This Is the House that Law Built: A Systems Story of Racism

Abstract

Referring to racism as a system does not mean simply that racism is big, messy, and intractable. Saying that racism is a system brings a wealth of work on systems to bear on a phenomenon that permeates our culture, our politics, and our economy - a phenomenon that reaches into our internalized psyches and our interpersonal interactions and also shapes our institutions, policies, and laws. Viewing racism through a systems lens, viewing racism as a system, provides an understanding of how racism functions, which is necessary for taking actions to neutralize and reverse it. Racism and race in the United States were both created by law. Law is the backbone of our social structure. Law is the enacted and codified framework that constitutes our articulated collective story. As it did four centuries ago, law captures and communicates our ideology of race; law also affects and effects the social structures of continuing racism. Overall, law created and continues to maintain the system that is racism. It accomplishes this today while concurrently professing to be committed to opposing and dismantling racial inequality. We need systems stories in order to dismantle and transform racism; the predominant stories that law offers are deficient, distracting, and disingenuous. We must be straight with ourselves and others about the systemic nature of racism as well as law's role in creating and sustaining it.

Keywords: racism, systems, law, equal protection

JEL Classification: K, P