Reproducing racism
Subtitle: how everyday choices lock in white advantage
By: Daria Roithmayr
Publisher: New York University Press
Published: 2014
Language: eng
Number of pages: 195
ISBN-13: 9780814777121
Copyright date: 2014
Subjects: Social conditions; Race relations; Economic conditions; Race discrimination; Whites; Racism; Minorities
Other titles: How everyday choices lock in white advantage
Description: "This book is designed to change the way we think about racial inequality. Long after the passage of civil rights laws and now the inauguration of our first black president, blacks and Latinos possess barely a nickel of wealth for every dollar that whites have. Why have we made so little progress? Legal scholar Daria Roithmayr provocatively argues that racial inequality lives on because white advantage functions as a powerful self-reinforcing monopoly, reproducing itself automatically from generation to generation even in the absence of intentional discrimination. Drawing on work in antitrust law and a range of other disciplines, Roithmayr brilliantly compares the dynamics of white advantage to the unfair tactics of giants like AT & T and Microsoft. With penetrating insight, Roithmayr locates the engine of white monopoly in positive feedback loops that connect the dramatic disparity of Jim Crow to modern racial gaps in jobs, housing and education. Wealthy white neighborhoods fund public schools that then turn out wealthy white neighbors. Whites with lucrative jobs informally refer their friends, who refer their friends, and so on. Roithmayr concludes that racial inequality might now be locked in place, unless policymakers immediately take drastic steps to dismantle this oppressive system. Daria Roithmayr is the George T. and Harriet E. Pfleger Professor of Law at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. An internationally acclaimed legal scholar and activist, she is one of the country's leading voices on the legal analysis of structural racial inequality. Prior to joining USC, Professor Roithmayr advised Senator Edward Kennedy on the nominations of Clarence Thomas and David Souter, and taught law at the University of Illinois"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 159-183) and index.
Table of contents: title: The more things change, the more they stay the same : some (incomplete and unsatisfying) explanations for persistent inequality; title: Cheating at the starting line : how white racial cartels gained an early unfair advantage during Jim Crow; title: Racial cartels in action : an in-depth look at historical racials cartels in housing and politics; title: Oh dad, poor dad : how whites' early unfair advantage in wealth became self-reinforcing over time; title: It's how you play the game : how whites created institutional rules that favored them over time; title: Not what you know, but who you know : how social networks reproduce early advantage; title: Please won't you be my neighbor? : How neighborhood effects reproduce racial segregation; title: Locked in : how white advantage may now have become hard-wired into the system; title: Reframing race : how the lock-in model helps us to think in new ways about racial inequality; title: Unlocking lock-in : some general observations (and one or two suggestions) on dismantling lock-in.