Charles Blow, a New York Times op-ed columnist, highlighted the media’s role in the Trayvon Martin case at the 10th Annual Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations Spring Lecture on March 20 at UF Law. (Photo by Haley Stracher)

By Jenna Box (3JM)
Student Writer

A man with a gun. A dead teen. A hoodie.

These images have been burned into the minds of Americans as symbols interracial crime, the use of deadly force and diversity in media coverage and crime reporting.

A little more than a year ago, the tragic shooting of a 17-year-old black teen walking home in a hoodie in Sanford, Fla., made waves across national media outlets.

On March 20, the 10^th Annual Spring Lecture put on by the Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations titled “At Close Range: The Curious Case of Trayvon Martin,” brought myriad questions about this case to light through a variety of interdisciplinary panels.

Keynote speaker Charles Blow, a New York Times op-ed columnist, highlighted the media’s role, and experts from nine University of Florida departments offered insight from their unique fields at the all-day event filmed by C-SPAN.

“Academic exploration of public policy issues from a multitude of perspectives cannot only deepen our own understanding but also help build a foundation for thoughtful policy making by those who create the laws, regulations and rules that govern all of us,” Dean Robert Jerry said as he opened the event to a packed audience in UF Law’s Chesterfield Smith Ceremonial Classroom, HOL 180.

The case has all the elements of a good story, Blow said: guns and murder, an unarmed boy and a suspicious man, racial profiling and threat responses. The combination of these raised some tough legal, social and racial questions.

Blow mentioned how the victim’s race has affected news coverage. Outside of Florida, he said, the only journalists who seem to write about the case are relatively young black men like him. Also, he mentioned the common topic of discussion: whether a black teen wearing a hoodie was enough to cause “suspicion.”

The arguments that “the way he behaved, the things that he wore, suggested he was not worthy of life past Feb. 26 fall short,” Blow said. “There is nothing that you can wear that gives someone license to shoot someone in the chest.”

Additionally, Blow spoke passionately about the “cocoon” media consumers place themselves in.

“People prefer to be affirmed in their beliefs than challenged,” he said. “I believe that is what we’ve seen in the Trayvon Martin case. People know what they want to believe and only listen to sources who confirm it.”

Alongside Blow, representatives from the UF departments of African-American studies; anthropology; English; health services; history; journalism and communications; philosophy; political science; and sociology, criminology and law, gave lectures and answered questions earlier in the day.

“[Blow] was an exceptional choice,” said Katheryn Russell-Brown, director of CSRRR, Chesterfield Smith Professor of Law and organizer of the event. “He was pitch-perfect and was able to use the case to discuss broader issues of journalism, politics and justice. This was a chance to talk across race, across disciplines on a wide range of issues.”

More than a year after the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, legal, social and cultural questions raised by the case are still being discussed across the country. The Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations will analyze a number of these questions during the 10^th annual CSRRR Spring Lecture, which will bring together experts from nine different departments at UF along with keynote speaker, New York Times op-ed columnist Charles Blow.

“At Close Range: The Curious Case of Trayvon Martin,” will take place Wednesday at the University of Florida Levin College of Law in the Chesterfield Smith Ceremonial Classroom, HOL 180. The panel presentations will be from 9 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. and Blow’s keynote lecture will be from noon to 1:30 p.m. The event is free and open to the public and law school parking restrictions will be lifted in the green lots. The event will also be webcast at http://mediasite.video.ufl.edu/Mediasite/Play/0bb612b41ae84a359f258f135abb99321d.

The panels will look at a wide variety of issues raised by the case, from a multitude of academic perspectives. Some of the featured panels include “Jim Crow Riding High: The 21^st Century Assault on African-American Voting Rights in Florida,” “Half-Baked: Weed, Race and the Demonization of Trayvon Martin,” and “Racial Profiling, Security and Human Rights.”

“The Trayvon Martin case is a social touchstone precisely because it serves up topics we’re uncomfortable talking about in public, including race, crime, policing, interracial crime, use of deadly force, black crime victims, Southern race relations, media representations of race, and gun control,” said Katheryn Russell-Brown, director of the CSRRR and Chesterfield Smith Professor of Law. “The case offers an important opportunity for us to learn about, discuss and debate these myriad and overlapping issues. Our Spring Lecture event will contribute to the national discussion of the case and emphasize policy recommendations.”

The departments of political science; health services; philosophy; sociology, criminology and law; journalism and communications; history; English; anthropology, and African-American studies will all be represented. The academic papers, which comprise the basis for the panel discussions, will be compiled for the first installment in a new series in collaboration with UF Law’s Lawton Chiles Legal Information Center. The panel agendas and abstracts for the papers can be seen in the Collections of the UF Law Scholarship Repository at, http://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/csrrr_events/10thspringlecture/panels/. For more information regarding the spring lecture, please visit the CSRRR homepage, http://www.law.ufl.edu/academics/centers/csrrr.

The University of Florida Levin College of Law’s CSRRR is committed to fostering communities of dialogue on race. The center creates and supports programs designed to enhance race-related curriculum development for faculty, staff and students in collegiate and professional schools. Of the five U.S. law schools with race centers, the CSRRR is uniquely focused on curriculum development.

About Charles Blow

After graduating cum laude from Grambling State University, keynote speaker Blow joined The New York Times in 1994 as a graphics editor and quickly became the paper’s graphics director, a position he held for nine years. The Louisiana native went on to become the paper’s design director for news before leaving in 2006 to become the art director of National Geographic Magazine.

Blow often appears on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight, Starting Point and AC360. He has also appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, the Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell and Hardball with Chris Matthews, Fox News’ Fox and Friends, the BBC and Al Jazeera, as well as numerous radio programs.

Alfred Brophy, Judge John J. Parker Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina, spoke March 21 as the CSRRR spring lecture speaker. He stands here with UF Law Professor Katheryn Russell-Brown. (Photo by Marcela Suter)

By Francie Weinberg
Student writer

Though many Americans view the Constitution as a beacon of freedom, Southerners in the antebellum period used it to justify their actions as slaveholders.

“Our nation’s journey toward freedom was shamefully long,” said Alfred Brophy, Judge John J. Parker Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina. “Southerners believed slavery could not be undone without having to undo all of society.”

Brophy, who was instrumental in getting the University of Alabama to apologize for its participation in slaveholding, presented this and other ideas Wednesday during his lecture, “Slavery, Secession and the Constitution,” during the ninth annual University of Florida Levin College of Law Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations spring lecture.

Brophy tied together the views of prominent Southerners including John C. Calhoun and Thomas Cobb with the pro-slavery actions of universities in the South to prove how they used the Constitution to continue the forced labor system almost a century after the Declaration of Independence.

“They were no longer in the world of Jefferson’s ‘all people are created equal,’” Brophy said. “Southerners had this sense that slavery was a foundation not just of Southern economy but of freedom for white people.”

Through the use of history, philosophy, economics and law, key governmental figures in the South convinced universities, such as Virginia Military Institute, that the Constitution had been perverted by Northerners.

“The Constitution gave the South political power and made abolition of slavery significantly more difficult,” he said. “We should learn about Constitutional culture to understand the close relationship between formal law and its surrounding ideas.”

Brophy said the Constitution, whether interpreted for good or evil, is a central vehicle in understanding both the Civil War and the American experience.

“We have to realize how much Southern advocacy bent a more normal interpretation of the Constitution,” he said. “Only then can we fully understand this struggle in its entirety.”

Brophy’s work includes the books: Reconstructing the Dreamland: The Tulsa Riot of 1921, Race, Reparations, Reconciliation and Reparations Pro and Con, as well as the co-authorship of Integrating Spaces: Poverty Law and Race.

“Through his work he shows not just that race matters but how, for whom and why all of us should care,” said Katheryn Russell-Brown, director of the Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations.

Every year the center invites a legal scholar who writes, teaches and researches at the intersections of race, law and justice. Lecturers in years past have included Professor Charles Ogletree of Harvard Law and Professor Robert S. Chang of Seattle University School of Law. The Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations’ objective is to recognize and celebrate scholarship that focuses unblinkingly on race, and to highlight scholars who engage in critical thinking about race. They also strive to feature work that signals new and creative thinking about race and race relations.

The Judge John J. Parker Distinguished Professor of Law will present a lecture titled, “Slavery, Secession and the Constitution,” at the ninth annual UF Levin College of Law Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations Spring Lecture Wednesday, March 21, at noon at the University of Florida Levin College of Law, Room 345. The lecture is free and open to the public.

“While everyone understands that slavery was at the center of the South’s secession, what I’m interested in is how southern politicians, lawyers and professors used constitutional ideas – like the Constitution’s protection of slavery – to argue for secession,” Brophy said.

Brophy said while today we see the Constitution as a guarantee of equal rights, before the Civil War, southerners used the same document to protect slavery, even at the cost of a united nation. This presentation is the culmination of years of work analyzing southern academics and their defense of slavery, and “how ideas about slavery, history and economy were used to gin up support for a proslavery interpretation of the Constitution and separate Confederate nation.”

Brophy is the author of Reconstructing the Dreamland: The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 (Oxford University Press, 2002) and Reparations Pro and Con (Oxford University Press, 2006), and is the co-author of Integrating Spaces: Property Law and Race (Aspen, 2011). He is completing a study of jurisprudence in the old South tentatively titled University, Court, and Slave and is starting a study of the idea of equality among African American intellectuals in the early twentieth century and the road to Brown, tentatively titled Reading the Great Constitutional Dream Book.

The University of Florida Levin College of Law Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations is committed to fostering communities of dialogue on race. The center creates and supports programs designed to enhance race-related curriculum development for faculty, staff and students in collegiate and professional schools. Of the five U.S. law schools with race centers, the CSRRR is uniquely focused on curriculum development.

From left: UF Law Professor Kenneth Nunn; Jackson State University Political Science Professor Michelle D. Deardorff; Mississippi School of Law Professor Angela M. Kupenda; UF Law Irving Cypen Professor of Law Sharon Rush; and UF Law Professor Jonathan R. Cohen. (Photo by Marcela Suter)

When Barack Obama was elected the first African-American president of the United States in 2008, the question of whether America had finally moved into a post-racial society became a widely discussed topic. While the answer to the question is still being debated, it is clear that there are many valid questions about how to approach and discuss issues of race in the modern world.

Scholars at “Race Talk in the Age of Obama,” addressed some of these questions by participating in a panel discussion based on the December 2011 issue of the University of Florida Journal of Law and Public Policy to which each of the five panelists contributed an article. The event, which was held Feb. 8 at UF Law, was co-sponsored by the JLPP and the Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations.

The panel was comprised of UF Law Professor Jonathan R. Cohen; Jackson State University Political Science Professor Michelle D. Deardorff; Mississippi School of Law Professor Angela M. Kupenda; UF Law Professor Kenneth Nunn and UF Law Professor Sharon Rush, the Irving Cypen Professor of Law.

Each participant brought a unique academic perspective to the discussion, which was facilitated by brief summaries of each panelists’ article and questions from members of the JLPP.

A recurring theme of the discussion was that race should be looked at as a structural institution rather than viewed in terms of personal relationships — an idea initially put forth by Deardorff in summarizing her article co-authored with Kupenda titled “Negotiating Social Mobility and Critical Citizenship.”

“We had 300 years of racialized, legalized, maintained oppression,” Deardorff said, “and then we removed the legalized part of it and said it was done.”

Yet, all the other structures still remain, she said.

The panel also examined how to address issues of race in educational institutions — and looked at examples of it being ignored and other situations where it is being addressed.

“Talking about race is difficult and it is challenging,” Nunn said. “It takes courage, perseverance, leadership and a thick skin.”

Cohen said in terms of exchanging ideas in the classroom, you can’t guarantee that people will fully understand you, but it shouldn’t prevent you from expressing your perspective. And he pointed out that the part of the conversation that is in your control is the act of trying to understand what other people in the conversation are saying.

Rush’s article, “Talking About Race and Equality,” which posits the idea that many people fall into two categories when it comes to talking about race — those who let blindness to racial inequality lead to the avoidance of talking about race, and those who see racial inequality everywhere and want to talk about it all the time. She suggests there is a middle ground people can find where they can comfortably address topics of race and inequality.

This led to the questions of whether Obama’s “approach concedes too much by ignoring the discriminatory intent that some people have that undermines (his good intentions).” Rush said she believes Obama understands that many equality-minded people don’t think about, or understand structural racism and that he is “managing the color line with extreme aplomb.”

On the other hand, Nunn stated that “Obama’s treatment of race is his consequence of negotiating a culture in our society where he knows it’s an explosive issue. His failure to engage it shows more than anything that we haven’t gotten beyond it.”

The University of Florida Levin College of Law Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations is committed to fostering communities of dialogue on race. The center creates and supports programs designed to enhance race-related curriculum development for faculty, staff and students in collegiate and professional schools. Of the five U.S. law schools with race centers, the CSRRR is uniquely focused on curriculum development.

The event, “Race Talk in the Age of Obama,” will be a timely and provocative panel discussion by contributors to the December 2011 issue of the University of Florida Journal of Law and Public Policy.

Representing diverse race, gender and academic perspectives, panelists will discuss how they confront race at a time when many claim America is now a post-racial society.

In light of the historic election of President Barack Obama, how does race matter? How should we engage in everyday conversations about race at work, at school and informally? What are the potential risks and benefits? What are the consequences of not talking about race? What is “critical citizenship” and how does it impact public policy and our work as students, lawyers and educators?

Panelists will include: Professor Jonathan R. Cohen, professor of law, University of Florida; Michelle D. Deardorff, professor of political science, Jackson State University, Jackson, Miss.; Angela Mae Kupenda, professor of law, Mississippi College School of Law, Jackson, Miss.; Professor Kenneth B. Nunn, professor of law, University of Florida; and Professor Sharon E. Rush, Irving Cypen Professor of Law, University of Florida.

Contact Melissa Bamba with questions at 273-0614 or bamba@law.ufl.edu.

UF Law’s newest clinic opens doors
The newest addition to UF Law’s Virgil D. Hawkins Civil Clinics opened its doors for the first time this past summer with four interns completing the program earlier this month. The Intimate Partner Violence Assistance Clinic (IPVAC) is the first and only clinic of its kind in the country; helping indigent victims of domestic violence meet legal, safety, family and medical needs.

“I am thrilled that we got IPVAC off the ground and running this summer,” said Teresa Drake, director of the clinic. “The students handled cases with issues ranging from dissolution to injunctive relief; immigration to landlord tenant law.”

“A major benefit of the clinic is that the law students are enabling individuals to have representation and a voice in proceedings where they might not have,” said intern Diana Korn (3L).

The clinic is a collaboration between the University of Florida Levin College of Law, College of Medicine, Shands Teaching Hospital and Peaceful Paths Domestic Abuse Network. Students interested in enrolling in the IPVAC program can contact Director Teresa Drake at drake@law.ufl.edu.

FJIL welcomes new members
The Florida Journal of International Law welcomes and congratulates its newest members for the Fall 2010 semester: Meghan Zavoina, Michael Burns, Chelsea Koff, Agnieszka (Agnes) Jeter, Liridona Sinani, Fabienne Suter, Shawn Clark, Daphne Duplessis, M. Austin Moretz, Adriana Paris, Kristina (Nina) Burke, Lamar Miller, Caroline Picart, Brian Wagner, Jennie Zilner, Anastasia Campbell, Julianne Parker, Michael Gutman, Brittany Jacobs, Monica L. Haddad, Nicole Zakarin, Jason Parnell, Jerry Lee, Jason Levy, Christopher Marotta and Laura Thayer. FJIL publishes three times a year and concentrates on international legal topics such as international trade and commerce law, human rights law, national security, war crimes, international environmental law and maritime law. For more information on FJIL, e-mail editor-in-chief Stephen Lott at FJIL.EIC@gmail.com.

CSRRR panel looks at new Arizona immigration law
Over the summer, the UF Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations presented an insightful examination of the controversial Arizona immigration law featuring Gainesville immigration attorney and UF Law alumni Evan George and UF Law professor Pedro Malavet. George and Malavet provided an overview of the law and elaborated on a number of reasons the law is a cause for concern. George focused on misperceptions about immigration issues while Malavet examined issues of race and culture in relation to the law.

No smoking policy takes effect
In order to provide faculty, staff and students with a healthy work and learning environmnent, UF became a tobacco-free campus on July 1. For more information about the Tobacco-Free Campus initiative and to learn about resources available to employees or students who wish to stop using tobacco, visit the Tobacco-Free Campus website at www.tobaccofree.ufl.edu/.

All of them agreed that there are problems with the death penalty today, though.

“The more we ask questions about the death penalty, the more we begin to see, at least from my perspective, that whether you’re for it or against it, it’s got problems,” Rambo said.

One of the problems agreed on are that the death penalty is arbitrarily imposed. For example, not all states have the death penalty, so a crime could be significantly worse in one state but not have the possibility of capital punishment. Nunn saw this first-hand as a defense attorney in Washington, D.C., which does not have the death penalty.

“I can assure you that the cases that I dealt with were as vile, troubling, vicious and cruel as any case in which the death penalty was imposed,” Nunn said. “None of these people received capital punishment.”

Nunn, who said the death penalty does not work and is arbitrarily imposed, spoke a lot about race’s effect on the death penalty. He raised a comprehensive study done by Iowa professor David Baldus, which has been cited by the Supreme Court. The study, done in Georgia, found that African-Americans were four times more like to be sentenced to death than white criminals when accounting for the crimes. Even more significantly, the color of the victim mattered more in the study. Criminals who murdered white victims were much more likely to get the death penalty. If an African-American killed a white victim, he was 11 times more likely to get the death penalty than a white person killing an African-American.

In McCleskey v. Kemp, the Supreme Court debated if there was enough evidence of racial bias to stop the death penalty. The justices cited the Baldus study, but in a 5-4 decision voted that the evidence was not sufficient enough to change the death penalty. Justice Scalia, who voted to sustain the death penalty, sent out a memo to his colleagues that was later leaked, Nunn said, arguing that Scalia admitted to racial bias but voted not to change anything for political reasons.

Nunn paraphrased Scalia’s memo: “I don’t think we need to debate on whether or not there is sufficient evidence of racial bias in implementation of the death penalty. I am convinced that there is sufficient evidence of racial bias in the administration of justice and particularly the death penalty in America. However, I’m not going to vote for this because I think that if I do the consequences will be so severe that we will not be able to maintain our criminal justice system in the manner in which we have done so throughout the history of the United States.”

Even Dekle admitted that the death penalty could be better imposed. He spent 32 years as a prosecutor and defense attorney and prosecuted 15 death penalty cases. He has attended two executions of criminals that he prosecuted and has other convictions sitting on death row.

“I will say this: over the 32 years that I practiced criminal law and prosecuted and defended death penalty cases, my views and opinions about the death penalty have evolved and changed, and now at the end of my career, looking at the death penalty and the way that it is being imposed in the United States, I see some problems,” Dekle said.