U NIVERSITY
OF
V IRGINIA S CHOOL
OF
L AW
C ENTER FOR THE S TUDY OF R ACE AND L AW
K IM F ORDE -M AZRUI , DIRECTOR
T IM L OVELACE , A SSISTANT D IRECTOR
A NNUAL R EPORT
2007-2008
V IRGINIA ’ S F REEDOM F IGHTER : T HE C ENTER H ONORS
O LIVER W. H ILL S R .
C ENTER E XECUTIVE
B OARD
The Center honored the late Oliver W. Hill Sr.,
esteemed civil rights attorney, for his integral
role in the civil rights movement at a Law
School event September 13, 2007 in Caplin
Pavilion. The event featured Henry L. Marsh
III, Virginia State Senator and Hill‟s former legal
partner, Robert M. O‟Neil, former President of
the University of Virginia and Emeritus
Professor of Law, and Claudrena Harold,
Assistant Professor of History and AfricanOliver Hill Jr. accepted the
American Studies at the University of Virginia.
inaugural Oliver W. Hill Sr.
The panel was moderated by Tomiko BrownLifetime Achievement Award.
Nagin, Professor of Law and History at the
University. The panelists remembered Hill‟s efforts to dismantle America‟s system
of racial apartheid and unfailing commitment to American democracy by discussing
his significant contributions to school desegregation, the practice of civil rights law,
First Amendment jurisprudence, and black leadership.
Yemi Abayomi JB Billings-Kang
Jared Boyd
Katie Burke
Andrew Duncan
Najah Farley
Nicole Flatow
Eric Gerard
Ashaki Holmes
Mai-Linh Hong
Frankie Jones
Tameka Phillips
Dana Weekes
The Center also presented the inaugural Oliver W. Hill Sr. Lifetime Achievement
Award at the event, which will be given yearly to a civil rights scholar or activist
that embodies Hill‟s ideals and commitment to equality. The first recipient was
Oliver Hill Sr., and Oliver Hill Jr. accepted the award on his father‟s behalf. The
event was sponsored by the Center, the Black Law Students Association, the Office
of the Vice President and Chief Officer for Diversity and Equity, the Carter G.
Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies, and the Office of the
Vice President and Chief Student Affairs Officer.
C ONTENTS
C ENTER F ACULTY
C OMMITTEE
Darryl Brown
Brandon Garrett
Tomiko Brown-Nagin
Contents
C OURSE O FFERINGS 2
S TUDENT
S CHOLARLY P APER
C OMPETITION
S YMPOSIUM
4
A MICUS B RIEF I N
4
K IMBROUGH
V.
US
R ESIDENT F ACULTY 5
S PEAKER S ERIES
Claudrena Harold
Henry Marsh
Report prepared by Tim Lovelace
Robert O’Neil
Tomiko Brown-Nagin
O UTSIDE F ACULTY
S PEAKER S ERIES
9
R ACE , L AW , &
H UMAN R IGHTS
S ERIES
11
C ENTER -S UPPORTED 14
E VENTS
Course offerings
R ACE
AND
P AGE 2
L AW C OURSE
In the spring semester of 2008, Professor Kim Forde-Mazrui taught a course, entitled “Race
and Law,” which examined the response of law to racial issues in a variety of contemporary
legal contexts. The seminar explored topics including education, employment, criminal
justice, voting, interracial relationships and adoption, and hate speech, and the course
materials consisted of a mix of cases and scholarly commentary. Classes centered on candid
discussion about the issues raised in the assigned materials and the continuing significance of
race in the American legal framework. Students engaged in meaningful scholarly exchanges,
examining whether the law has aided or impeded the cause of civil rights in the past and the
extent to which the law can help to resolve racial issues in the present and future.
The student essays for the 2008 seminar are listed below.
Yemi Abayomi, “Whose Kids Are We Really Helping? And Are They the Right Ones?: An
Analysis of Juvenile Transfer Policies and Their Impact on Minority Youth”
Debo Adesina, “Are „Coalitional Districts‟ under Section 5 States Practical to Helping
African-Americans Effectively Exercise the Electoral Franchise?”
Ahmad Alshorbagy, “The Early Islamic State and the United States: A Comparative Study in
Race and Law”
Chioma Ayogu, “Being Black Enough”
Kim Forde-Mazrui
Director, Center for the
Study of Race and Law
Justice Thurgood
Marshall Distinguished
Professor of Law
University of Virginia
School of Law
Erica Brewington, “The Racial Implications of the NCAA Academic Standards: No Foul, No
Harm?”
Christopher Cahill, “The Fourteenth Amendment: First Step to Applying a Race-Conscious Approach”
Xavier Carter, “What Now?: Is Integration a Viable Option in the Wake of Parents Involved v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1?”
Jacqueline Choi, “Discussion of the Provocation Defenses for Victims of Racialized Violence”
Sungwan Choy, “When, If Ever, Is Race-Based Jury Nullification Legitimate or Desirable?”
Elisabeth Custalow, “Educating the Wanabi Nation: How Check-the-Box on University Admissions Applications Defeats
Its Own Purpose”
Loren Days, “The Tension of Justice: Racial Classifications of African-Americans and the Law”
Germaine Dunn, “A Look at Some of the Sources and Implications of Black Immigrants‟ and Black Americans‟ Experiences
under Affirmative Action”
Mia Ellis, “Beyond Essentialism: Construction of the “Black Indian Identity”
Stephanie Fier, “Closing the Loopholes: Achieving Race-Neutrality in the Adoptive Process”
Karla Hardy, “The Worst of Both Worlds”
Michelle Harris, “Black, Breastfeeding, and Back to Work: How the 1996 Welfare Reform Act Has Contributed to Low
Breastfeeding Rates among African American Women”
Elizabeth Hatcher, “Reevaluating Race Based Jury Nullification”
Jeannie Ho, “The Darden Dilemma and Asian Americans: Should Asian Americans Become Prosecutors?”
Wei Ji, “Interracial Marriage in U.S. and Its Laws”
Hyowon Kang, “The Possibility of Regulation of Hate Speech”
Dongju Kwon, “Race-Based Jury Nullification”
Course offerings
R ACE
AND
P AGE 3
L AW C OURSE ( CONTINUED )
Taylor Lankford, “A List of Demands for the Supreme Court: Exposing Flawed Rhetoric on Citizenship and Offering
Solutions through the Lens of Asian-American Literature”
Elizabeth Lim, “Checking the „Asian‟ Box: The Legal and Social Implications of a Government-Defined Racial Identity”
Ameenah Lloyd, “Still Separate and Still Unequal: The Effects of Tracking Programs & the Compelling Need for True
Desegregation & Diversity”
Justin Lowery, “The Use of Racial Classifications in Medical Situations”
Lara Loyd, “SWF Seeks Same:” The Use of Racial Language in Ms. Murphy Advertising”
Savannah Marion, “Historically Black Colleges and Universities: Establishing Legal and Educational Justifications”
Zack McDermott, “Facilitative Accommodation: Parents‟ Racial Preferences in Adoption”
Nilakshi Parndigamage, “Dead Cat on the Doorstep: International Law, The United States and Article 2 (1)(c) of The
International Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination”
Sam Russell, “An American Hate Speech Regime? (but Don‟t Throw the Baby out with the Bathwater!)”
Renada Rutmanis, “Not Such a Bad IDEA: Why Racial Disproportionality in Special Education is Not Just Black and White”
Kate Skagerberg, “Race and Rape: The Role of Race in Sexual Assault Prosecutions”
Michael Stark, “Racism, the War on Drugs, and Whither Malcolm X? Part I: Introduction and Origins”
Thomas Wood, “Race, Tax Policy, and the Internal Revenue Code”
Howard Yuan, “Unique But United: Asian American Perspectives on Affirmative Action”
Latif Zaman, “Immigrant Assimilation and African-American Alienation”
Professor Forde-Mazrui also supervised an Independent Research Project:
Stephen Anthony, “Brown and Black Justices: Reconciling Justices Marshall‟s and Thomas‟ Approach to the Issue of Race
and Educational Opportunity”
R ACE
AND
L AW S HORT C OURSE
In the fall semester of 2007, Professor Devon Carbado a two-week course at the Law School,
entitled, “Critical Race Theory: Problems in Anti-Discrimination Law.” The course explored
the deep interconnections between race and law, and particularly the ways in which race and law
are mutually constitutive, by exploring the emerging themes within critical race theory. The
course also examined some of the questions and criticisms raised about critical race theory, from
both inside and outside of the genre, as well as the impact of the work on legal and political discourse. The point of departure for the course was an exploration of the definition of race itself
and the role law plays in constructing this identity. Finally, the course considered the extent to
which critical race theory can be employed to address various problems in anti-discrimination
law.
Devon Carbado
Professor of Law
University of CaliforniaLos Angeles Law School
NEW Student initiatives
P AGE 4
R ACE AND L AW S TUDENT S CHOLARLY
P APER C OMPETITION
In the spring of 2007, the Center and the Virginia Journal of Social Policy & the Law
inaugurated the Race and Law Student Scholarly Paper Competition. The Race and Law Student
Scholarly Paper Competition, which was the result of student initiative, aimed to encourage
and recognize outstanding scholarship pertaining to race and law by law students in the
Commonwealth of Virginia. The winning paper was published in the Virginia Law Review,
the second place paper will be published in the Virginia Journal of Social Policy & the Law, and
the third place paper will be published in the Virginia Journal of International Law.
Lisa Perez
On November 6, 2007, the authors of the three winning papers returned to the Law
School to present an oral summary of their work at the Center‟s First Annual Scholarly Paper
Competition Symposium. The winners of the inaugural the Race and Law Student Scholarly Paper
Competition are below.
First Place: Lisa Perez
“Citizenship Denied: The Insular Cases and the Fourteenth Amendment”
VIRGINIA LAW REVIEW
Archie Alston
Second Place: Archie Alston
“Affirmative Inaction: How Allowing African Americans to Opt Out of Affirmative Action
May Increase its Efficacy and Illuminate Its Original Intent”
VIRGINIA JOURNAL OF SOCIAL POLICY & THE LAW
Third Place: Mai-Linh Hong
“A Genocide by Any Other Name: Language, Law and the Response to Darfur”
VIRGINIA JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW
T HE C ENTER F ILES
K IMBROUGH
V.
AN
A MICUS B RIEF
Mai-Linh Hong
IN
U NITED S TATES
In 2007, the Center partnered with The Sentencing Project to submit an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court
case Kimbrough v. United States, in which the appellant challenged the idea of mandatory sentencing guidelines for
the manufacture and distribution of crack cocaine. The partnership was the idea of Jared Boyd,
a student member of the Center‟s Executive Board, who wanted to explore how students
might apply legal theory to real-world problems. Boyd commented, “Legal scholars and civil
rights organizations have continually demonstrated that the mandatory federal sentencing
guidelines for crack cocaine were not only unreasonable, but also had a disparate impact on
African-Americans. We believed that by joining with practitioners, we could advance our
scholarly interests and promote social justice.” During the Supreme Court‟s 2007-2008
term, the Court sided with Kimbrough and the Center and ruled that the federal sentencing
guidelines were not mandatory. As a result of this partnership, the Law School is offering the
course Advanced Race and Law Projects so that students may use scholarship to address other
Jared Boyd
race-related, public policy issues.
Resident Faculty Speaker Series
P AGE 5
FORDE-MAZRUI, WARDLE DEBATE
SAME-SEX MARRIAGE, ADOPTION
A debate on same-sex marriage and adoption brought a standing-room-only crowd to Caplin Pavilion November
13, as Virginia law professor Kim Forde-Mazrui and Professor Lynn Wardle from the J. Reuben Clark Law School
at Brigham Young University faced off on one of the most contentious issues in family law. Wardle began by citing
the relatively short list of nations and states that support same-sex
marriage. Wardle said, “Same-sex marriage is explicitly prohibited in the
laws of 45 states and more than 70 nations…banned by state constitutions in
27 states… and banned in the national constitutions of 32 nations. Marriage
between other than a man and a woman has never been legalized in the
history of the world until 2001, when the Netherlands did it.” Wardle
argued that marriage between a man and women “is deeply rooted in the
history and traditions of our people” and that “same-sex marriage has never
been deemed a fundamental constitutional right.” Similarly, he maintained
that gay and lesbian adoptions were a radical idea in most jurisdictions, as a
majority of states do not explicitly permit gay and lesbian adoptions and only
15 out of 192 nations allow gay and lesbian adoptions. Wardle contended
Lynn Wardle
that in the early part of the last century, the theory of eugenics was the social
movement that redefined marriage for that time but that the real agenda was
separation of races. “Today we have a similar movement attempting to capture marriage in order to promote their
social agenda, and I think that their tactic is as impermissible and as dangerous to society as was the movement of
the white supremacists and the social eugenicists.”
In his response, Forde-Mazrui acknowledged that gay marriage and adoption were divisive topics. He argued,
however, that such division does not occur among social scientists, national organizations of psychiatrists,
psychologists, pediatricians, and social workers, all of whom have found that “there‟s no detrimental risk of any
significance when it comes to sexual orientation of parents.” Forde-Mazrui
agreed with Wardle on being pro-marriage and discussed several studies,
which demonstrate the importance of children having permanent parents
despite their parents‟ sexual orientation. Forde-Mazrui also cited past laws
and social mores allowing racial segregation in marriage and education that,
although popular into the 1970s, are rejected today. He noted the
similarities with views held today regarding same-sex relationships and
societal fears for children raised in such relationships. “If you hold to the
fact that the primary conduct [of gays and lesbians] is not wrong, I think it
will strike you how much the arguments seem to rely so easily on overgeneralizations…exaggerations of the risks involved, unsubstantiated
Kim Forde-Mazrui
claims, stereotypes—and I think the driving factor is fear.” He urged
students to hold on to their beliefs but to remember that, “We have a
tradition in America of separating faith from public policy…So, with
respect to marriage and adoption…let‟s opt for a light hand from government to maximize liberty and equality for
all.” The event was sponsored by the Center, Federalist Society, and ACLU-UVA Law.
Resident Faculty Speaker Series
C ARBADO
ON
P AGE 6
“A CTING W HITE ”
On October 25, 2007, Devon Carbado, UCLA law professor, delivered a presentation,
“Acting White,” to a cross-Grounds University audience in Newcomb Hall. Carbado
dynamic presentation used Senator Barack Obama‟s ascendance to the forefront of
American politics and representations from popular culture to discuss what race means
in America. Carbado asked, “What does it mean to be „too Negro?‟ What does it mean
to „act white?‟” For Carbado, Obama‟s ancestry has little to do with how we understand
his racial identity. Instead, Carbado claimed, Obama‟s racial identity is intimately linked
to his performance of race. Carbado explained that racial performance means “the
racially-associated ways of being, including, but not limited to, how we dress and style
our hair, our institutional affiliations, who we date and/or marry, where we live, how
we speak, the people with whom we associate, and our overall mannerisms and
demeanor.” Carbado argued that in this age of Obama, we must reconsider how we
think about the meaning of race, and he challenged the audience to interrogate any
claims to racial authenticity. Carbado‟s presentation was co-sponsored by the Center,
the Asian Student Union, Black Student Alliance, the University chapter of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Black Law Students
Association.
C ARBADO
ADDRESSES
F ACULTY W ORKSHOP
Devon Carbado discussed his paper, “Acting White: What‟s Law Got to do With It?” (co
-authored with Mitu Gulati), at a faculty workshop on October 26, 2007.
Carbado
explored the performative dimensions of racial identity in America and asserted that
these raced evaluations are consequential, particularly in the workplace, as decisionmakers relying on racial performances determine “how black” an African-American employee is. According to Carbado, “almost all of our conversations about and analysis of
employment discrimination focus on whether an employer‟s hiring or promotion decisions reflect a preference for whites over non-whites. This interracial frame is too narrow.” Carbado stated that to appreciate the significance of race in the contemporary
workplace, we must understand racial salience—“the difference amongst and between
black people based on their racial performance.” For some employers, including those
who profess a commitment to racial diversity, the ideal African-American employee is
one who is phenotypically African-American but who moderates any perceived racial
excesses generally attributed to African-Americans. Carbado maintained that if
employment discrimination law is to have real meaning in the twenty-first century, it
must take account of how the performative dimension of race shapes the economic opportunities of African-Americans.
Devon Carbado
Professor of Law
University of CaliforniaLos Angeles Law School
Resident Faculty Speaker Series
P AGE 7
C ONSCIOUSNESS . C ULTIVATION . C HANGE .
On February 8, 2008, the Center joined with the Black Law Students Association for
“Consciousness. Cultivation. Change,” the kick-off for Law School‟s celebration of
Black History Month. Michael Klarman, University of Virginia Professor of Law, gave
the keynote speech, and used insights from his newest book, Unfinished Business: Racial
Equality in America, to explore contemporary race relations. Klarman argued that the
racial progress in America has never been linear path toward equality or due to the
simple benevolence of the Supreme Court. Rather, for Klarman, racial progress “has
come in fits and starts” with many periods of “racial retrogression.” He then examined
the contexts in which racial progress has occurred during the twentieth century,
highlighting the significance of growing black demands for justice, the Great Migration,
World War II, and the Cold War imperative in the fight to end Jim Crow. As Klarman
considered the future strategies of racial progress, he reminded the audience that those
who seek improve race relations should not necessarily deem the Supreme Court as
friendly to racial progress, because the Court‟s civil rights jurisprudence merely reflects
the dominant national racial attitude.
Michael Klarman
James Monroe Distinguished
Professor of Law
Elizabeth D. and Richard A.
Merrill Research
Professor of Law
University of Virginia
School of Law
H OUSING S EGREGATION AND THE R ISE
M IDDLE C LASS B LACK S UBURB
OF THE
On February 25, 2008, the Center welcomed Richard Schragger and his presentation,
“Housing Segregation and the Rise of the Middle Class Black Suburb.” Schragger began
the discussion by noting that a majority of scholars originally believed that residential
segregation was caused by housing discrimination and the income gap between blacks
and whites. However, as enforcement of anti-discrimination laws increased and the income gap began to close, the expected suburban integration did not materialize. While
only 31 percent of blacks live in suburbs today, as compared with 73 percent of whites,
those African Americans that are moving out of cities are increasingly avoiding neighborhoods where they would be an ethnic minority. They are instead seeking out
predominantly black suburbs. For Schragger, middle class black suburbs have grown,
because upwardly mobile black people with choices about where to live are choosing
newer, predominantly black suburban communities. However, Schragger also
contended that despite the rise of black suburbia, many urban problems often to follow
the black middle class into black suburbs. Schragger subsequently opened up his
presentation and engaged the audience in a lively discussion where he and students
debated the benefits and costs of black middle class suburbs and discussed the future of
American residential segregation.
Richard Schragger
Professor of Law
Class of 1948 Professor in
Scholarly Research in Law
University of Virginia
School of Law
Resident Faculty Speaker Series
R ECOVERING
Risa Goluboff
THE
L OST P ROMISE
OF
P AGE 8
C IVIL R IGHTS
The Center hosted a panel discussion of Professor Risa Goluboff‟s new book, The Lost
Promise of Civil Rights, on April 8, 2008. Goluboff, Virginia law professor and the
2008 James Willard Hurst Prize winner, reflected on her ground-breaking research and
the academic debates leading to The Lost Promise of Civil Rights, while panelists Danny
Greenberg, Special Counsel at Schulte, Roth, & Zabel and former President and
Attorney-in-Chief for the Legal Aid Society in New York City, and Tomiko BrownNagin, Virginia law professor, offered their scholarly assessments of Goluboff‟s work.
Goluboff explained that before Brown v. Board of Education, labor rights were central to
the conception of civil rights. She detailed how black agricultural workers in the South
demanded civil rights protections aimed at economic as well as legal inequalities, and in
turn, lawyers in the new Civil Rights Section of the Department of Justice and in the
NAACP used these labor cases to attack Jim Crow. Goluboff maintained, however, that
“[w]hen the lawyers succeeded in Brown, they simultaneously marginalized the host of
other harms--economic inequality chief among them--that afflicted the majority of
African Americans during the mid-twentieth century.” Both Greenberg and BrownNagin lamented the dearth of civil rights scholarship focused on labor issues and praised
Goluboff‟s efforts to recover civil rights before the success of the Brown litigation.
Brown-Nagin commented, “The Lost Promise of Civil Rights makes a singular
contribution to the law and society literature. It recasts labor rights as civil rights, and
gives voice to subjects who rarely receive attention in legal scholarship — AfricanAmerican workers. The [Hurst] award is richly deserved.”
A DDITONAL P RAISE
FOR
T HE L OST P ROMISE
OF
C IVIL R IGHTS

Goluboff‟s book constitutes an important and original contribution to the history of civil
rights before Brown. Few historians—and virtually no legal historians—have investigated
the NAACP‟s labor cases of this era. Risa has deepened our understanding of why the
NAACP suddenly abandoned its newfound interest in employment discrimination cases,
going beyond the conventional account that emphasizes the effects of McCarthyism.
—Michael Klarman, 2005 Bancroft Prize winner for his book, From Jim Crow to Civil
Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality

A scholar of history as well as law, Goluboff has done a significant service for all those
concerned about racism‟s continuing viability. Her review of the civil rights history of
the 1930s and 1940s unearths the quasi-slave status of many black workers well into the
Twentieth Century.
—Derrick Bell, Virginia Law Review

The Lost Promise of Civil Rights is original, provocative, and persuasive. By uncovering
the forgotten history of the NAACP's labor litigation, Risa Goluboff opens up new ways
of thinking about the tangled connections between racial and economic justice. When it
came to the working class, the civil rights movement's march through the courts reached
a dead end. This book is essential to understanding America's still unfinished struggle for
equality.
—Thomas J. Sugrue, author of The Origins of the Urban Crisis
I
ii
Outside Faculty Speaker Series
BANKS DISCUSSES RACE, LAW ENFORCEMENT
SEPTEMBER 11 WORLD
P AGE 9
IN A
POST-
On September 21, 2007, Richard Banks, Stanford law professor, delivered a lunchtime
presentation at the Law School and discussed the problems that arise from the blurred
boundary between discriminatory racial profiling and the more acceptable suspect
description reliance. According to Banks, racial profiling was first recognized as a problem
domestically in the mid 1990s. In terms of the type of people being checked for drugs at
motorist stops, there appeared to be “wildly disproportionate stopping of AfricanAmericans,” Banks said. The movement to end racial profiling rose “in response to this
abusive practice,” he explained. However, after September 11, the racial profiling debate
arose once again, this time in the context of anti-terrorism efforts, as the country debated
whether stopping a disproportionate number of Arabs and Muslims in airports was racial
profiling. Banks explained that there are two categories related to picking out a suspect
based on race. For Banks, racial profiling means “relying on a stereotype of the criminal
propensities” of a certain group, while suspect description occurs when someone has seen
the suspect and knows for a fact what race they belong to. He maintained that while it can
be difficult to distinguish between the two categories, he asserted that the prohibition of
racial profiling would actually do very little to end disproportionate questioning of certain
groups of people. “The term racial profiling has political salience, it has emotional and
rhetorical punch, but it doesn‟t have any analytical usefulness,” Banks said. Instead, Banks
reasoned, law enforcement officials should consider the seriousness of the crime they are
trying to correct, as well as the consequences for individuals and communities of their
efforts, as official attempt to curb perceived racial profiling.
R ACE C ONSCIOUSNESS , C OLOR B LINDNESS ,
A NTIDISCRIMINATION D OCTRINE
AND
Richard Banks presented his paper, “Race Consciousness, Color Blindness, and
Antidiscrimination Doctrine” to September 21 law faculty workshop. In the paper, Banks
asserted that despite anti-discrimination law, many racially conscious practices, such as a
racially restrictive advertisement for an actor or a white parent‟s desire to adopt white
children only, are not subject to the constitutional or moral skepticism normally accorded
practices that overtly disadvantage individuals on the basis of their race. For Banks, the
non-recognition of these widespread practices as discriminatory is not an inconsequential
or easily remedied doctrinal glitch. Rather, non-recognition of these practices is a means
of reconciling the permissibility of these practices with the ideological commitment to colorblindness. However, Banks argued that the doctrinal ideology of colorblindness, not
only misdescribes the actual operation of the doctrine, it misleadingly depicts those race
dependent practices that survive strict scrutiny—practices such as affirmative action—as
rare exceptions to an otherwise inviolate rule. According to Banks, our society accepts
many more race dependent social practices than the formal rules of the doctrine would
seem to permit. Banks concluded that in a society as race conscious as ours, it should not
be surprising that we are not ready to eliminate racial discrimination, nor that there would
be disagreement about the forms of race dependent decision-making that should be
regarded as inconsistent with our racial equality aspirations.
Richard Banks
Jackson Eli Reynolds
Professor of Law
Stanford Law School
Outside Faculty Speaker Series
T HE B LACK V OTE :
S ECURING THE W HITE H OUSE
IN
P AGE 10
2008
On February 21, 2008, the Center and the Black Law Students Association hosted “The Black Vote: Securing the
White House in 2008,” a discussion with Edward Hailes, Jr., Senior Attorney at the Advancement Project and
Georgetown law professor. Edward Hailes, Jr., former legislative
counsel for the NAACP and former general counsel for the U.S.
Commission on Civil Rights, discussed his role in the historic
investigation into allegations of voting irregularities in Florida during
the November 2000 presidential election. Hailes predicted an
unprecedented turnout in the upcoming Presidential Election, noting
that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton‟s pioneering candidacies have
triggered newfound enthusiasm among college students, racial
minorities, and women. In turn, he maintained that states seeking to
avoid the “Florida debacle of 2000” be adequately prepared to receive
this record turnout by obtaining more voting machines in precincts
where turnout is predicted to be high, reallocating existing voting
Edward Hailes
inventory to high traffic areas, allowing voters to use paper ballots to
shorten their waiting times, and extending voting hours to allow voters
time to travel to and from their precincts. Hailes challenged law students to remember the struggle for the Voting
Rights Act of 1965 and encouraged them to take an active role in ensuring voter turnout and protection.
Race , law, & Human Rights Series
P AGE 11
The Center and the Human Rights Program co-sponsored, “Human Rights at Home: Race, Rights and the U.N.
Race Convention,” a year-long series of discussions exploring the intersections of race and international human
rights law. In 1994, the United States ratified the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Racial Discrimination (ICERD). ICERD requires that all state signatories remedy racial discrimination in their
respective territories, and in turn, each country that has ratified the treaty must submit a report every few years to
the United Nations detailing what laws and programs were adopted to end domestic racial discrimination. The
Center and the Human Rights Program collaborated on this interdisciplinary initiative to give students a more
sophisticated understanding of race and international human rights law
by providing them with a substantial opportunity to examine a single,
race-oriented treaty.
Deena Hurwitz
Kim Forde-Mazrui
Director, Human Rights
Program
Director, Center for the
Study of Race and Law
DNA TESTING MARKS BEGINNING
MOVEMENT, GARRETT SAYS
OF A
NEW
Virginia law professor Brandon Garrett spoke about his groundbreaking research on DNA testing to prove wrongful
convictions and the U.S. criminal justice system‟s faulty appeals process at a September 24 event at the Law School.
Garrett studied 200 post-conviction exoneration victims who were incarcerated and later proven innocent using
DNA technology. According to his study, egregious errors were made by police
during investigations, by courts that wrongfully convicted and appellate courts
that failed to exonerate in the appeals process. He noted that 86 percent of the
wrongfully convicted were not exonerated in the appeals process until DNA
evidence was used. Garrett‟s study was particularly significant because he found
that 71 percent of those wrongfully convicted were racial minorities,
demonstrating a clear racial bias in the criminal justice system. The vast majority
of convictions were for sexual assaults for which DNA testing is one of the most
useful tools to prove innocence because biological evidence is usually involved.
His study showed blatant scientific fraud in many of the cases where medical
examiners and alleged experts made up forensic evidence to aid in the
defendants‟ wrongful convictions. Police investigators also coerced false
confessions in 16 percent of those studied. Additionally, unreliable informant
testimony and eyewitness identification were used in the majority of cases.
Garrett argued that in order to prevent wrongful convictions in the future and
Brandon Garrett
promote human rights at home, crime labs could be audited to detect false
forensic evidence. He also declared that police departments should videotape
confessions to check police coercion and use double-blind line-ups so that a victim does not identify the wrong
suspect.
Race , law, & Human Rights Series
P AGE 12
U.S. HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISTS USING INTERNATIONAL
LAW TO REMEDY DOMESTIC HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS
Margaret Huang, Director of the U.S. Racial Discrimination Program at Global Rights,
discussed the vital role of human rights activists in pressuring the United States to fill the
gap between domestic human rights and the standards set in international human rights
treaties that the government has ratified at a Law School talk October 22. Huang questioned in light of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial
Discrimination (ICERD). Huang stated, “Unfortunately, if you do a not-so-quick read of
the U.S. report, it manages to talk very little about problems in the United States. There
is no mention at all of violence against women, no mention at all of police brutality and
other problems by law enforcement, no mention of the school-to-prison pipeline problem, and no mention of a lot of the issues around Katrina including the treatment of prisoners during Katrina.” To make up for the shortcomings of the U.S. ICERD report,
NGOs and other human rights activists have stepped in to submit “shadow reports” that
highlight the current problems with racial discrimination in the United States. Huang
said that shadow reports allow the Committee to make adequate recommendations as to
how the United States might fulfill its ICERD treaty obligations to end racial discrimination. After the Committee makes the recommendations, NGOs and activists must then
push for policy reform in the U.S. Huang maintained, “International human rights laws
are a new framework for moving the struggle forward.”
Margaret Huang
Director of the U.S.
Racial Discrimination
Program, Global Rights
LUNCHTIME ROUNDTABLE ON THIRD WORLD
APPROACHES TO INTERNATIONAL LAW
On November 4, 2007, the Center and the Human Rights Program welcomed
Balakrishnan Rajagopal for a lunchtime roundtable on Third World Approaches to
International Law (TWAIL). Rajagopal explained that TWAIL scholarship creates an
analytic space to consider how international law has often legitimized the hegemony of
the First World and the marginalization of the Third World. Rajagopal argued that if
international law is to ever become counter-hegemonic, it must transcend the
contemporary discourses of human rights and development and seriously engage Third
World social movement actors in decision-making. Rajagopal challenged the students
who intend to become international lawyers to adopt a critical appreciation of social
movements in the Third World, and not simply state actors, to guarantee that the voices
of ordinary people, who are subordinated in the contemporary global order, are heard.
Balakrishnan Rajagopal
Ford International
Associate Professor of Law
and Development
Massachusetts Institute
of Technology
Race , law, & Human Rights Series
R AJAGOPAL C RITICAL
OF THE
R ULE
OF
P AGE 13
L AW D ISCOURSE
On November 4, 2007, Balakrishnan Rajagopal delivered an evening talk, entitled, “Rule of Law in Post-Conflict
Nation Building: A Critical Examination.” Rajagopal noted that establishing the rule of law is increasingly seen as the
panacea for all the problems that afflict many non-western countries, particularly in post-conflict settings.
Development experts prescribe it as the surest short cut to market-led growth; human rights groups advocate the rule
of law as the best defense against human rights abuses; and in the area of peace and security, the rule of law is seen as
the surest guarantee against the (re)-emergence of conflicts and the basis for rebuilding post-conflict societies.
However, Rajagopal argued that this new-found fascination with the rule of law is misplaced, because this discourse
depicts the rule of law as technical, legal, and apolitical. Rajagopal also asserted that the invocation of rule of law
hides many contradictions between the different policy agendas themselves, such as between development and human
rights or between security and human rights, that cannot be fully “resolved” by invoking the “rule of law” as a mantra.
He maintained that it is far more important to inquire into the real consequences of these agendas on ordinary people.
For Rajagopal, focusing attention on the rule of law, as a broad if not lofty concept, diverts attention from the
coherence, effectiveness, or legitimacy of specific policies that are pursued to ensure security, promote development,
or protect human rights. Rajagopal concluded that the rule of law agenda threatens to obfuscate the real tradeoffs that
need to be made in order to achieve these worthy goals. The event was co-sponsored by the Center, the Human
Rights Program, and the J.B. Moore Society of International Law.
B RINGING H UMAN R IGHTS H OME
Gay McDougall, the United Nations independent expert on minority issues, lectured on the topic “Bringing Human
Rights Home” February 27 in Caplin Pavilion. McDougall is a former U.N. special rapporteur on issues of systematic
rape and sexual slavery, a former executive director of the organizations Global Rights and Partners for Justice, and
the first American elected to serve on the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of
All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD). McDougall discussed CERD‟s
upcoming review of race relations in the United States, and she highlighted a range
of areas in which the U.S. could improve, including “a disproportionately high
percentage of minorities in jails and prisons, the unilateral abrogation of Indian
treaties, violence to women belonging to racial, religious, or ethnic minorities, and
racial disparities in female sexual and reproductive rights, specifically the disparity
in HIV infection rates for minority women.” According to McDougall,
international scrutiny, like the CERD report, often drives domestic racial reform,
and McDougall asserted that the U.S. Supreme Court‟s Cold War-era decision in
Gay McDougall
Brown v. Board of Education exemplifies this maxim. However, McDougall noted
that as the Cold War waned, the U.S. has increasingly backed away from the system
of accountability and for decades, “has stood at arm‟s length during this important developmental period of human
rights.” Even today, she said, “the U.S. has ratified only a handful of these important conventions.” As recently as
September 2007 the U.S. voted against the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, which had been in
negotiation for more than 20 years.
McDougall was also critical of civil right lawyers and activists who had been absent from such international forums
over the last two decades, preferring instead to seek enforcement of human rights through litigation in the American
judicial system. She, however, remained optimistic that “the tide is turning,” as nearly 120 American lawyers,
advocacy groups, and community activists submitted hundreds of pages of shadow briefs at a hearing in Geneva held
by CERD. McDougall declared, “We must begin to understand and frame our issues…using the language and the
assistance of the international community in order to fashion good solutions, but also, importantly, to gain the allies
that we‟ll need in other places in the world that will join us in a struggle around similar issues, often against our own
institutions.” McDougall‟s talk was sponsored by the Center and the Human Rights Program.
Center-supported events
P AGE 14
The Center also supports and promotes events concerning race-related issues that are sponsored by other organizations
and departments. Several events during the 2007-2008 school year are listed below.

Sara Roy, Senior Research Scholar at the Harvard University Center for Middle Eastern Studies, delivered a
lecture, entitled, “(re)Conceptualizing the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict Key Paradigm Shifts” on April 1, 2008.
This event was sponsored by the Human Rights Program, Islamic Legal Exchange, and J.B. Moore Society of
International Law.

Daryl Scott, Professor and Chair of the History Department at Howard University, gave a talk, entitled,
“Roy V. Harris and the Lost World of White Nationalism in the American South” on March 28, 2008. The
event was sponsored by the Governing America in a Global Era (GAGE) program at the University of
Virginia‟s Miller Center of Public Affairs.

The conference on “Justice and Legal Reform in China” was held on March 26-27, 2008. The conference was
sponsored by the Human Rights Program.

Phil C. W. Chan, Senior Visiting Scholar in Political Science at Vanderbilt University and a Research
Associate in the School of Law and School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, spoke
on “Stonewalling through Schizophrenia: An Anti-Gay Rights Culture in Hong Kong?” on March 13, 2008.
This event was sponsored by the Lambda Law Alliance, UVA LGBT Resource Center, and the J.B. Moore
Society of International Law.

Panelists, Dawn Baum, staff attorney with the Native American Rights Fund, and Lise Dobrin, Professor of
Anthropology at the University of Virginia convened to discuss, “Keeping Indigenous Languages Alive in Spite
of the Law” on November 7, 2007. The event was sponsored by the Native American Law Students
Association and the Public Service Center at the University of Virginia School of Law.

Marc Mauer, Executive Director of The Sentencing Project, lectured on “Race and Justice in America: The
Intersection of Race and Sentencing” on October 30, 2007. This event was sponsored by the Black Law
Students Association.

Scot A. French, Director of the Virginia Center for Digital History and Associate Professor of History and
African American Studies at the University of Virginia, offered “Race and Place: A Virtual Tour of AfricanAmerican Life and History in UVA and Charlottesville” on October 19, 2007. The event was sponsored by
the University of Virginia‟s Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement.

Suzanne W. Jones, Professor of English at the University of Richmond and Fellow at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, presented her work, entitled “Tragic No More?: The Return of the „Mulatto‟ in
Contemporary American Fiction” on October 16, 2007. The event was sponsored by the Virginia Foundation
for the Humanities.

Ruth Hill, Professor in the University of Virginia Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, spoke on
the topic “From Jim Crow to the Internet Age: White Supremacist Lies about Latinos” on September 19,
2007. The event was sponsored by the Latino Student Union and SUR Magazine.

Dennis Barrett and Germaine Dunn, recipients of the Class of 1957 South Africa Human Rights
Fellowship, delivered presentations on October 1, 2007 detailing their research and field work as interns in
South Africa. The event was sponsored by the Human Rights Program.

The University of Virginia Symposium on Race and Society hosted numerous speakers at its conference
entitled, “At the Crossroads: The Racial Implications of America‟s Health Care Crisis” from September 30October 2, 2007. The conference was sponsored by the University of Virginia Health System.
U NIVERSITY OF V IRGINIA
S CHOOL OF L AW
C ENTER FOR THE S TUDY
OF R ACE AND LAW
Phone: 434-924-3299
www.law.virginia.edu/race
A BOUT
THE
The Center‟s mission is to foster intellectual and scholarly exploration
of the intersections of race and law in American society. It is
motivated by the belief that a deeper appreciation of how these
intersections came about and what their central characteristics are is
necessary for progress. The Center, founded in 2003, advances racial
understanding by providing opportunities for students, scholars,
practitioners and community members to examine and exchange ideas
related to race and law through lectures, symposia and scholarship. In
the last five years, the Center has grown from the dream of a few
students into a vibrant community. We hope to not only continue
the Center‟s current programming but, in addition, cultivate new and
fresh ideas, and build the Center into a major element of the Law
School‟s academic landscape.
D IRECTOR
Kim Forde-Mazrui became a member of the faculty in 1996 and Director of the
Center in 2003. He teaches courses in criminal law and procedure, constitutional
law, and race and law. His research interests include race and criminal procedure,
race in the child placement process, affirmative action, and reparations.
Forde-Mazrui is a magna cum laude graduate of the University of Michigan Law
School, where he received the Carl Gussin Memorial Prize for excellence in trial
advocacy and the Henry M. Bates Memorial Scholarship, the highest award given to
outstanding seniors. He was note editor of the Michigan Law Review and a member
of Order of the Coif, Phi Beta Kappa, and the Golden Key National Honor Society.
A BOUT
THE
Kim Forde-Mazrui
A SSISTANT D IRECTOR
Tim Lovelace became Assistant Director of the Center in 2006. In his role, he
supports the Center‟s short courses, guest lectures, panel discussions, faculty
workshops, and symposia and collaborates with the Director to develop new initiatives
aimed at producing interdisciplinary scholarly analysis and research on issues of race
and law. Lovelace also began work on a Ph.D. in history at UVA when he accepted
the position with the Center.
Tim Lovelace
Lovelace is a graduate of the University‟s Law School, where was an Oliver Hill
Scholar. As a law student, he was President of the Black Law Students Association, a
member of the Virginia Sports and Entertainment Law Journal‟s editorial board, a
member of the Raven Society Leadership Council, and the recipient of the Thomas
Marshall Miller Prize at graduation, an award given by the faculty to an outstanding
and deserving student.