Spring 2014 Unit for Criticism Faculty Lecture, Lisa Cacho: "Criminalizing the Dead"
Response by Margareth Etienne

Monday, June 2, 2014

posted under , , , , , , by Unit for Criticism

[On April 21, the Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory hosted a Spring 2014 faculty lecture, "Criminalizing the Dead." The lecture was delivered by Lisa Cacho (Latina/o Studies, Asian American Studies. The response by Margareth Etienne (Law) is published below.]

“Excerpts from A Response to Dr. Lisa Cacho’s ‘Criminalizing the Dead’”

Written by Margareth Etienne (Law)



A group of teenagers getting stop-and-frisked on
Seneca Avenue,  Bronx, on their way home from
school on September 2012. (Photo: Pearl Gabel)
As you are all surely aware, it has become a fairly common-place observation that our criminal justice system over-criminalizes black and brown people (and the spaces they occupy). There are many versions of this claim: driving while black or brown; selectively enforced stop and frisk rules; loitering ordinances; racial and ethnic profiling. Lisa Cacho does in her work, Criminalizing the Dead, is to take this observation further and documents its application well beyond the ethnic minority criminal defendant to the ethnic minority victim. She argues that even when underrepresented minorities and women are victims of violent crimes like homicide, they are viewed not as victims but as criminals or criminals averted. Cacho notes this is especially true with the murder victim who can no longer speak her or his own narrative but whose very persons become the new embodiment of a racialized stereotype. She shows how under current law, as applied, in many cases, death facilitates the criminalization of these individuals. Yes, this gives us much to think about.

There is a lot to be said about this work but I want to share with you today a few thoughts that have been churning over and over in my mind over the last couple weeks as I have been contemplating what I, as a criminal law scholar, could contribute to this conversation. Like much engaging scholarship, Cacho has leads us to re-envision old problems in new ways.

I want to invite you to think about the legal concept of proxies and how they elucidate a point that Cacho already makes quite forcefully.

Read more

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)
top

total visits to date | come back again

© Kritik - Adapted from code by Jack Book and Dezinerfolio