rawlings\u27s employees or their family members: a woman in her sixties named Martha Mickens, two of her adult children, and the children\u27s spouses. They are likely singing spirituals or hymns, for Martha Mickens knows a huge repertoire.1 In a second photograph of the same evening, Rawlings\u27s friend Rebecca Camp stands in the middle of the dining room. Behind Camp, with her back to the camera and headed toward the kitchen, is Idella Parker, Rawlings\u27s cook, in full formal servant\u27s uniform: white headpiece, dark dress with a white collar, and white apron. Although the dining table is not visible, the diners likely enjoyed one of Parker\u27s sumptuous meals, perhaps a roast pork loin from one of Rawlings\u27s pigs or seafood Newburg, made with fresh fish from the nearby Atlantic, served on one of Rawlings\u27s several sets of imported china.2 The photograph centers on Camp in her evening dress; Parker, in her worker\u27s garb, is busy in the background

Virus as Foreign Invader: U.S. Voters & the Immigration Debate

Nativist sentiments against classes of immigrants have existed since colonial times. But views about immigration and immigrants drive U.S. electoral politics now more than ever, accounting for a significant number of voters who crossed party lines in the 2016 presidential election. The COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to harden deeply-held beliefs about outsider threats and further entrench the polarization of public views on immigration. During his campaigns and term in office, President Trump popularized nativism, breaking from the received wisdom of the Republican party. Casting the virus as a foreign invader, he built on fears of the contagion to alter immigration policy in fundamental ways, including shutting down the border and eviscerating asylum protections. Nativism has allowed President Trump and his supporters to harmonize their contradictory beliefs that, on the one hand, anti-virus public health measures do not require strong collective action within the country, but, on the other, they justify extreme restrictions against immigrants. Over the long term, changing demographics and an increasingly positive view of immigrants and immigration signal that the country is on a trajectory to a more open society. In the short term, however, the Biden administration must contend with the surge of nativism stoked by President Trump and exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic

Addiction-Informed Immigration Reform

Immigration law fails to align with the contemporary understanding of substance addiction as a medical condition. The Immigration and Nationality Act regards noncitizens who suffer from drug or alcohol substance use disorder as immoral and undesirable. Addiction is a ground of exclusion and deportation and can prevent the finding of good moral character needed for certain immigration applications. Substance use disorder can lead to criminal behavior that lands noncitizens, including lawful permanent residents, in removal proceedings with no defense. The time has come for immigration law to catch up to today\u27s understanding of addiction. The damage done by failing to contemporize the law extends beyond the harms of unwarranted family separation due to the deportation or exclusion of people who suffer from substance use disorder. Holding noncitizens to an archaic standard threatens our civic and political identity as a diverse and democratic country. The bigger the gap between contemporary mores and immigration law and policy, the harder it is for U.S. citizens to develop a civic and political identity that is free of ethnic and racial animus. Double standards for citizens and noncitizens create cognitive dissonance, leaving society vulnerable to discriminatory or stereotypical views to justify the differential treatment. This phenomenon not only harms noncitizens but thwarts the formation of a national civic and political identity free of ethnic and racial bias. This Article proposes and explains the legislative reforms necessary to remedy the current state of immigration law\u27s treatment of people with substance use disorders

Review of \u3ci\u3eTexas Women: Frontier to Future\u3c/i\u3e by Ann Fears Crawford and Crystal Sasse Ragsdale

Texas Women might serve as a suitable introduction to elite white women in Texas, but will not serve a deeper purpose because of its lack of original research. (A number of the subjects, such as Ames, Porter, and Martin, have already been subjects of monographs, and others would make interesting full-length studies.) It is not suitable for classroom use because of its lack of multicultural inclusiveness, which could have been easily overcome. Perhdps heavily documented, deeply researched scholarly monographs are not for a popular audience. But popular writing can still reflect the richness of women\u27s experience in Texas. Crawford and Ragsdale point to the need for continued work on Texas women

More Than One Lane Wide: Against Hierarchies of Helping in Progressive Legal Advocacy

Progressive legal scholars and practitioners have created a hierarchy within social justice lawyering. Direct service attorneys-nonprofit attorneys who focus on helping individuals in civil cases-sit at the bottom. In the 1960s, progressive theorists advanced a negative portrayal of direct service attorneys as a class. This discourse has continued through different phases in the development of progressive legal theory. Direct service work is done primarily by women in the service of women, has the aesthetic of traditional women\u27s work, and can be understood as embodying the thesis that women have a greater existential and psychological connection to others than men. Like other forms of women\u27s work, direct service work often goes unrecognized even though more visible progressive work depends on it. Negative portrayals of direct service attorneys employ a strategy of oppositional definition that is representative of binary male thinking and deny a positive view of direct service work as life-sustaining service to others. This article discusses the harms perpetuated by hierarchies of helping and sketches a more inclusive vision of progressive lawyering

Human Frailty, Unbreakable Victims and Asylum

This article analyzes the asylum decisions of immigration agencies and federal appellate courts and demonstrates that the case law driven standard for persecution is out of step with the original meaning of the term, international law standards, and contemporary understanding of how human beings experience physical and mental harm. Medical and psychological evidence establishes that even trauma at the lower end of the spectrum of severity can inflict lasting and debilitating effects on people\u27s health. Yet over the last three decades, virtually no court decisions have decreased the showing of harm needed to establish persecution. To the contrary, courts have generally ratcheted up what is required. Today, most judicial decisions rest on the unwarranted assumption of an unbreakable asylum applicant who must show systematic and escalating physical mistreatment over a sustained period or a single instance of extraordinary harm that results in a scar, disability, or other lasting physical injury. Although mental harm can qualify as persecution, courts rarely find persecution based solely on mental mistreatment. And courts routinely fail to consider the longstanding mental effects of physical trauma. Court decisions on persecution are consistent with troubling studies suggesting people have difficulty empathizing with, and understanding, the situations of others when there is a lack of immediacy, and that decision makers and authority figures are prone to making racialized attributions of pain on the baseless assumption that people of color can withstand more pain than white people. Decision makers should seek to minimize the tendency to downplay the pain of others in asylum adjudications and adopt a human rights approach, which tags the concept of persecution to the violation of a human right and better tracks the prevailing understanding of how humans experience both physical and mental mistreatment, which grows more encompassing over time