The Neutrality Of Amendment One - 4116 Words

â€Å"Neutrality of Amendment One† Throughout our country’s history we have proclaimed a love for equality for all; however there have been times were this was not so. Someone could think of many examples of times where the equality of every individual was not upheld, but today, legislation is considered to be race neutral. Today, laws must be formally equal. We live in a time after slavery and after Jim Crow which deliberately placed African-Americans at a disadvantage. Because of this, laws are meant to be race neutral. One can then suspect that the effects of those laws, written in race neutral language will also be race neutral. However, this may not be the case. It could very well be that the effects of some laws disproportionately, and†¦show more content†¦She discusses several reasons as to why this type of law disproportionally affects African-American women. She claims that these laws were brought about as a direct response to the crack cocaine epidem ic, which was predominantly associated with the African-American community. She also notes other reasons such as how because minority women tend to live in the lower economic class they depend on more government assistance which therefore makes their drug abuse much more noticeable than a white woman’s drug abuse (Roberts pgs386-388). This paper will have a similar objective as Dorothy E. Robert’s piece. It will look specifically at Tennessee’s newly passed Amendment One and its possible effects on minority women. To truly see the effects, individuals must first understand what the amendment says, why it was brought up to vote, and what the effects on minority women may be as an outcome of its passing. The point of this paper is not to determine whether or not this amendment should have passed, but rather decide if the race neutral wording of the law truly produces race neutral effects when it comes to the individuals it effects. The state of Tennessee voted on Amendment One on November fourth of this year and it passed with fifty-three percent of the vote which roughly translates into 728,751 ‘yes’