Social Work Policy Practice

Author: DeMecia Wooten-Irizarry

  • Reclaiming the Record: Slavery, Constitutional Complicity, and the 21st-Century Struggle Against Neo-Jim Crow

    America’s founding myth celebrates liberty, but its historical reality is rooted in slavery, racial violence, and systemic exclusion. The revision of history—especially around slavery, the Constitution, and civil rights—is not just academic; it is a moral imperative. It determines whose stories are told, whose suffering is acknowledged, and whose dignity is restored.

    The Constitution’s Complicity in Slavery

    The U.S. Constitution, often revered as a symbol of freedom, was crafted with explicit protections for slavery. These were not accidental omissions—they were strategic concessions to slaveholding states. Article I, Section 2 (the Three-Fifths Compromise) counted enslaved people as three-fifths of a person for congressional representation, reinforcing their dehumanization. Article I, Section 9 delayed the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade until 1808, allowing the continued importation of enslaved Africans. Article IV, Section 2 (the Fugitive Slave Clause) required the return of escaped enslaved people, legitimizing human bondage across state lines. These clauses embedded white supremacy into the nation’s legal framework, ensuring that enslavers retained political and economic power (Finkelman, 2001).

    Historical Revisionism: Truth vs. Sanitization

    Efforts to revise American history have intensified in recent years. The 1619 Project, launched by The New York Times Magazine, reframed the national origin story by placing slavery and Black resistance at the center (Hannah-Jones, 2019). It argued that 1619—the year enslaved Africans arrived in Virginia—is a more honest founding date than 1776. In response, the Trump administration created the 1776 Commission, which promoted a sanitized version of U.S. history that downplayed slavery, systemic racism, and the contributions of Black Americans (Mockaitis, 2025). This revisionist effort sought to restore a mythic past, one that erases the trauma and resistance of marginalized communities. Even public spaces have become battlegrounds for historical truth. At Independence National Historic Park, efforts to remove exhibits acknowledging slavery reflect a broader attempt to obscure the Constitution’s role in upholding racial hierarchy (Mockaitis, 2025).

    From Emancipation to Civil Rights—and Beyond

    The abolition of slavery in 1865 did not dismantle the systems of racial control. Instead, they evolved. During Reconstruction (1865–1877), brief gains in Black political power were violently overturned by white supremacist backlash. The Jim Crow Era (1877–1954) followed, codifying legal segregation, voter suppression, and racial terror. The Civil Rights Movement (1954–1968) brought landmark victories like Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and the Civil Rights Act (1964), challenging institutional racism and expanding civil liberties. Yet even after these gains, mass incarceration, redlining, and economic exclusion emerged as new tools of racial control (Alexander, 2010). Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow (2010) argues that mass incarceration functions as a modern caste system, disproportionately targeting Black Americans through punitive drug laws, surveillance, and prison labor schemes that echo slavery’s coercive logic.

    Neo-Jim Crow in the 21st Century

    Today, the push toward a 21st-century Jim Crow is not cloaked in overt segregation but in policies and cultural shifts that suppress truth and reinforce racial hierarchy. Voter suppression laws in over 20 states disproportionately affect Black and Brown communities, especially in the South. These include ID requirements, purges of voter rolls, and restrictions on early voting (Brennan Center for Justice, 2021). Educational gag orders in more than 35 states restrict the teaching of racism, slavery, and systemic inequality. These policies mirror historical censorship and aim to erase the trauma of marginalized communities (Mockaitis, 2025). Meanwhile, the prison system continues to disproportionately target Black Americans, with prison labor functioning as a modern form of coerced labor (Alexander, 2010). These trends reflect a backlash against racial justice movements and a desire to restore racial hierarchies under new guises. They are not relics of the past—they are reinventions of old systems, adapted to modern legal and cultural frameworks.

    Why This Matters

    Historical revisionism, when rooted in truth and justice, is not distortion—it is repair. It is a principled act of reclaiming erased narratives, confronting systemic harm, and honoring the resistance of those who fought—and continue to fight—for dignity. To confront the resurgence of neo-Jim Crow, we must tell the full story. We must name the Constitution’s complicity, honor the resistance of enslaved and oppressed peoples, and reject sanitized myths that obscure systemic harm. This is not merely a debate over curriculum—it is a struggle over memory, power, and justice.

    References 

    Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. The New Press.

    Brennan Center for Justice. (2021). Voting laws roundup. https://www.brennancenter.org

    Finkelman, P. (2001). Slavery and the founders: Race and liberty in the age of Jefferson. M.E. Sharpe.

    Hannah-Jones, N. (2019). The 1619 Project. The New York Times Magazine.

    Mockaitis, T. (2025, August 15). Trump’s Orwellian revisionist history rewrites America’s reality. The Hill. https://thehill.com/opinion/education/5453023-trump-rewriting-american-history

  • The Supreme Court’s Emergency Docket Is Quietly Rewriting the Separation of Powers

    By DeMecia Wooten-Irizarry

    As a public administrator and licensed social worker, I write with deep concern about the Supreme Court’s recent decision permitting the President to remove Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter without cause. This action, issued via the emergency docket, quietly dismantles Humphrey’s Executor v. United States (1935)—a precedent that for ninety years affirmed Congress’s authority to insulate independent agencies from partisan control.

    The Federal Trade Commission was never intended to serve the political agenda of any administration. Its bipartisan structure is a constitutional safeguard, designed to protect the public interest through regulatory independence. By allowing the President to unilaterally dismiss a sitting commissioner, the Court has not merely paused a lower court’s ruling—it has endorsed a doctrine that threatens the architecture of democratic governance.

    This decision cannot be divorced from broader ideological currents. It aligns with the Heritage Foundation’s Mandate for Leadership, a policy blueprint aimed at consolidating executive power and dismantling the administrative state. That doctrine is no longer aspirational—it is being operationalized through judicial appointments and jurisprudential shifts. Many of the justices now reshaping constitutional precedent were selected from Heritage-approved lists, chosen for their alignment with a belief system that rejects regulatory insulation and favors unitary executive control.

    The emergency docket, once reserved for urgent and time-sensitive relief, has become a mechanism for constitutional transformation. By bypassing full briefing, oral argument, and public transparency, the Court accelerates outcomes that erode checks and balances without the scrutiny such decisions demand. This procedural shift is not neutral—it is ideological.

    Justice Elena Kagan’s dissent in Slaughter v. United States (2025) warns that the majority’s posture “transfers government authority from Congress to the President, and thus reshapes the Nation’s separation of powers.” That transfer is not theoretical. It is active, and it is destabilizing. When the Court abandons its own precedent to serve a partisan vision of governance, it ceases to function as a guardian of law and becomes complicit in its erosion.

    This is not about one commissioner. It is about whether independent agencies will continue to serve as constitutional guardrails—or be repurposed as instruments of executive will. It is about whether Congress will reclaim its oversight role, or allow judicial reinterpretation to hollow out its authority.

    As a doctoral candidate in social work policy practice and a trauma-informed policy advocate, I view this moment as a constitutional inflection point. My work centers survivor dignity, historical precedent, and public accountability. I approach governance through a systems lens—one that recognizes how legal decisions reverberate through institutions and communities, especially those already marginalized by structural inequity.

    The Court’s decision invites a future where regulatory bodies are politicized, precedent is disposable, and constitutional boundaries are redrawn without public consent. That future is not inevitable—but resisting it requires clarity, vigilance, and principled alarm.

    Congressional oversight is not a formality. It is a constitutional obligation. If Congress will not defend its own authority, and the Court will not defend its own precedent, then it falls to the public—and to those of us trained in law, policy, and care—to sound the alarm.

    DeMecia Wooten-Irizarry is a public administrator, licensed social worker, and doctoral candidate in social work policy practice. Her work centers trauma-informed, survivor-focused policy reform and constitutional accountability.

  • The Art of Connection

    The Art of Connection

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  • Beyond the Obstacle

    Beyond the Obstacle

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  • Growth Unlocked

    Growth Unlocked

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  • Collaboration Magic

    Collaboration Magic

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  • Teamwork Triumphs

    Teamwork Triumphs

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  • Adaptive Advantage

    Adaptive Advantage

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