S. Latino/as and Civil Rights Law

Latino/as and Civil Rights Law addresses the legal norms that have shaped, in part, the experience of Latinos and Latinas in this country. The Latino community in the U.S. has consistently used the courts to ensure equal treatment for all in civil rights and human rights jurisprudence. The modern civil rights era has also impacted upon the actual experience of Latinx and all national minorities in this country. Accordingly, the course will explore legal and public policy concerns in areas such as education, criminal justice, policing, voting and immigration, generally. The learning goals of the course include understanding the contributions Latinx communities have made to the development of U.S. civil rights and human rights norms and appreciating legal regulations at the intersection of Latino identifiers in race, language and national origin with the protections of anti-discrimination laws. Invisibility is the theme that runs through these readings: The invisibility of the Latinx experience in the United States as if its concerns are not worthy of mainstream attention; the inability / refusal to count Latinx engagement in criminal justice encounters; the absence of memory of the pain of Juan Crow; the erasure in public schools of Latinx ethnic studies and forced Americanization in Puerto Rico; the silencing of our workers who speak Spanish on the job; the concealment of Latinx immigration status or criminal histories to allow entry to the labor market; the concealed sleeping giant of Latinx political power; and the criminalization of just being in the U.S. or just walking, driving, eating while Brown even if you have papers. The Latino/a label is affixed to over 62 million people in the U.S. in 2020 – add 3 million more when you add Puerto Rico. The challenge for all of us is to make visible the invisible.