Law Commons^™

Biological Metaphors For Whiteness: Beyond Merit And Malice, Brant T. Lee

Brant T. Lee

The problem of persistent racial inequality is grounded in a failure of imagination. The general mainstream conception is that unfair racial inequality occurs only when there is intentional racism. Absent conscious racial malice, no racism is seen to exist. The only generally available alternative explanation for racial inequality is the meritocratic system. Viewing the distribution of resources as a product of a generally fair meritocratic system provides a defense against any charge of racism, and justifies the status quo.

But in economics, business, computer science, and even biology, observers of complexity are coming to understand how dominant systems can prevail …

Book Review Of Thomas J. Davis, Race Relations In America: A Reference Guide With Primary Documents, Brant T. Lee

Brant T. Lee

Book Review.

The Devil In The Details: On Intelligent Design, Racial Conspiracy Theories, And The Theology Of Whiteness, Brant T. Lee

Brant T. Lee

It is a central problem in the great American conversation about race to explain persistent racial inequality. The dominant narrative tells us that, historically, racial inequality was caused directly and simply, by explicit and intentional racial discrimination based on unreasoning race hatred. The paradigmatic examples are slavery and segregation; the icon is Bull Connor. Together, the Civil War and the civil rights movement comprise America's delivery from this original sin. In law, this redemption is reflected in the Emancipation Proclamation and in the fulfillment of the Civil War-era constitutional amendments [FN6] through Brown v. Board of Education and the antidiscrimination …

The Network Economic Effects Of Whiteness, Brant T. Lee

Brant T. Lee

In this Essay I demonstrate that a network economic analysis of race provides an important and intuitive explanation of racial inequality. In short, Whiteness is Microsoft's Windows operating system, or the QWERTY keyboard, or the standard (non-metric) measurement system, and it is difficult to dislodge for many of the same reasons. Network effects explain how (1) the establishment of a dominant market standard can be contingent on historical context, and it is not necessarily derived from superior intrinsic merit, and (2) a dominant standard exhibits strong self-reinforcing characteristics that can maintain the dominance of the standard in perpetuity, even in …

Teaching The Amistad, Brant T. Lee

Brant T. Lee

In 1841, a Cuban slave ship called the Amistad was captured and taken into custody near Long Island. The forty-five Black people on board were alleged to be slaves, who had mutinied, murdered the captain, killed or expelled the crew and taken over the ship. Two Cubans found on the ship claimed to be their owners. There were salvage claims by the officers who captured the ship and its passengers and miscellaneous other claims by parties claiming a property interest in the ship or its cargo. The United States government intervened on behalf of the Queen of Spain in support …

A Racial Trust: The Japanese Ywca And The Alien Land Law, Brant T. Lee

Brant T. Lee

When a dispute arose over the old Japanese Young Women's Christian Association (“YWCA”) building in San Francisco's Japantown neighborhood, it seemed yet another example of a community institution inevitably ceding to the demands of the modern market economy. Instead, what has resulted has been an exercise in legal archaeology, a refreshing insight into the collective memory of the Japanese American community, and a legal theory that brings to light several central episodes in Asian American legal history and puts them to practical use in a contemporary property dispute.

In 1996, the San Francisco YWCA decided it could no longer afford …