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Consumer Discrimination: The Limitations Of Federal Civil Rights Protection, Deseriee A. Kennedy

Missouri Law Review

This Article argues that consumer discrimination is symptomatic of the myriad ways in which racism has become subtly muted and infused into everyday interaction. This “everyday racism,” while carried out and experienced by individuals, is a result of social and institutional policies and, therefore, it represents a fusion of both individual and institutional racism. Despite the ubiquity of the experience, courts have been reluctant to directly address the harms that result from being the target of racial profiling in consumer setting using pre-trial dismissals and an unduly constricted reading of the Civil Rights Act to reject plaintiffs’ claims. The courts …