White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race

Chapter 8 focuses on colorblind racism and is new to White by Law’s 10th anniversary edition. Notions of race are changing because of shifting demographics and growing numbers of mixed-race marriages. Once dominant white supremacist ideologies are now relegated to the fringes. Similarly, large swaths of American society claim to support racial equality. These improvements have led many to believe that we are entering a post-racial era.

Haney López takes a dimmer view of American race relations, arguing that the decreasing salience of race makes it more likely that race will continue to skew society. Far from promoting social justice, the law legitimates inequality. Widespread anti-racism rhetoric has not ended racism. Instead, it has created new practices and rationales to preserve racial inequities.

Racial Futures

Haney López outlines four ways in which race might evolve in the future. The first posits the maintenance of white exceptionalism, whereby white people remain dominant, despite becoming the numerical minority. Black exceptionalism, wherein Black people remain the prime racial minority, presents an alternative to this model, reducing racial categories to Black and non-Black. A third possibility is multiracialism, wherein race ceases to be hierarchical and instead becomes solely a cultural signifier. A final possibility is Latin Americanization, which refers to the softening of racial hierarchies caused by the degradation of the Black-white dichotomy and ideas of biological racial difference.

Haney López identifies Latin Americanization as the most likely short-term development, as it maintains core notions about race, albeit with more subtle gradations. It defines race as more than ancestry and morphology, taking into account socioeconomic factors, such as wealth, educational level, and profession. Immigrants from Latin America are the most vocal proponents of this model. They see the move away from bio-racial views of race toward a socio-racial understanding as a positive development that will benefit Black people. Detractors argue that this trend will lead to an emphasis on color, with gradations in skin tones replacing current racial categories.

Colorblind White Dominance

Haney López argues that the US is heading toward an age of colorblind white dominance, not the directions outlined above. There are three main aspects to this new racial paradigm: 1) The continuation of white dominance in social, political, and economic terms; 2) an expansion of what constitutes whiteness along socio-racial lines; and 3) an ideology that claims to be antiracist, but that works to prevent racial equity.

Haney López cites statistics to illustrate his idea of white dominance. For example, the poverty rate among Back people was 24% in 2003, compared to 8% for white people. The same year, 20% of Black people lacked health insurance, compared to 11% of white people. Similarly, Black men have a 28.5% chance of being incarcerated, compared to 2.5% of white men (148). That white dominance has not vanished in the face of changing racial demographics is also evident in the high poverty and low insurance rates of Hispanic people (148).

Redefining whiteness is a salient feature of Haney López’s vision of race in the future. Whiteness will expand to include some Hispanic, Asian, and Black people, including those whose physical features allow them to pass as white. Whiteness will also encompass an emerging group of “honorary Whites” (151). Asian Americans fit into this category insofar as they receive the status of whiteness in some respects, in large part due to “the model minority myth” that characterizes Asians as meek and conforming and their professional success.

In addition to groups with high levels of acculturation, success, and wealth, “honorary Whites” also include those who previously occupied a liminal racial position between white and non-white. For example, Hispanic people with fair features and material wealth are increasingly being identified (and self-identifying) as white. Immigration and changing demographics are key to expanding definitions of whiteness. Studies show that in the late 20th century, the Asian population grew by 72% and the Hispanic population by almost 60% (153). By 2050, white people will be a numerical minority in the US (154).

As Haney López argues, however, redefining whiteness in socio-racial terms does not constitute the kind of change necessary to end racial inequity. In addition, expanding whiteness does not do away with the valorization of some physical features over others. Darker-skinned Black, Asian, and Hispanic people cannot become “honorary Whites,” regardless of their accomplishments. Expanding definitions of whiteness, then, will not bring about widespread social justice.

Colorblindness rationalizes and protects white racial dominance. Colorblindness is a pervasive ideology that claims to bracket out race, but in fact supports racial domination and subordination dynamics. The ideology emerged in American courts in the 1940s, but it did not take hold until after the civil rights era. Conservative members of the Supreme Court curtailed racial discrimination protections from the civil rights era and limited race-conscious solutions to inequality by citing colorblindness. Justice Clarence Thomas went so far as to draw a connection between laws that subjugate a race and laws that bestow benefits based on race. Put another way, he equated Jim Crow laws—laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern US—with affirmative action laws designed to uplift racial minorities (159).

Proponents of colorblindness eschew all direct invocations of race. They see the precipitous decline of virulent white supremacy after the civil rights era as evidence that the country is free of racism. They emphasize that the US is “a nation of minorities” (159). Last, they claim that white people are victims of racism and no longer dominant. Colorblindness divorces race from social practices. Proponents claim that race is either purely physical or an abstract fiction, rather than a function of how people are perceived and treated. For them, not speaking of race or racism means it doesn’t exist: White people can discriminate against non-white people, so long as they do not utter racial words or tie their actions explicitly to race. Attacks on undocumented immigrants do not target racial groups, according to proponents, but those who violate immigration laws. As Haney López notes, however, the rhetoric of securing the southern border stirs racial animus, even if the words race and racism are never uttered.

Conclusion

Haney López concludes on a bleak note: White dominance has not ended, nor will it end anytime soon. The material interests of large swaths of the American population depend on maintaining white dominance. The antiracist pretensions of colorblindness merely curtail race-conscious efforts to end racial inequity. The immediate future, then, is one of continued inequality.