The Invisible Hands of Structural Racism in Housing: Our Hands, Our Responsibility

Abstract

This essay considers the question of what law might look like if it were to take on structural racism, the set of structural injustices that time and time again reproduce racial disparities. Because our law and our society co-evolve, dismantling structural racial injustice calls for developing legal theories and strategies to condemn and undermine it. And yet our theories of responsibility focus heavily on the individual. In this essay, I use the specific example of structural racial injustice in housing in the Omaha-Council Bluffs region to explore responsibility for that injustice using the work of political philosopher Iris Marion Young. I conclude that Young’s insights into responsibility for social injustice by individuals who – acting without ill intent – contribute to a web of causation that results in structural injustice point toward a new paradigm for dismantling current racial disparities. A public health paradigm offers a promising way to understand and begin to challenge systems-based inequity.

Keywords: Housing, Structural Racism, Responsibility for Justice, Iris Marion Young, Omaha-Council Bluffs, Public Health