Freespace

AZ bureaucrats want to put mom's name on the state's list of child abusers for letting her son play in a park

I talked with Armstrong and Getty this morning about our newest lawsuit at Goldwater: defending a Tucson mom named Sarra against state officials who want to put her name on the state's Central Registry--essentially a "do not hire" list--for letting her son play in a neighborhood park by himself for a half-hour. County prosecutors dismissed the case--but the state's Department of Child Safety is moving forward with putting her name on the blacklist for twenty-five years, based on the lax standard of "probable cause." That's already been declared unconstitutional in several other states, and we're arguing that it's unconstitutional in Arizona, too. You can listen here. I was also on Wake up Tucson! yesterday talking about the case with Chris DeSimone, and if you missed it, you can listen here.

The irrationality of racial classifications

In my latest book review for The Objective Standard, I look at David E. Bernstein’s new book Classified, which examines the arbitrary ways government labels people by race—often by racial or pseudo-racial terms that are entirely made up. Excerpt:

The “Hispanic” classification is even more capricious. It was created by government fiat in the 1970s to encompass people whose ancestry is derived from Spanish-speaking countries. Basing a classification on language rather than history or biology is peculiar, given that language is not an immutable characteristic acquired at birth. But the Hispanic category also includes people who do not speak Spanish, such as Brazilians, who speak Portuguese, and immigrants from Spain who speak Catalan. What’s more, residents of Spanish-speaking countries do not call themselves “Hispanic,” and polls reveal that half of American-citizen Hispanics consider themselves white.

The results of this bizarre taxonomy are sometimes silly. When Steven Spielberg’s remake of West Side Story  appeared last year, studio publicists boasted that the cast would be racially “authentic” because the Puerto Rican character Maria would be portrayed by Hispanic actress Rachel Zegler. But Zegler is of Colombian and European ancestry and has no Puerto Rican heritage. “Exactly how casting a half-Colombian, half-European actress to play a Puerto Rican character is culturally sensitive was left unexplained,” writes Bernstein.

Read the rest….

The Federalism Problems with the Indian Child Welfare Act

My new article, "The Federalism Problems with the Indian Child Welfare Act," has been posted online at the Texas Review of Law & Politics' website. This is part two of a two-part series of articles on the Act that I've done for the TROLP. The first focused on the racial aspects of the law, and this one, obviously, focuses on the federalism problems. This is also the article that the American Indian Law Review cancelled after deciding it was politically unacceptable. The article will appear in print at 26 Tex. Rev. L. & Pol. 429. I'm grateful to the TROLP for posting it promptly so that it's available for those who want to review it while briefing in Brackeen is underway.

New York City Haiku

My latest poem, “New York City Haiku,” has been published in the Ekphrastic Review. It’s inspired by the lovely painting “Braille to the Night” by Casey Baugh. Yes, that really is a painting.