Laws and Policies
This section provides resources about the relationship of laws and policies to racial equity and inequity. The resources provide information about laws and policies with the explicit intent of advantaging groups allowed to be called white, and disadvantaging and, in some cases, dehumanizing and/or criminalizing, groups not allowed to be called white, as well as laws and policies with that impact if not that stated intent. As an example of explicit intent, the documentary, Slavery by Another Name, shares that “after the failure of Reconstruction in 1877 and the removal of black men from political offices, Southern states enacted a series of laws….[that] penalized anyone attempting to leave a job before an advance had been worked off… vagrancy statutes made it a crime to be unemployed.” Examples of implicit intent include laws and policies including mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines created as part of the so-called “war on drugs,” laws and policies that link voting rights and felony convictions, “three strikes you are out” laws and policies, and current immigration policies.
Resources also share ways in which the existence of a range of laws and policies simultaneously create and respond to cultural messages, particularly in terms of which groups have been deemed worthy of protection and support (white women, Irish, Jewish and Italian immigrants at particular points in time) and which were not (Native Americans, recently emancipated African-Americans). Karen Brodkin, in her book How the Jews Became White writes about how in the 19th century United States anti-working class and anti-immigrant notions were tied together, and both were deeply tied to shifts in the need for particular kinds of labor. Brodkin argues that this occurred because people in power in the United States were threatened by a large influx of immigrants.
- History of Racist US Laws
- Khalil Muhammad on Facing Our Racial Past
- Race-based legislation in the North; 1807 - 1850
- Slavery By Another Name
- Race and the Drug War
- How Racist is U.S. Immigration Policy?
- The History of Surveillance and the Black Community
- Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror
- History of Lynchings in the South Documents Nearly 4,000 Names
- Resources on the 50th Anniversary of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965
- Equitable Development Toolkit
- Map of White Supremacy Mob Violence
- New Orleans Mayor on Removing Confederate Monuments
- Reflections on the History of White Supremacy in the United States
- Legalizing Othering: The United States of Islamophobia
- Our Racist Past
- Key Kerner Commission Recommendations
- Segregation in America
- The Disturbing History of the Suburbs
- Social Exclusion: The Decisions and Dynamics that Drive Racism
- Race: Power of an Illusion site
- Slavery in Effect: A History Design Studio Briefing
- Black People’s Land Was Stolen
- The Road Not Taken: Housing and Criminal Justice 50 Years After the Kerner Commission Report
- Decolonizing Together: Moving Beyond a Politics of Solidarity Toward a Practice of Decolonization
- The Legend of A-N-N-A: Revisiting an American Town Where Black People Weren’t Welcome After Dark
