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. "The racial inequality that grew out of slavery and Jim Crow laws went beyond individual mistreatment of black Americans, resulting in a systematic cartel of whites operating to secure advantages for themselves, significant advantages that have continued to this day, argues legal scholar Roithmayr. Drawing on the work of economist Glenn Loury, Roithmayr details the feedback loops in family, social, neighborhood, and institutional networks that are locked in and benefit whites and disadvantage racial minorities. Roithmayr cites case studies, including the use of restrictive covenants in Chicago that helped to maintain residential segregation and the private preprimary election used to disenfranchise black voters in Texas, to illustrate how laws and customs have made racism systemic, so deeply embedded that even when individuals are not biased, the system itself is. Comparing racial advantage to the tactics of monopolies like AT&T and Microsoft, she explores how access to wealth, better housing, education, and social contacts have guaranteed better prospects for whites, an advantage that is now locked in and will continue into the future unless the cartel is dismantled. This is a well-researched and thought-provoking analysis of the legacy and complexity of racism that has broad implications for American politics and social policies." --Vanessa Bush, Booklist, Starred Review "Reproducing Racism: How Everyday Choices Lock in White Advantage by Daria Roithmayr, 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." -Z Magazine "The most persuasive argument I've yet seen for why racial inequality persists and what we can do about it. Well-written, well-researched, and well worth reading." -W. Brian Arthur,External Professor, Santa Fe Institute "Offers an explanation of the operation of race that transcends and incorporates the best extant scholarship on the issue."-Steven Ramirez, Loyola University Chicago “This is a well-researched and thought provoking analysis of the legacy and complexity of racism that has broad implications for American politics and social policies." -Vanessa Bush,Booklist "A tremendously important examination of the racial disparity in achievement in America; one that tests the reflexive assumptions of both liberals and conservatives on the subject. Roithmayr's sobering read on our inequality gap—its roots and its lingering effects—should be required reading for anyone who believes in simple causation or easy fixes for the equality gap. This is a clear-eyed, and often brutal look at whether America is indeed 'post-racial' and what we must demand of ourselves to get there." -Dahlia Lithwick, Senior Editor, Slate "This book, which builds on an already impressive body of work by Professor Daria Roithmayr, deserves to be widely read. It is methodologically serious and theoretically rigorous."-Gerald Torres,Bryant Smith Chair in Law, the University of Texas at Austin School of Law "The disadvantaged status of many blacks and Latinos is an enduring problem. Legal scholar Daria Roithmayr gives us profoundly important leverage on the 'locked-in' nature of American racial inequality. Her accessible and ably documented book shows how the historic works of 'racial cartels' like the Jim Crow system gave white Americans a now self-reinforcing and troublingly permanent economic advantage in life. Critically, she shows how today’s ostensibly race-neutral processes of family inheritance, social network ties, and institutional practices and meritocratic standards make racial inequality automatic. This book is a necessary antidote to all the nonsense talk of post-racialism." -Lawrence D. Bobo,W. E. B. Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences, Harvard University Daria Roithmayr teaches and writes about the dynamics of racial inequality, and in particular the persistence of structural disparities in labor, housing, political participation, wealth and education. Her recent book, Reproducing Racism: How Everyday Choices Lock In White Advantage (NYU 2014), explores the self-reinforcing dynamics of persistent racial inequality. Her work is heavily interdisciplinary, drawing from economics, sociology, political theory, history and complex systems theory. She joined USC Gould School of Law in fall 2006. Before joining USC Gould, Roithmayr taught for nine years at the University of Illinois College of Law. She has been a visiting scholar at Harvard’s Program for Evolutionary Dynamics. She has also been a visiting law professor at the University of Michigan, Georgetown, and Yale. Among her representative publications are the forthcoming “Should Law Keep Pace With Society? An Evolutionary Game Theory Approach” (working paper); “Complexity Law and Economics" (Elgar Encyclopedia of Law and Economics) (T. Ulen ed. 2014); and “Critical Race Theory Meets Social Science” (Ann. Rev. Law and Social Science) (2014). Roithmayr received her BS from UCLA, and her JD, magna cum laude, from the Georgetown University Law Center, where she was a member of Order of the Coif and served as senior notes editor of the Georgetown Law Journal. She clerked for The Honorable Marvin J. Garbis, judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland.