| excerpted Wrom: CLBDXRQBGJSNBOHMKHJ
Constructed Identities of Asian and African Americans: a Story of Two
Races and the Criminal Justice System, 19 Harvard BlackLetter Law
Journal 181-199, 181-184 (Spring, 2003)(86 footnotes omitted)
The United States' criminal justice system is a modern form of tribal
warfare. However, battles have been raging against racial minorities in
the U.S. long before the war on drugs was officially declared. The
racism embedded in the criminal justice system is born of the same
hatred and fear that spawned slavery, Jim Crow, and exclusionary
immigration policy. As law is the weapon of choice in these battles,
codified hatred has shaped U.S. history. In their seminal work on the
development of racial categories, Michael Omi and Howard Winant refer to
slavery, segregation and exclusionary immigration policy as "racial
projects." Specifically, Omi and Winant state that "a racial
project is simultaneously an interpretation, representation or
explanation of racial dynamics and an effort to reorganize and
redistribute resources along particular racial lines."
According to Omi and Winant, racial projects are considered racist
when they "create or reproduc[e] structures of domination based on
essentialist categories of race." An essentialist approach to race
is one based on stereotypes and generalizations. For example, slavery
was justified by assertions that Africans were an inferior race. Asians
were restricted from immigrating to the United States because it was
Congress's and the Supreme Court's view that Asians could not
assimilate. Modern essentialist approaches to race are found in the
stereotype of a violent, young African American male and the perception
that Asian Americans will always be foreigners.
This country's most invidious racist racial projects were impossible
to implement without first defining and separating the races. Slavery,
Jim Crow, anti-miscegenation laws, and exclusionary immigration policies
all hinged on racial classifications. The United States Supreme Court
declared unconstitutional the majority of the racist racial projects
implemented by the U.S. government. However, the criminal justice system
has replaced slavery, Jim Crow and exclusionary immigration policy as
the racist racial project that shapes race in America. The criminal
justice system is inherently racialized because people of color and new
immigrants are disproportionately represented as both victims and
perpetrators of crime. According to Paula Johnson, "not only is
race used to identify criminals, it is embedded in the very foundation
of our criminal law. Race helps determine who the criminals are, what
conduct constitutes a crime, and what crimes society treats most
seriously." This Article explores how an essentialist approach to
race is evident in today's criminal justice system. It argues that
people of color are similarly situated both inside and outside the
racist racial project we call the justice system, and therefore
advocates for coalition building between minority groups as a method of
combating the "white supremacy" inherent in the criminal
justice system.
In Part II of this Article, I discuss the criminal justice system's
general contributions to racial formation in the modern United States,
and specifically discuss how criminal law enforcement and adjudication
shapes what it means to be African and Asian American in this country.
Part III explores the factual circumstances surrounding the deaths of
Malice Green, an African American man who was beaten to death by two
white Detroit police officers, and Vincent Chin, an Asian American, also
beaten to death by two white Detroit autoworkers. Arguably, both men
were killed because their killers took an essentialist view of their
victims' racial identities. To his murderers, Malice Green ceased to be
an unarmed man and was perceived as some sort of violent super predator.
Similarly, Vincent Chin, born and raised in the Midwest, was to his
murderers a foreign interloper stealing jobs from red- blooded
Americans. In Part III, I examine the portrayals of these men, and the
commonalties surrounding the adjudication of their accused. In
conclusion, I draw on the lessons learned from the deaths of Malice and
Vincent to argue for coalition building between Asian and African
American civil rights organizations, particularly on criminal justice
issues.
[1]. Civil Rights Teaching Fellow/Staff Attorney, Georgetown
University Law Center's Institute for Public Representation. LL.M.
candidate, Georgetown University Law Center, 2003. J.D. American
University Washington College of Law, 2001. |
