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.