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Reproducing Racism: How Everyday Choices Lock In White Advantage
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.
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.
206 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 20, 2014
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November 7, 2019
Many economists, I am told, assert that if we do nothing, racism will end because it’s not rational. Those who are too racist to look for talent, customers, or love wherever it may be will be outcompeted by those who look everywhere.
This book takes on that hypothesis. It is a truth that should be universally acknowledged that the burdens and benefits of civilization have been distributed unfairly based on race in my country. That distribution, Professor Rothmayr argues, will perpetuate itself until it is disrupted. Inherited wealth, connections, the tendency to like people we believe deep down are like us, the wealth of our neighbors and the qualities of our schools all conspire to perpetuate that unfair distribution, even if every single person on the powerful side of the ledger harbors no racist will at all.
A powerful and depressing book.
This book takes on that hypothesis. It is a truth that should be universally acknowledged that the burdens and benefits of civilization have been distributed unfairly based on race in my country. That distribution, Professor Rothmayr argues, will perpetuate itself until it is disrupted. Inherited wealth, connections, the tendency to like people we believe deep down are like us, the wealth of our neighbors and the qualities of our schools all conspire to perpetuate that unfair distribution, even if every single person on the powerful side of the ledger harbors no racist will at all.
A powerful and depressing book.
July 23, 2016
I've yet to find a critical review of this book and though I don't know enough history or case law to be of any use, apparently I will have to write the first one.
This book succeeds as a narrow view on history and case law. Issues discussed in particular include: steering, redlining, and labor that contributed to the peril of Black Americans. The author is well versed in these issues and their corresponding case law, but beyond that scope, the book is effectively worthless. For its historical value, I'm giving the book two stars instead of one.
Anything beyond a historic description of events in this book wades into shoal where the arguments are transparent and woefully inadequate. Even within this weak aspect of the book, she does succeed in limited ways. A great example can be found in the closing paragraph of the book:
"In the absence of restructuring, the everyday processes that we take for granted - referring our friends for a job, choosing a neighborhood with well-financed public schools, giving our children money for college tuition - will continue to reproduce racial inequality." In the book, she was unable to persuasively tie these actions to inequality, yet she doesn't have to. It's self evident that exercising any advantage that another lacks will contribute to inequality (racial or otherwise). For instance, if I teach my kid how to read before going to school and some other parent does not, I just handed my kid an advantage. I would venture to guess that Roithmayr wouldn't classify my example as unfair since the other parent had the same opportunity and simply didn't choose the more prudent path. But what if the parent in question is functionally illiterate? My choice is an unfair advantage and in my passing this skill to my child, I'm reproducing the advantage into the next generation. A similar argument could be made from any number of vantage points; in fact, the possible inequitable advantages between parents, and more so between classes, are infinite.
That brings me to an important note worth mentioning. The book has a tacit understanding that most of what is discussed isn't best described in terms of race, but rather class. I believe the author has this tacit understanding and is correct in it, yet the terms of the book are nearly exclusively discussed as racial, which ultimately weakens her argument substantially.
As my example from the book demonstrates, the advantages discussed in the book are arbitrary, not well explored, and are a tiny fraction of what could theoretically be discussed in a book such as this one. Wealth, according to Roithmayr, is passed generation to generation causing the earlier history to have a disproportionate influence on current outcome. I recommend you read that sentence again, as it is the major theme of the book. Middle class whites are apparently the beneficiaries of this history. The only problem is, I find the claim dubious. For instance, my family migrated to the US after the civil war; presumably the beneficiary of white labor cartels, my grandfather who could barely speak the language, worked in a steal mill. Then, when I came along, I was adopted into an entirely different family with Irish decent. The Irish heritage was also rife with discrimination early on - as the author might guess, I received no family money for a down payment on a house and no family money for education. There were times in my childhood when my worn shoes, replete with holes, had to suffice on a winter's school day. Yet today, my half brother is successful in a trade, and I own my home outright and have enough time to post lengthy book reviews on Goodreads.
What I'm trying to say is that the author's view point is so shallow that it ignores significant areas worth discussing. In fact, her viewpoint is worse than shallow - it's completely fallacious; I'll save the big one for last.
The author derides the LSAT throughout the book. According to her, the glaring differences in norms between racial groups is proof positive that law school admissions are favoring whites. She doesn't exactly say it that way. She says, "the LSAT disproportionately excludes Black and Latino applicants" (p 116). I can't stress this enough, it's not true at all. Sure, test scores between the races are vastly different, but the LSAT is only one piece of the process. More importantly, "Blacks and Latino applicants" aren't competing against whites on the LSAT. They're competing among other Blacks and Latino applicants. In fairness, I suppose where Roithmayr teaches law, it's a bit different because California doesn't allow college admissions to use ethnicity as basis for admission. I'm unclear how this works at the graduate level in California, but I know colleges have somewhat gotten around this issue at the undergraduate level by using class rank (a subjective measure that depends upon your classmates) instead of normalized test scores; she might be correct if you only talk about California. Every where else, it's well understood that a respectable score of 165 won't be enough to get you into Yale if you check the Caucasian box, but will likely put you in contention if you check the African American box. This well understood affirmative action doesn't weigh on Rothmayr's opinion that the LSAT works against non-Asian minorities.
Actually, the term "non-Asian minorities" is enlightening and ought to illuminate a glaring omission of "the lockout model" that Roitmayr avers. Certain sects of the Asian population have suffered from the same structural restrictions and overall lack that other immigrants and minorities have had to endure, yet within a single generation or two, have achieved an overwhelming success to the point of becoming "advantaged" themselves. The lockout model cannot explain the discrepancy. Actually, she mentions this somewhat in the opening pages but its silence on the matter is deafening. In Amy Chua's Triple Package she similarly attempts to isolate a structure to demonstrate their salience. Chua succeeds by illustrating three necessary yet insufficient characteristics of culture (the insufficiency is a key to the success of the argument). Roithmayr mostly illustrates insufficient explanations in an attempt to build a model that explains an unknown portion of the observed variance. The reader, and therefore most likely the author, are oblivious as to how much a factor the built-in structures described in narrative are at work. Perhaps this is simply the difference between a Yale law professor and a USC law professor.
It's disingenuous to propound a model that is both inadequate and of dubious value on such a strident issue. At best, the lockout model explains a fraction of what's happening (FWIW, I don't doubt that the factors are in play), and at worst the model is completely worthless and not worth any serious time. Why is that? Quite simply, it's fallacious (which is an odd thing coming from a law professor).
The realm of economics was obviously a large influence on Roithmayr. Traditional economics, as taught on college campuses around the world, have their value. They also typically have their flaws. In attacking (an Austrian?) economic belief that an efficient market will do away with discrimination, Roithmayr adopts one of the perilous tools of economics; The Ludic fallacy.
The author uses two games and various simulations (done by researchers) to bolster her argument. The problem is that the games are dissimilar to the issue at hand. Actually, Roithmayr's pet game, the Polya urn simulation, is a terrible analogy. In the Poly urn, colored balls are placed in a theoretical urn... one color A and another color B. They can be of whatever percentage, but equal numbers will prove the point quite well: 50 A and 50 B. A random selection is made and the ball is placed back into the urn along with another of the same color (it's this second part that's the key). So now you have 51 A and 50 B, which is an inequality. Moving forward from this point on, A has a higher expectation to be selected than does B. If the variance works in A's favor, the percentage will quickly become so disproportionate that it would be difficult for laity to comprehend that the two colors started off equally. Draws in the later round also will not produce this disproportionate effect, and the reason is mathematical. One ball (the one that is added after selection) becomes a smaller and smaller percentage of the whole, and therefore the model "locks in." As my quote might indicate, this is the idea of Roithmayr's lock-in model. Early advantage locks in and creates a feedback loop. She commits the Ludic fallacy when attempting to equate a mathematical game with a real life society.
A far better recent book, also written by a left-wing university professor, is The Son Also Rises by Gregory Clark. In that book, he demonstrates that this locking in isn't reflective of reality, and unlike Roithmayr, he has the math to prove it. Sadly, "advantages" are extremely obstinate according to Clark. This is where the two would agree. What they wouldn't agree upon are the drivers of the inequality and their potential solutions. According to Clark, the worst thing an underclass can do is to have a high fertility rate; a high fertility rate among the underclass will build a permanent underclass. Secondly, fertility or more specifically exogamy among the classes will speed up social mobility while caste like hypergamy will effectively lock-in a lineage. As stated, Clark can basically prove it, and yet this entire line of reasoning is unaccounted for in Roithmayr's book. Oh sure, in the opening page she mentions The Bell Curve and its request for government to intervene on the problem of the lower classes having higher fertility rates than the upper classes. Actually, this opening paragraph is akin to a stumble out of the gate, because no such advocacy is stated in The Bell Curve. I know because I took issue with this particular section of the book, here on Goodreads, in my review of it. What is requested is that government quit dysgenic policies. That's all. There's nothing in there about reducing fertility in the underclass, though it is tacitly understood that the authors were referring to the welfare state that enables and often encourages higher natality as a means for more entitlements. Curiously, the author leaves the brief mention of the book (along with others writers such as Thomas Sowell) dangling with no purpose at all.
Perhaps Roithmayr could understand the Polya urn model as it relates to something similar: fertility. If you think of the colored balls as having a child (since you add to the population as you go), the more one color is selected the more it will be selected going forward; it will reinforce prior variance (or fertility). It's a far more useful analogy to fertility than to society as a whole. More of one class reproducing than another class will reinforce and bolster that particular class. This game supports Clark's argument while not helping Roithmayr's model at all. Now, instead of a linear game, imagine if it were exponential... and perhaps you can see the insight espoused in books such as The Son Also Rises and The Bell Curve. Insight that, unfortunately, was glossed over in this book.
The idea or concept that 40 acres and a mule would have altered the outcome is disputed in The Son Also Rises.
I will also add that the author's main remedy was hilarious and made me question my impression that she was well versed in economics. She advocates for a trust fund for poor children, to be used for college or a house purchase. 1. This shows a lack of understanding of monetary policy... presuming the funds are acquired the same way the federal government acquires them now. 2. All this would do is enhance home sellers and college degree suppliers. This entire line of reasoning is sadly laughable because it demonstrates a significant ignorance of money and drivers of costs. For instance, home ownership is heralded to the point that I thought she sounded like George W Bush - it's not all that she makes it out to be. There are some that own their home outright and when those people die, the home is sold, and funds are distributed to the next of kin. Having said that, home ownership is a liability, and expensive homes (ie, well-funded public schools) are even more a liability to the point that I'd classify them as disadvantages of the rich. Monetary policy and credit expansion are two massive issues at play within the discussion in the book (and more notably, in real life where it matters) and yet the ignorance is appalling. Presuming restriction to credit, this is likely a good thing where the discriminators were doing the victims a favor. Furthermore, "net worth is worthless." The author might want to revisit this entire line of reasoning for further evaluation.
tldr; version of the review: faulty logic and reasoning built into a model based upon a mathematically precise game, which equates to the Ludic fallacy. At best, the model explains some unknown small percentage of inequality, and at worst is a complete waste of time. Recommended only for history and case law.
This book succeeds as a narrow view on history and case law. Issues discussed in particular include: steering, redlining, and labor that contributed to the peril of Black Americans. The author is well versed in these issues and their corresponding case law, but beyond that scope, the book is effectively worthless. For its historical value, I'm giving the book two stars instead of one.
Anything beyond a historic description of events in this book wades into shoal where the arguments are transparent and woefully inadequate. Even within this weak aspect of the book, she does succeed in limited ways. A great example can be found in the closing paragraph of the book:
"In the absence of restructuring, the everyday processes that we take for granted - referring our friends for a job, choosing a neighborhood with well-financed public schools, giving our children money for college tuition - will continue to reproduce racial inequality." In the book, she was unable to persuasively tie these actions to inequality, yet she doesn't have to. It's self evident that exercising any advantage that another lacks will contribute to inequality (racial or otherwise). For instance, if I teach my kid how to read before going to school and some other parent does not, I just handed my kid an advantage. I would venture to guess that Roithmayr wouldn't classify my example as unfair since the other parent had the same opportunity and simply didn't choose the more prudent path. But what if the parent in question is functionally illiterate? My choice is an unfair advantage and in my passing this skill to my child, I'm reproducing the advantage into the next generation. A similar argument could be made from any number of vantage points; in fact, the possible inequitable advantages between parents, and more so between classes, are infinite.
That brings me to an important note worth mentioning. The book has a tacit understanding that most of what is discussed isn't best described in terms of race, but rather class. I believe the author has this tacit understanding and is correct in it, yet the terms of the book are nearly exclusively discussed as racial, which ultimately weakens her argument substantially.
As my example from the book demonstrates, the advantages discussed in the book are arbitrary, not well explored, and are a tiny fraction of what could theoretically be discussed in a book such as this one. Wealth, according to Roithmayr, is passed generation to generation causing the earlier history to have a disproportionate influence on current outcome. I recommend you read that sentence again, as it is the major theme of the book. Middle class whites are apparently the beneficiaries of this history. The only problem is, I find the claim dubious. For instance, my family migrated to the US after the civil war; presumably the beneficiary of white labor cartels, my grandfather who could barely speak the language, worked in a steal mill. Then, when I came along, I was adopted into an entirely different family with Irish decent. The Irish heritage was also rife with discrimination early on - as the author might guess, I received no family money for a down payment on a house and no family money for education. There were times in my childhood when my worn shoes, replete with holes, had to suffice on a winter's school day. Yet today, my half brother is successful in a trade, and I own my home outright and have enough time to post lengthy book reviews on Goodreads.
What I'm trying to say is that the author's view point is so shallow that it ignores significant areas worth discussing. In fact, her viewpoint is worse than shallow - it's completely fallacious; I'll save the big one for last.
The author derides the LSAT throughout the book. According to her, the glaring differences in norms between racial groups is proof positive that law school admissions are favoring whites. She doesn't exactly say it that way. She says, "the LSAT disproportionately excludes Black and Latino applicants" (p 116). I can't stress this enough, it's not true at all. Sure, test scores between the races are vastly different, but the LSAT is only one piece of the process. More importantly, "Blacks and Latino applicants" aren't competing against whites on the LSAT. They're competing among other Blacks and Latino applicants. In fairness, I suppose where Roithmayr teaches law, it's a bit different because California doesn't allow college admissions to use ethnicity as basis for admission. I'm unclear how this works at the graduate level in California, but I know colleges have somewhat gotten around this issue at the undergraduate level by using class rank (a subjective measure that depends upon your classmates) instead of normalized test scores; she might be correct if you only talk about California. Every where else, it's well understood that a respectable score of 165 won't be enough to get you into Yale if you check the Caucasian box, but will likely put you in contention if you check the African American box. This well understood affirmative action doesn't weigh on Rothmayr's opinion that the LSAT works against non-Asian minorities.
Actually, the term "non-Asian minorities" is enlightening and ought to illuminate a glaring omission of "the lockout model" that Roitmayr avers. Certain sects of the Asian population have suffered from the same structural restrictions and overall lack that other immigrants and minorities have had to endure, yet within a single generation or two, have achieved an overwhelming success to the point of becoming "advantaged" themselves. The lockout model cannot explain the discrepancy. Actually, she mentions this somewhat in the opening pages but its silence on the matter is deafening. In Amy Chua's Triple Package she similarly attempts to isolate a structure to demonstrate their salience. Chua succeeds by illustrating three necessary yet insufficient characteristics of culture (the insufficiency is a key to the success of the argument). Roithmayr mostly illustrates insufficient explanations in an attempt to build a model that explains an unknown portion of the observed variance. The reader, and therefore most likely the author, are oblivious as to how much a factor the built-in structures described in narrative are at work. Perhaps this is simply the difference between a Yale law professor and a USC law professor.
It's disingenuous to propound a model that is both inadequate and of dubious value on such a strident issue. At best, the lockout model explains a fraction of what's happening (FWIW, I don't doubt that the factors are in play), and at worst the model is completely worthless and not worth any serious time. Why is that? Quite simply, it's fallacious (which is an odd thing coming from a law professor).
The realm of economics was obviously a large influence on Roithmayr. Traditional economics, as taught on college campuses around the world, have their value. They also typically have their flaws. In attacking (an Austrian?) economic belief that an efficient market will do away with discrimination, Roithmayr adopts one of the perilous tools of economics; The Ludic fallacy.
The author uses two games and various simulations (done by researchers) to bolster her argument. The problem is that the games are dissimilar to the issue at hand. Actually, Roithmayr's pet game, the Polya urn simulation, is a terrible analogy. In the Poly urn, colored balls are placed in a theoretical urn... one color A and another color B. They can be of whatever percentage, but equal numbers will prove the point quite well: 50 A and 50 B. A random selection is made and the ball is placed back into the urn along with another of the same color (it's this second part that's the key). So now you have 51 A and 50 B, which is an inequality. Moving forward from this point on, A has a higher expectation to be selected than does B. If the variance works in A's favor, the percentage will quickly become so disproportionate that it would be difficult for laity to comprehend that the two colors started off equally. Draws in the later round also will not produce this disproportionate effect, and the reason is mathematical. One ball (the one that is added after selection) becomes a smaller and smaller percentage of the whole, and therefore the model "locks in." As my quote might indicate, this is the idea of Roithmayr's lock-in model. Early advantage locks in and creates a feedback loop. She commits the Ludic fallacy when attempting to equate a mathematical game with a real life society.
A far better recent book, also written by a left-wing university professor, is The Son Also Rises by Gregory Clark. In that book, he demonstrates that this locking in isn't reflective of reality, and unlike Roithmayr, he has the math to prove it. Sadly, "advantages" are extremely obstinate according to Clark. This is where the two would agree. What they wouldn't agree upon are the drivers of the inequality and their potential solutions. According to Clark, the worst thing an underclass can do is to have a high fertility rate; a high fertility rate among the underclass will build a permanent underclass. Secondly, fertility or more specifically exogamy among the classes will speed up social mobility while caste like hypergamy will effectively lock-in a lineage. As stated, Clark can basically prove it, and yet this entire line of reasoning is unaccounted for in Roithmayr's book. Oh sure, in the opening page she mentions The Bell Curve and its request for government to intervene on the problem of the lower classes having higher fertility rates than the upper classes. Actually, this opening paragraph is akin to a stumble out of the gate, because no such advocacy is stated in The Bell Curve. I know because I took issue with this particular section of the book, here on Goodreads, in my review of it. What is requested is that government quit dysgenic policies. That's all. There's nothing in there about reducing fertility in the underclass, though it is tacitly understood that the authors were referring to the welfare state that enables and often encourages higher natality as a means for more entitlements. Curiously, the author leaves the brief mention of the book (along with others writers such as Thomas Sowell) dangling with no purpose at all.
Perhaps Roithmayr could understand the Polya urn model as it relates to something similar: fertility. If you think of the colored balls as having a child (since you add to the population as you go), the more one color is selected the more it will be selected going forward; it will reinforce prior variance (or fertility). It's a far more useful analogy to fertility than to society as a whole. More of one class reproducing than another class will reinforce and bolster that particular class. This game supports Clark's argument while not helping Roithmayr's model at all. Now, instead of a linear game, imagine if it were exponential... and perhaps you can see the insight espoused in books such as The Son Also Rises and The Bell Curve. Insight that, unfortunately, was glossed over in this book.
The idea or concept that 40 acres and a mule would have altered the outcome is disputed in The Son Also Rises.
I will also add that the author's main remedy was hilarious and made me question my impression that she was well versed in economics. She advocates for a trust fund for poor children, to be used for college or a house purchase. 1. This shows a lack of understanding of monetary policy... presuming the funds are acquired the same way the federal government acquires them now. 2. All this would do is enhance home sellers and college degree suppliers. This entire line of reasoning is sadly laughable because it demonstrates a significant ignorance of money and drivers of costs. For instance, home ownership is heralded to the point that I thought she sounded like George W Bush - it's not all that she makes it out to be. There are some that own their home outright and when those people die, the home is sold, and funds are distributed to the next of kin. Having said that, home ownership is a liability, and expensive homes (ie, well-funded public schools) are even more a liability to the point that I'd classify them as disadvantages of the rich. Monetary policy and credit expansion are two massive issues at play within the discussion in the book (and more notably, in real life where it matters) and yet the ignorance is appalling. Presuming restriction to credit, this is likely a good thing where the discriminators were doing the victims a favor. Furthermore, "net worth is worthless." The author might want to revisit this entire line of reasoning for further evaluation.
tldr; version of the review: faulty logic and reasoning built into a model based upon a mathematically precise game, which equates to the Ludic fallacy. At best, the model explains some unknown small percentage of inequality, and at worst is a complete waste of time. Recommended only for history and case law.
March 29, 2015
Using concepts from economics such as cartel and lock-in, Roithmayr shows on policies and practices lock-in white supremacy in the law, institutions, and government practice. This is perhaps the clearest explanation I have come across that explains how institutional racism comes to be. He explains the concept and then shows in several spheres such as wealth, education, housing and criminal justice the was the system continues to reproduce racism long after culture and attitudes have changed. The book is rather sobering and does not offer many solution except fundamental, radical structural change - which in today's political environment seems impossible. However for people concerned about the increasing inequalities between rich and poor and the power differentials between Whites and People of Color, this book is an important read.
Read
October 2, 2015I struggled with this book. Which is, I suppose, what Roithmayr intended. Make one uncomfortable enough to think about things that just seem to exist.
Roithmayr uses economic theory to show how history has locked in white advantage. Using examples of cartels, homeowner's associations and college applications have formed a self reinforcing feedback loop to lock in white advantage and support racial inequality. While her arguments sound convincing I found them to be very narrow and not substantiated by any real data.
Her solution: "significant government 'antitrust' intervention to dismantle white monopoly on advantage."
I will recommend this to students looking at civil rights issues for research.
Roithmayr uses economic theory to show how history has locked in white advantage. Using examples of cartels, homeowner's associations and college applications have formed a self reinforcing feedback loop to lock in white advantage and support racial inequality. While her arguments sound convincing I found them to be very narrow and not substantiated by any real data.
Her solution: "significant government 'antitrust' intervention to dismantle white monopoly on advantage."
I will recommend this to students looking at civil rights issues for research.
Read
August 31, 2020I read this book back in 2014 or 2015 when it first came out, and it was a MAJOR eye-opener for me about what systemic racism really means and how it works. Highly recommended, especially for those who think that undoing racism is about loving each other, and is a "heart issue." (Spoiler alert: we need systemic policy changes, not just good feelings.)
July 28, 2017
This book did a nice job explaining why our historical context has created enduring patterns of systemic racism that are alive and well today. A nice primer!
January 29, 2016
Jim Crow laws, which enforced "separate but equal" policies for African Americans, have been gone since 1965, and since that time the American public has become less racist. But racism still persists, especially in forms of institutional racism.
Institutional racism is sometimes underestimated. But notice the simple ways we can see it at work. It turns out, for example, that when job candidates with typically white names added better credentials to their resumes that they're callback rate improved. Yet for candidates with typically black names, the better credentials had no effect. This is one among a litany of examples of institutional racism that lawyer Daria Roithmayr writes of in her book Reproducing Racism. Several biases like this can persist non-consciously. In a test, for instance, of preferences for faces, 75 percent of white and Asian people demonstrate a bias in favor of whites against blacks.
Some of the language regarding race, too, has shifted and may hide a non-conscious bias. In the past, when people spoke of the different "races," they would identify certain supposedly inherent traits that those races were supposed to possess. There was a perceived hierarchy of capability based on these races. At some point, the discourse changed. Although the discourse made reference to environmental factors, the prevailing factors were supposed to be "cultural."
But more than that. "Culture" became a code word for the "bad qualities" of minority races. And since culture is supposed to be generated by people, not imposed from without, culture is supposed to be a matter of personal responsibility.
The black community is often blamed for not engaging enough within the wider community. It is also criticized for not having strong male role models and for having too much distrust for law enforcement. But as Daria Roithmayr points out, many of these attitudes are perfectly rational given the outside influences and conditions. Black families tend to be matriarchal because the men of the families are often incarcerated, sometimes for petty crimes like marijuana peddling, which is dubiously harmful from a legal and medical perspective. The distrust for police and authority persists because of the long history of racial profiling that black people have been subject to.
Here are some other conditions worth considering. The black community is sometimes criticized for "allowing" its neighborhoods to deteriorate into ghettos and slums, and this deterioration is said to be part of black culture. But when we think of the history of economic conditions and rights to private property, the burden seems to be misplaced on black people.
Historically, black people were excluded from living in white neighborhoods, sometimes very self-consciously so. In these cases, the cities' major funding went to the white neighborhoods, the white neighborhoods enjoyed more legal protection, and so perpetuated a system where the black communities began as or turned into slums.
In other cases what occurred was "white flight." In cases where black people were allowed to live among white people, white people would often leave those neighborhoods. So neighborhoods that had traditionally received funding and good access to public schools now received less funding because of racism, conscious and non-conscious.
Daria Roithmayr writes of the racial cartels, which were very real and which actively tried to keep black people out of the housing market. A cartel is, according to the book, "a group of actors who work together to extract monopoly profits by manipulating price and limiting competition." This truly was a racial cartel for housing, where homeowners associations told other white homeowners that they were not to sell or lease to black people.
Read only Roithmayr's description of homeowners' associations in Chicago from 1930 onward:
Less and less these days, but historically it's true that white families have been able to help their children make down payments on houses, pay for their college tuition, and help invest in their future through other means as well, like opening savings account for their children. Black people, not so. The majority of black families in America never created that wealth in the first place, because they were never given the opportunity.
We know all this. We also know that black families are more likely to be downwardly mobile and caught in poverty traps far more than whites. Reparations, therefore, need to be in place to do something about this persistent problem, as well as the other problems black people and other minorities face based on longstanding racial prejudices.
Institutional racism is sometimes underestimated. But notice the simple ways we can see it at work. It turns out, for example, that when job candidates with typically white names added better credentials to their resumes that they're callback rate improved. Yet for candidates with typically black names, the better credentials had no effect. This is one among a litany of examples of institutional racism that lawyer Daria Roithmayr writes of in her book Reproducing Racism. Several biases like this can persist non-consciously. In a test, for instance, of preferences for faces, 75 percent of white and Asian people demonstrate a bias in favor of whites against blacks.
Some of the language regarding race, too, has shifted and may hide a non-conscious bias. In the past, when people spoke of the different "races," they would identify certain supposedly inherent traits that those races were supposed to possess. There was a perceived hierarchy of capability based on these races. At some point, the discourse changed. Although the discourse made reference to environmental factors, the prevailing factors were supposed to be "cultural."
But more than that. "Culture" became a code word for the "bad qualities" of minority races. And since culture is supposed to be generated by people, not imposed from without, culture is supposed to be a matter of personal responsibility.
The black community is often blamed for not engaging enough within the wider community. It is also criticized for not having strong male role models and for having too much distrust for law enforcement. But as Daria Roithmayr points out, many of these attitudes are perfectly rational given the outside influences and conditions. Black families tend to be matriarchal because the men of the families are often incarcerated, sometimes for petty crimes like marijuana peddling, which is dubiously harmful from a legal and medical perspective. The distrust for police and authority persists because of the long history of racial profiling that black people have been subject to.
Here are some other conditions worth considering. The black community is sometimes criticized for "allowing" its neighborhoods to deteriorate into ghettos and slums, and this deterioration is said to be part of black culture. But when we think of the history of economic conditions and rights to private property, the burden seems to be misplaced on black people.
Historically, black people were excluded from living in white neighborhoods, sometimes very self-consciously so. In these cases, the cities' major funding went to the white neighborhoods, the white neighborhoods enjoyed more legal protection, and so perpetuated a system where the black communities began as or turned into slums.
In other cases what occurred was "white flight." In cases where black people were allowed to live among white people, white people would often leave those neighborhoods. So neighborhoods that had traditionally received funding and good access to public schools now received less funding because of racism, conscious and non-conscious.
Daria Roithmayr writes of the racial cartels, which were very real and which actively tried to keep black people out of the housing market. A cartel is, according to the book, "a group of actors who work together to extract monopoly profits by manipulating price and limiting competition." This truly was a racial cartel for housing, where homeowners associations told other white homeowners that they were not to sell or lease to black people.
Read only Roithmayr's description of homeowners' associations in Chicago from 1930 onward:
By 1940, white cartels had succeeded— Chicago displayed an almost perfect segregation index of .95.17Roithmayr goes on to write:
Many homeowners’ associations did not hesitate to use physical violence to advance their cause: they organized their members to fire gunshots into residents’ homes, burn crosses on their lawns, and physically break into and ransack their homes.
Members of homeowners’ associations provided the labor to spread restrictive covenants all over the city. Making sure that an area was covered by covenants was time-consuming and expensive. Someone had to track down owners, gather signatures, compile descriptions of the properties, and file signed documents in the right office. Filers also had to pay drafting and recording fees to put restrictions in deeds, and homeowners’ associations became fund-raising organizations in that regard. 31 By the end of the 1930s restrictive covenants covered close to a third of Chicago properties, and eventually over 80 percent of properties included restrictive covenants.
The associations also provided much of the machinery of retaliatory punishment, namely community shaming and economic harassment. Punishment was usually swift and often fierce. In one amazing example of informal punishment, the Alarm Clock, a community newspaper sponsored by the Park Manor Improvement Association in Chicago, ran the following announcement: “Every case on which we can get facts where whites have sold to negroes [sic] WILL BE PUBLICIZED. Every white person that we know who has sold to negroes [sic] will find the truth of his action no matter where he goes.”
Law appears to have played an important role in racial cartel punishing. Public law, in particular, appears to have been quite useful in policing against cartel members who were tempted to defect or free-ride. To take the most obvious example, white homeowners and developers worked together to enact segregation ordinances in several cities to police the boundaries of white neighborhoods. In the early twentieth century, zoning ordinances like those in Baltimore, Winston-Salem, Atlanta, and Louisville legally restricted areas for either black or white residents or prohibited blacks from moving into blocks where a greater number of whites than blacks resided.The homeowners would also actively report on people who violated the segregation they were trying to impose.
In another section of the paper, the association advertised: “IT HAS BEEN REPORTED: Joseph Biondi of 7020 South Park sold to colored and has moved to 2007 W. 70th Street. He is an electrician for the Pennsylvania Railroad.” 36 Homeowners’ association members socially shamed violators like Mr. Biondi, and often organized economic boycotts of violators’ businesses or professional clientele.Justification for the segregation was sometimes explicitly racist. As Roithmayr tells us:
Racial identity did much of the work to generate guilt and shame for brokers. As one broker put it, “whether I’m a priest, a rabbi or a real estate man, I’m still a member of a race.” Other brokers spoke of their obligations as white real estate brokers.Sometimes the racism was far more subtle. Here Roithmayr quotes one of the realtors who was responsible for not selling or leasing to black people:
No [r]ealtor objects to dealing with Negroes but we have that certain obligation to white people. The value of their property goes down. You want their faith, their good will. You have an obligation to your client, loyalty to your client. You have a moral obligation to your client not to break a block. It’s an unwritten law.In addition to segregation through home ownership, there were poll taxes and literacy tests for voting, which persisted right up until the 1960s. Level playing field, my foot. Also, it is obvious, and something Roithmayr writes about, that the racial wealth gap persists in large part because one of the fastest ways to gain wealth is to inherit it, and black families often never generated the wealth in the first place such that it could be inherited down to the next generation.
Less and less these days, but historically it's true that white families have been able to help their children make down payments on houses, pay for their college tuition, and help invest in their future through other means as well, like opening savings account for their children. Black people, not so. The majority of black families in America never created that wealth in the first place, because they were never given the opportunity.
We know all this. We also know that black families are more likely to be downwardly mobile and caught in poverty traps far more than whites. Reparations, therefore, need to be in place to do something about this persistent problem, as well as the other problems black people and other minorities face based on longstanding racial prejudices.
April 24, 2019
This is a profound book; one that should be read by everyone who cares about the future of the United States. Prof. Roithmayr has undertaken an exploration of how Slavery and the Jim Crow Era has left a lasting impact on US society and economy. So that even after nearly 50 years of civil rights laws, affirmative action, fair housing, and the election of our first African-American President, this country has made little progress towards resolving racial inequalities. Roithmayr examines how the treatment of African-Americans as slaves prior to the Civil War and as second class citizens during the Jim Crow Era has locked in patterns of wealth distribution, social networks, as well as access to education and high paying jobs has divided the US into the haves and have-nots that is disturbingly correlated with race. The longer we put off addressing the structures that have locked in these inequalities, the more difficult and costly the solution.
By providing examples and details, she is able to illustrate how "feedback loops" in economic theory can be generalized to explain racist disparities. Her theory provides a cogent one which is congruent both with this history and with the presumption of the lack of (individual) intention which she presupposes.
Roithmayr's focus on the economic and racial links that systemically disadvantage people of color do much in framing, not only the reasons that inequity looks the way it does, but the necessity for a systemic overhaul to move towards true equity.
Given the importance of this book, its readability is encouraging and hopefully leads to dissemination of these ideas.
By providing examples and details, she is able to illustrate how "feedback loops" in economic theory can be generalized to explain racist disparities. Her theory provides a cogent one which is congruent both with this history and with the presumption of the lack of (individual) intention which she presupposes.
Roithmayr's focus on the economic and racial links that systemically disadvantage people of color do much in framing, not only the reasons that inequity looks the way it does, but the necessity for a systemic overhaul to move towards true equity.
Given the importance of this book, its readability is encouraging and hopefully leads to dissemination of these ideas.
July 9, 2021
My first endorsement is that this is very readable and short, but on top of that, the rhetoric has the force expected from a law school professor: this book is a concise, well-organized, readable essay. The cover graphic is a summary and the writing extends this idea with a LOT useful granularity.
The current post-2020 backlash (look up any 2021 scare story claiming that "Critical Race Theory is a cult that is coming for your children") makes this a great time to re-issue this book.
This book hits a sweet spot of well-researched, short, cautious, realistic social justice rhetoric and deserves to be widely read. High school seniors would like it but it is more for senior undergrads at the college level. Is there a textbook / reading club version?
The current post-2020 backlash (look up any 2021 scare story claiming that "Critical Race Theory is a cult that is coming for your children") makes this a great time to re-issue this book.
This book hits a sweet spot of well-researched, short, cautious, realistic social justice rhetoric and deserves to be widely read. High school seniors would like it but it is more for senior undergrads at the college level. Is there a textbook / reading club version?
October 15, 2021
This book should be required reading for any thoughtful person who wants to think seriously about systemic racism. Reproducing Racism takes a very economic lens to issues of racial inequality in the United States and concludes that the most useful way to address systemic inequalities is by thinking of historic racial discrimination as being a sort of locked-in cartel system that should be combatted using antitrust strategies. It's a fascinating viewpoint and one that seemed amply supported within the book.
August 7, 2022
This book provides a concise and readable overview of how the racist policy-making and thinking of the past continues to impact the circumstances of the present and the future, and what obstacles prevent change and thus greater racial equality in the U.S. It's a great introduction to the topic, though fairly narrow in scope, focusing primarily on the legal and economic conditions at work.
March 19, 2020
Certainly read this book. And take copious notes. Novel conceptual approach.
November 7, 2025
an analysis worth returning to
October 12, 2016
The lock-in theory is a more compelling variant on the theories of persistent racism that you hear in the mainstream media, but ultimately it's unpersuasive. The main sins were of omission: failure to explain the rise in blacks from the 1860s to the 1940s (pre-civil rights, and during a period in US history with far more racism than exists today), and failure to account for non-black minority groups that were discriminated against yet have achieved remarkable success (of which there are numerous examples, notably Asians living in the US during the aftermath of World War II).
March 10, 2016
Very intriguing book that redefines structural racism in terms of 'white' cartels' anti competitive practices during Jim Crow and the lock-in theory. She explains how practices like redlining, housing discrimination, college application practices, and disenfranchisement have created the conditions we have today. In doing so, she explains how race and class are so intrinsically linked. I do wish she spent more time discussing possible solutions (she does so for the last chapter). After reading, my mind became inundated as to how to dismantle structural racism.
September 2, 2014
3.5 stars. I felt this was a compelling explanation of how advantage gets "locked in", though I didn't necessarily feel the author "proved" it with some of the data and mathematical models she described - more that her explanation was clear and convincing. Ultimately - as always when this issue comes up! - I felt the solutions were lacking.
March 15, 2015
Nice quick overview of the racial discrimination/inequality feed-back loops in America, focusing on how initial racism has become locked in even when in the absence of intentional discrimination. Near the end the author also provides ideas on how to address these issues and the viability of each plan.
November 4, 2016
The book preaches to the choir and does not test its hypotheses effectively. Although, corroborative evidence of the author's thesis is present, the book does not evaluate contrary evidence that might upend the thesis (Thesis = inequalities between blacks and whites are caused by historical discrimination that has been "locked in" through everyday Channels like referral networks).
June 10, 2014
Draws on economic theory to explain the persistence of white supremacy even in the absence of what most whites would recognize as intentional racism. Probably very useful for teaching at the undergraduate level. Not so much in terms of research.
Read
August 8, 2014305.80097 R7413 2014
August 17, 2014
Brilliant explanation on how pass racism continued to help whites today and hinder minorities. Also reminds us that the racist laws of the past are not in our ancient past
maybe
June 22, 2015Interesting discussion of the book and its use in formal & informal education: http://equality.jotwell.com/breaking-...
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