Racial Classification and Ascriptive Injury

Abstract

This paper describes a new model of the relationship between racial ascriptions on an individual level, private racial bias, social disadvantage, and state action, called the cognitive hierarchical model. As the name suggests, it deploys psychological, sociological, and historical evidence to argue that racial hierarchy in the wider culture leaks into our individual cognitions, and vice versa. Status evaluations turn out to be built deep into our racial perceptions.

The state, for its part, exercises a continuing influence on that culture and the cognitions it generates; this gives rise to new grounds for constitutional challenge to state complicity in racial hierarchy. To be ascribed a stigmatized racial identity is to be subject to continuing harm, which this paper calls ascriptive injury. This paper ultimately argues that the state, by participating in the continual creation and reinscription of stigmatized racial identities, causes such ascriptive injuries, and argues for a constitutional remedy.

Keywords: race, inequality, hierarchy, psychology, stereotypes, implicit bias, critical race theory, ascription

JEL Classification: J15, J71, J78, J70