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William M. Wiecek
College of Law
Syracuse University
Syracuse NY 13244
Phone: 315-443-4108
FAX: 315-443-5394
wmwiecek@law.syr.edu
... and ...
Maxwell School
Syracuse University
Syracuse NY 13244
Phone: 315-443-4108
FAX: 315-443-5394
wmwiecek@law.syr.edu
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Current Project
Structural Racism and the United States Supreme Court
William M. Wiecek, a constitutional
historian, and
Judy Hamilton, a sociologist, are investigating
the encounter of the United States Supreme Court with structural racism. In
contrast with traditional, overt racism, the phenomenon that sociologists have
identified as structural racism depends not on the bigoted attitudes of
individuals, but on institutional and structural barriers that people of color
encounter in all social and economic domains. Policies and procedures that
appear on their face to be race-neutral nevertheless reproduce
disparate outcomes that diminish the life
chances of people of color. This manifestation of racism is invisible,
automatic, and self-propagating. Unacknowledged white self-interest keeps it
both elusive and effective. It does not depends for its existence or
effectiveness on the bigoted attitudes of individuals. For this reason, intent
to discriminate is irrelevant in analyzing and combating it.
Structural racism is the result of the
ordinary, day-to-day practices of organizations like business firms and
government agencies, as well as of social policies produced by political
decisions, such as funding public schools primarily through local private
property taxes. These practices and policies are not consciously maintained
because someone intends to discriminate on the basis of race (though they may
have originated with that objective in mind). Thus on the surface they appear to
be non-discriminatory. But they reduce opportunities and outcomes for people of
color, as, for example, by diminishing the quality of education in schools
attended by their children. What is significant here is not anyone’s racist
attitude, but rather the non-intended effects of decisions that do not seem to
implicate race directly.
Since 1971, the United States Supreme Court has refused to recognize that form
of racism. It has foreclosed most possibilities of mitigating its impact on the
lives of African-Americans and other people of color. Instead, the Justices have
formulated doctrines like the purpose-impact distinction of Washington v. Davis
(1976), the trope of white innocence, and the modern colorblindness principle
that assure structural racism’s continued force in our lives and that disable
other branches of both the federal and state governments from uprooting it. The
Court resolves race-related issues in an abstracted and formalistic resolution
of race-related issues, ripping them out of their social and historical
contexts, and banning other public institutions from devising pragmatic
solutions to inequality. We combine the disciplines of sociology, law, and
history to present the findings of social scientists over the past four decades
that establish the reality of structural racism and document its workings. We
hope thereby to persuade lawyers and judges of its reality. We then critique the
failure of the Court to acknowledge it, and its consequent determination to
insulate racially disparate effects from legal remedy. The Court has frustrated
the efforts of Congress, local governments, and private institutions to overcome
structural racism. In doing so it has perverted the ideals of the Civil Rights
movement and created body of doctrine that protects structural racism from legal
challenge. We pursue this inquiry into four selected social domains: employment
discrimination, residential segregation, educational policy, and wealth
accumulation. The field and its problems are too vast to cover comprehensively
in one finite study of reasonable scope, so we have chosen these four areas to
illustrate the Court's failings in all the others as well (health, criminal
justice, environmental degradation, and so on.) We anticipate that our work will
be presented in a book, articles, and presentations at scholarly and
professional conferences.
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Structural Racism Links
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Structural Racism Bibliography
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Statistics Confirm Racial Disparities
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