Today and Tuesday we will discuss the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. Racial conflict is among the longest running (and most shameful) narratives in American history, and we see the intersection between race and Constitutional law perhaps nowhere more than in equal-protection cases.
The abolition of slavery after the Civil War was but one important step in Black Americans' struggle for freedom, followed as it was by almost a century of segregationist policies in southern states. While I dearly wish the United States could have completely closed that chapter too by this point in history, just last week, news media reported on a case in Louisiana where a white judge refused to grant a marriage license to an interracial couple (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091015/ap_on_re_us/us_interracial_rebuff). Clearly, there is still some ways to go to abolish bigotry, notwithstanding the election of America's first Black president in 2008.
For the next two classes, please read textbook pages 223-247 and familiarize yourselves with affirmative action policy.
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