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Speaking Truth to Power - Vernellia R. Randall

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 An eclectic collection of poetry, music, essays and the musing of one African American woman on race, racism, gender, health care, law, and legal education. 

I hope that this site and my work

inspires women-of-color and men-of-color who are struggling to succeed in a racially hostile world.

provides insight and education to non-blacks on issues of importance to the black community.  

I use this site and my work to provide me a creative and spiritual outlet as I struggle in a profession that has become almost devoid of creativity and spirituality. 

I hope that my site and my work reflects who I am - 

an African American,  a woman,  a mother, a sister, an aunt, and a friend who works continuously at changing the world through law, love, and activism. 

But first I'd like to share  with you some  poems and passages that have been important in my life:

The Black National Anthem

Invictus

No Struggle-No Progress

The Bridge Poem

Still, I Rise

The Greatest Gift is Love!

Make Me an Instrument of Peace (Peace Prayer)

The American Genocide of the Indians—Historical Facts and Real Evidence

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The Chinese Embassy in Washington D.C. recently released a statement entitled "The American Genocide of the Indians—Historical Facts and Real Evidence" in response to U.S. diplomats boycotting the Beijing Olympics, citing human rights abuses. The statement identifies the definition of genocide. It declares, "According to international law and its domestic law, what the United States did to the Indians covers all the acts that define genocide and indisputably constitute genocide." While the accusations against China by the United States are valid, so are the accusations from China about the United States. The document highlights the atrocities of the past, the American Indians' current disadvantaged political status, and the poor economic and security conditions they face each day.  (Full Document)

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Justice as Healing: Native Nations and Reconciliation

Abstract

Excerpted From: Rebecca Tsosie, Justice as Healing: Native Nations and Reconciliation, 54 Arizona State Law Journal 1 (Spring, 2022) (68 Footnotes) (Full Document)

I am giving this lecture in October 2020, as we near the end of a year marked by multiple and often overlapping crises. The global pandemic remains our most serious concern, as we struggle to determine how--or if--our society can ever truly return to “normal.” The climate crisis is evident in the unprecedented fires that have burned throughout California, the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest, and now rage in the Mountain states. In the summer months, we witnessed racial violence and widespread protests for racial justice, highlighting the urgent need for renewed attention to racial inequalities and the stark fact that some lives are clearly not given the same value as others. It quickly became apparent that the intersection of race, poverty and inequality still jeopardizes the health of our nation. As I explored the role of the law in sustaining our ability to meet these various crises, I saw that our notions of justice in the present moment (for example, how we could ensure the safe closure of reservation borders, given that these communities do not have access to food, water, and safe housing in a pandemic) were incomplete without reference to our collective past. The legacy of colonialism haunts us still, although we rarely acknowledge this in public discourse. Most importantly, I wanted to look toward the future in a way that highlighted the theme of healing trauma and restoring a vision of justice that was sustainable and had the capacity to transform the deficiencies in our current institutions.

When I was invited to give this lecture, I reflected on Judge Canby's legacy of intellectual leadership. In 1989, Judge Canby wrote the Foreword for an Indian Law Symposium, organized by two prominent University of Arizona law faculty members, the late Professor Vine Deloria, Jr., and Professor Robert Williams-- both of whom started the UA Indian law program and were leading Native law faculty members when I was a student. Judge Canby's text inspired me so much that I quote it on my Federal Indian law class syllabus each year. Professor Canby wrote that Indian law is a complex field of law that features challenging jurisdictional contests, but it also has a greater significance:

Lincoln, Douglass, Fugitive Slave Law, and Constitutional Evil

Abstract 

Excerpted From: Robinson Woodward Burns, Lincoln, Douglass, Fugitive Slave Law, and Constitutional Evil, 83 Maryland Law Review 281 (2023) (82 Footnotes) (Full Document)

Several sections of the antebellum Constitution addressed slavery. Perhaps most contentious was the Fugitive Slave Clause, requiring that fugitive slaves “shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.” This Clause never specified whether federal, state, or private actors could recapture fugitives, spurring enforcement disputes. Congress' 1793 Fugitive Slave Act (“1793 Act”) charged recapture to private agents rather than to state officials, who, in the North, shielded fugitives from return. Heartened by resistance in Massachusetts, Ralph Waldo Emerson held “[t]here was a fugitive law, but it had become or was fast becoming, a dead letter; and, by the genius and laws of Massachusetts inoperative.” In response, Congress' 1850 Fugitive Slave Act (“1850 Act”) empowered federal marshals and commissioners to rally private citizens as a posse comitatus to summarily capture, put on trial, and return fugitives, while noncompliant bystanders faced a $1,000 fine and half year in prison. As Emerson concluded, “[t]he new Bill made [the 1793 Act] operative; required me to hunt slaves; and it found citizens in Massachusetts willing to act as judges and captors.” Northern legislatures answered by expanding fugitives' habeas and jury trial rights under “personal liberty” laws, and citing these laws, free state citizens and officials challenged their obligation to the Constitution's Fugitive Slave Clause. As Emerson concluded, “[a]n immoral law makes it a man's duty to break it.”

Constitutions, framed through compromise, bind subjects to compromised, unjust provisions. The problem of constitutional evil, per Mark Graber, arises when subjects are asked to obey unjust practices not clearly authorized by constitutional text or history. The Fugitive Slave Acts present such a problem. The Fugitive Slave Clause, drafted as a concession to Southern convention delegates, endorsed the return of fugitive slaves, a moral evil. But the Clause did not clearly authorize the 1793 or 1850 Act's enforcement provisions, at least according to antislavery Northern thinkers.

Chief among these thinkers were Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, the latter a former fugitive from slavery. Lincoln and Douglass disagreed on whether the Clause and 1850 Act bound Northern citizens and officeholders. Douglass's narrow reading of the Clause and broad reading of natural law authorized citizen resistance to the 1850 Act. This Essay details his views in Part I. Part II notes how Lincoln believed lawmakers were oath-bound to the Clause and to slaveholders' morally unjust but constitutional right to recapture fugitives under the 1850 Act. Lincoln felt his duty to the Constitution overrode the dictates of natural law, at least until the Civil War let him bend the Constitution to conform to natural law. Part III concludes by noting both Lincoln and Douglass saw that the framers intended the Clause to authorize recapture. Douglass as an essayist and orator hewed to the natural law against the 1850 Act, while Lincoln as a congressman and executive understood himself oath-bound to the positive law under the 1850 Act. This Essay considers Douglass and Lincoln on the 1850 Act, taking them as “representative men,” per Emerson's term, who confronted the fundamental constitutional problem of the 1850s.

[. . .]

p>The Fugitive Slave Clause did not expressly empower federal, state, or private agents to recapture fugitive slaves. This recapture, unjust and not clearly authorized by constitutional text or history, presented the problem of constitutional evil. Antislavery thinkers differed on whether to read the Clause to endorse federal, state, or private recapture of fugitives. Lincoln held that he and other lawmakers were oath-bound to support the Clause and consequently the 1793 and 1850 Acts. Douglass felt the Constitution's text, largely silent on the fugitive slave question, did not authorize recapture and thus he condemned president-elect Lincoln's public “slave-catching and slave-killing pledges.” He felt Lincoln was not expressly bound to the Clause or Acts--years earlier in a Free Soil convention he explained this objection to Lincoln's approach: “[I]t has been said that this [Fugitive] law is constitutional--if it were, it would be equally the legitimate sphere of government to repeal it.” To his point, nothing in the Constitution strictly“construed according to its reading,” mandated the expansive 1850 Act or prohibited its repeal or nonenforcement. To Douglass, natural law also invalidated the framers' Fugitive Slave Clause and the 1850 Act: “It has been said that our fathers entered into a covenant for this slave-catching. ... If they made a covenant that you should do that which they have no right to do themselves, they transcended their own authority, and surely it is not binding on you.” In Douglass's view, the illegitimate Clause did not empower or bind lawmakers, Lincoln included, to provide for the recapture of fugitive slaves.

During the War, the fugitive slave matter became a question of contraband law. Douglass, a critic of Lincoln's early administration of the War, objected when Lincoln in August 1861 relieved Major-General John C. Frémont for declaring fugitive slaves emancipated contraband. Years later, Douglass held that Lincoln, “when he revoked the proclamation of emancipation of General Frémont,” showed that he “was willing to pursue, recapture, and send back the fugitive slave to his master, and to suppress a slave rising for liberty, though his guilty masters were already in arms against the Government.” In so doing, Lincoln revealed he was “preeminently the white man's President.” Similarly, in a July Fourth address in 1862, Douglass faulted Lincoln for failing to enforce the Confiscation Acts' promise of liberty to fugitives. Only the eventual enforcement of the Confiscation Acts and Emancipation Proclamation convinced Douglass that the Lincoln Administration had brought some limited “reprobation upon slave-hunting.” This “immortal paper which, though special in its language, was general in its principles and effect, making slavery forever impossible in the United States.”

Southern secession let Lincoln bring positive law closer to antislavery natural law. When Confederate slaveholders seceded, opening a period of rebellion, Lincoln could finally turn their supposed right to property in man into a tool for abolition through seizure of contraband property. To Emerson, Lincoln through the Emancipation Proclamation had finally shown willingness to interpret the Constitution flexibly: “All our action now is new & unconstitutional, & necessarily so. ... & enough to drive a strict constructionist out of his wits.” For Lincoln, as for Douglass, war allowed abrogation of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. Douglass in 1850 predicted abolition would come through war, quoting Jefferson: “It was the sage of the Old Dominion that said ... 'God is just, and that his justice cannot sleep forever.”’ Lincoln, in the same jeremiad tradition, concluded his second inaugural:

Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.”

Lincoln and Douglass differed on their obligations to do constitutional evil under the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. This was perhaps because they held different relationships to the law. Douglass, never oath-bound to the Constitution, freely condemned the document in his essays and speeches on broad natural rights grounds. Lincoln, obligated by oath to uphold the Constitution, understood himself as bound to enforcement of the whole Constitution, Fugitive Slave Clause included--perhaps as a Unionist position early in the secession crisis--until secession and the Confiscation Acts empowered him to emancipate fugitives. Lincoln and Douglass' different positions might be reduced to their different obligations under the law.

Associate Professor of Political Science, Howard University.

A Reflection about Black Progress: Not Better or Worst - Just Different

Vernellia R. Randall,  A Reflection about Black Progress: Not Better or Worst - Just Different, (Full Document)  Racism.org (Last Visited: March 7, 2022)

Yesterday was my birthday. Today is the 57th anniversary of the Selma March.  I was 17 years old at the time of the Selma March.

To some things are better because there are no more overt laws. To me, it is worst because the overt laws have been replaced by invisible discrimination that is harder to fight.

Maybe worst is not the right word.

Not worst but not better either just different.

I grew up in the segregated south - went to segregated schools where the black teachers encouraged and helped us to achieve our best. We did not always have the best books, equipment of buildings but we had the best and brightest teachers who were role models for us because they were black.

I grew up going into the side door of white businesses because we could not go through the front. But I also grew-up going to vibrant black business that thrived because of segregation.

Integration ruined all that and we are seeing the long-term impact of the destroyed black educational system taken over by whites that are at best indifferent and worst hostile to black children.

We have seen the implementation of a school-to-prison pipeline where black bodies continue to be a commodity on which to make money.

We have seen the destruction of the entrepreneur's economic base in the black community.

We have seen the media demonize black men and women alike.

We have seen a significant increase in the brutalization of black men and women. And black women are being made irrelevant to the point that 64000 missing black women are not even discussed.

We have a race/class/gender ceiling in access to education and employment.

To the extent that removing overt laws of segregation is a step forward, we definitely moved forward.

To the extent that replacing an overt system with a covert system -- we have taken many steps backward 

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Silencio: The Hispanic/Latino Reticent Approach to Racism

Abstract

Excerpted From: Nicolle Londoño-Rosado, Silencio: The Hispanic/Latino Reticent Approach to Racism, 17 Florida A & M University Law Review 161 (Spring, 2023) (127 Footnotes) (Full Document)

Many Latinos dream of coming to America in search for a better way of life but instead are faced with discrimination based on where they come from, the language they speak, and the pigmentation of their skin. Racial discrimination is one of the most ever-present issues in the United States of America today. Some look at discrimination and believe that it has been “fixed” through our political and judicial processes. However, others know that discrimination is still alive and prominent today. Today, discrimination has manifested itself differently -it is discreet and indirect but still prominent in the daily lives of minoritized communities. The discussion of racism has always been between the Black and White communities -specifically, the oppression the Black community experiences as a result of racism. It has been stated that “the most pervasive and powerful paradigm of race in the United States is the ‘Black-White paradigm.”’ Racism and oppression against the Latino community also exist in the United States of America; however, it has received less coverage and recognition than that of the Black community for several reasons.

A poll performed by the Associated Press, found that 57% of non-Hispanic Whites harbored anti-Hispanic sentiment. Another poll conducted by the Pew Research Center found that 61% of the Latino community believed that racial discrimination against the Hispanic community is a “major problem.” This article will begin with an examination of the background and historical context of Latino History in the United States and how it has impacted and forced the Latino community into an abyss of forgotten struggles. It will explore some of the history of discrimination against Latino people in the United States, such as the Mexican American war and Latino Lynching. The lack of recognition of the history of discrimination against Latino people significantly contributes to the invisibility of racial issues in the community.

Part 1 article will highlight discrimination against Latinos and the effect that it has on the community. It will expose the unspoken truth of transgressions faced by Latinos in the United States and discuss how silence in the Latino community on racial issues has contributed to the invisibility of the Latino community. Part II will explore a theoretical view of why the Latinos have stayed silent and not vocalized racial discrimination. It will discuss possible factors surrounding educational institutions, the American Political system, lack of media coverage Latino hate crimes, the underrepresentation of Latinos in media, forced assimilation, Latino culture, and the possibility of the unfamiliarity of race language.

Part III will include a qualitative study on Latinos who are presently living in the United States who have faced racial discrimination in the form of, including but not limited to, a direct verbal remark, physical action, and patronization. The Pew Research Center conducted a qualitative and empirical study on Latinos and discrimination, providing us with data and sample size on Latinos and their experiences with discrimination under the Trump administration. This article will analyze a 2018 survey conducted by The Pew Research Center to understand the overall Latino assessment on discrimination, and apply its findings to address why the Latino community, who has experienced discrimination, has not vocalized and has disregarded such hate and crimes against them. Part IV will discuss proposals for change that may be instilled at a state or federal level to provide to support toward the Latino community and to properly educate on the racial discrimination faced by the Latino community. These proposals for change include, but are not limited to, educating the masses on Latino history and how it intertwines with American history, improving accuracy of reports of hate crimes against Latinos, empowering the Spanish language in public educational institutions, and creating programs to empower Latinos to enter workforces where Latinos are underrepresented.

[. . .]

Latinos are discriminated against based on the language they speak and education level. Pigmentation of their skin and stereotypes in American culture. Despite experiencing significant discrimination in the United States, Latinos are still reticent about sharing their personal experiences with racism and advocating for racial justice. Although the law can be used to improve race relations, Latinos would best benefit from the formulations of coalitions for change -following those of the Black community. These coalitions would focus on divulging and exposing racial discrimination faced by Latinos and working toward progressions of those issues. They can also encourage other racially minoritized communities, who experience discrimination in the United States of America, to find support and advocacy within their coalitions. To develop diverse coalitions for racial justice, there must be a willingness of all communities to learn from each other's experiences. This requires a commitment to recognizing each minoritized community's contributions, embracing their differences and similarities, and keeping an eagerness “to bake a [new] American pie to be shared equitably by the people in this nation.”

Nicolle Londoño-Rosado, J.D. Candidate, Florida A&M University College of Law, 2023.