Law in Contemporary Society

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CarlaChowSecondPaper 3 - 05 Aug 2012 - Main.CarlaChow
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All Great Problems come from the Streets

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  Writing for the Web is a skill you need to perfect.
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No hay racismo aqui

There is a fairy tale that is sometimes told in Puerto Rico: that racism, the great American evil, does not exist on the Isle of Enchantment. Of course, racism is very much alive and well, but in contrast to the mainland United States, the overarching social and culture narrative on the island is one of wealth disparity and classism, not race. Even my father has told me a personal variation of this: “When I first moved here no firm would interview me – a Harvard man, a Chinaman – not because of the color of my skin, but because they had never heard of my father.“

 
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>		I am not suggesting that racism and classism exist to the same degree or have the exact same effect in Puerto Rico and the rest of the United States nor negating the importance of historical and cultural factors. I do however find this difference between the racial/classist narratives of Puerto Rico versus the rest of the U.S. narratives to be striking, perhaps not so much because of the great divide between them but because of how little it all seems to matter in the end. Wryly we realize that this growing lawlessness has had the result of chipping away at these social and racial divisions. Black, white, rich, poor – a bullet really is the great equalizer.
 In Lawyerland Judge Day asks what happens to law and civil order in a nation of civil wars. What would happen if the law were to be infiltrated by the problems from the streets; what would the law then be? I would argue that this is exactly what is happening in Puerto Rico. The problems of its streets have been ignored and accepted for so long that they now engulf the entire island. The justice of law has been replaced with the justice of the streets with the result that no one is simply unlucky and everybody is getting what they deserve.

Revision 3r3 - 05 Aug 2012 - 15:35:46 - CarlaChow
Revision 2r2 - 19 Jun 2012 - 00:45:17 - EbenMoglen
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