Abstract
This Article explores the disharmonious and disturbing influence of race in the enforcement of liquor licenses. Across the length and breadth of this nation, attentive Black revelers bear witness to an all-too-familiar trend signified by the disproportionately frequent closures of Black entertainment businesses. This Article argues that the punitive disposition toward Black entertainment businesses is not just a contemporary phenomenon; rather, it is a set of practices rooted in centuries of exclusion and regulatory abuse.
Over the past two centuries, state liquor licensing agencies have emerged as contentious battlegrounds where legal, social, and economic factors converge—often to the detriment of the very businesses they were intended to regulate. Throughout the colonial, post-revolutionary, and antebellum eras, state boards and commissions used liquor license regulations to maintain systems of control and preserve the racialized status quo. By unveiling these historical and ongoing practices, this Article reconceptualizes how legal reform might rectify the structural obstacles that disproportionately affect Black entertainment businesses.
Additionally, this Article challenges the perception of drinking establishments as trivial or controversial by highlighting their significance as profound sites for meaning-making, cultural production, and reclamation. This exploration presents an emic perspective that counters the negative and inaccurate stereotypes often associated with spaces of Black entertainment, leisure, and recreation.
Recommended Citation
Angela E. Addae, Booze, Bars, and Bias: Anti-Blackness in Liquor Licensing Enforcement, 81 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 1855 (2025).Available at: https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/wlulr/vol81/iss5/4
Included in
Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, Law and Race Commons, State and Local Government Law Commons
