Culverhouse Chair Devon Carbado hosts class on critical race judgements
By Brittany Given
Stetson Law 3L
Feb. 14, 2020
Devon Carbado, distinguished UCLA law professor and author, returned to Stetson Law on Feb. 8, 2020, as the new Culverhouse Chair to teach “Critical Race Judgments: Critical Race Theory and Supreme Court Decision making.”
Carbado launched the Saturday morning class with a racial determination exercise where he first described one parent as black and another parent as white. He then asked students to classify the child as black, white, biracial, multiracial, or other. He repeated this exercise multiple times with different combinations of the child’s parents including white, black, Latino, and Asian. The takeaway from this exercise was to see that society does not take into account how a person identifies himself or herself. Rather, society primarily views people based on their physical features.
At the end of the exercise, Carbado posed the question: Should people have the right to choose their own race? It was a topic he would circle back to at the end of the class.
This icebreaker segued into a discussion on the landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which declared that racial segregation in public school was unconstitutional. It was a decision that went against the will of the majority Americans and an achievement that was not without controversy. Carbado explained that progress has not been linear, but rather can be described as ebb and flow. When slavery was abolished, there was a backlash and Jim Crow laws were enacted. After the victory in Brown v. Board of Education, more lynchings started to occur. When the Civil Rights Act was passed, many people and businesses resisted integration.
The class discussion about the ebb and flow of progress led Carbado to explain the concept of “racial math.” Slavery produced racial inequality. Then there was some civil rights intervention during the period of Reconstruction. If you take the racial inequality and subtract the civil rights intervention during Reconstruction, Carbado explains that you can only get two possible answers: The first answer is that there is zero racial inequality. The second answer is that there is still some racial inequality. After Reconstruction, most everyone agrees there was still some racial inequality, and Jim Crow laws increased the divide, but Brown v. Board of Education helped offset some of the inequality. Still, society was left with some racial inequality rather than zero racial inequality.
Carbado continued in this vein, going through much of the history of the United States and giving examples of when more racial inequality was added and when some racial inequality was subtracted. His point was that there has never been a moment in our history when the intervention has been enough to completely clear the slate or to have zero racial inequality. The accumulation of racial inequality has been a problem over hundreds of years.
After providing students this historical context, Carbado then broached how race is a social construction. He broke it down into five parts: The first part is the moment when people say that race matters now. People agree that race is a thing that is recognized. The second part is when people decide the relevant categories of race, such as black, white, or yellow. He encouraged students to look at the U.S. census over the years because there have been different racial categories over time. The third part is to determine what criteria to employ to stick people in the categories. Phenotype hasn’t been the only criteria used. Language, accent, and demeanor also are used to place people into racial categories. The fourth part is to map some experience such as slavery, freedom, or internment. The final part is to assign meanings to the different groups, such as those enslaved are inferior. Race, he said, is bound up with questions of social meaning.
Carbado will return to Stetson and continue teaching this course over spring break. Anyone interested in learning more about the topics can read his book, Acting White? Rethinking Race in “Post-Racial” America.
Post date: Feb. 14, 2020
Media contact: Kate Bradshaw
[email protected] | 727-430-1580