Reproducing Racism: How Everyday Choices Lock in White Advantage.

• Author: Brooks, Richard R.W.
• Position: Book review

The Banality of Racial Inequality:

Reproducing Racism: How Everyday Choices Lock in White Advantage

NEW YORK: NYU PRESS, 2014, PP. 205, $25-00

INTRODUCTION I. MODELS AND METAPHORS II. ABSTRACT AND ACTUAL CARTELS III. RACIAL COVENANTS AND WHITE PRIMARIES: THE CENTRAL ACCOUNTS IV. WEALTH, NETWORKS, AND FEEDBACK LOOPS A. The Racial Wealth Gap B. Family Feedback Loops C. Education and Mental Models D. Employment and Housing V. THEORY AND IMPLICATIONS CONCLUSION INTRODUCTION

Consider a counterfactual America where there is race but no racism. An impossibility, even conceptually, cynics and skeptics will quite reasonably argue. Nonetheless, suspend your disbelief. Imagine everyone were given a pill that rendered them and their offspring completely and permanently blind to race and all its amorphous indicia. As a side effect they also experienced amnesia about their prior racial identities and those of others. Logs of racial determination in birth certificates and other official and unofficial records were swiped clean through a massive government program. Race remains as an idea, a concept, in the post-pill world, but no one can observe or remember it in others or themselves. (1)

Daria Roithmayr's argument in Reproducing Racism, (2) taken in its starkest terms, maintains that, without further state intervention, those people who would have been perceived as black before the pill would, well into the future and perhaps indefinitely, experience the same social and economic disadvantages they have faced for generations. (3) Absent additional state action, the fate of black Americans would remain locked in a pattern established long before their birth and based on reasons no one currently recognizes or endorses. (4)

A stark claim, no doubt, but nobody should be surprised by the suggestion that the children of slaves and their descendants bear inequalities carried forward from a more racist past. Libraries have been written on the various ways in which these inequalities are transferred across generations. (5) What distinguishes Roithmayr's contribution to the inequality library is its indictment of the mundane, ostensibly race-neutral practices we all take for granted. Racial inequality will continue even in the post-pill world described above, but not through overt animus or more subtle forms of implicit or institutional discrimination. Rather, Roithmayr argues, our inequality is perpetuated through a set of seemingly innocuous, if not laudable, choices people take pride in making, such as referring a friend to a job or helping a child pay for college or a down payment on a home. (6)

Friends and families, left to their own devices, will always stand in the way of any real prospects for equality of opportunity. No one likes to think of loved ones in a negative light, but a moment's reflection reveals this undeniable truth-both as a practical and a theoretical matter. "[A]s long as some form of the family exists," John Rawls wrote, the project of "fair opportunity can be only imperfectly carried out." (7) George Bernard Shaw was even more doubtful about the prospects of equal opportunity. In a 1913 address to the Liberal Club of London, he taunted his host, saying, "[y]ou, Mr. Chairman, have spoken of equality of opportunity. The difficulty about that is that it is entirely and completely and eternally impossible." (8) To Shaw, inequality was so inevitable and so profound that even a pill that made everyone forget family and friends could not overcome his pessimism concerning the likelihood of equality of opportunity. (9) Roithmayr is no pessimist. She sets her gaze on the banalities of inequality--the everyday mundane determinations that reproduce social and economic differences along racial lines--and seeks a remedy. (10) Her remedial preference does not call for busting up families, but rather undoing the effects of other combinations, so-called "racial cartels," that once dominated the political and economic order of the country. Racial cartels may be past their heyday, but, Roithmayr argues, their lingering effects continue to privilege white Americans while disadvantaging certain racial minorities. Her argument proceeds in parts. The first is historical. Roithmayr establishes that historical decisions based on race gave whites an early advantage. (11) Of course, every competition has winners and losers. That's life. But, Roithmayr presses, whites won their early advantage through morally and legally indefensible conduct, acting as cartels to exclude other racial groups from fair competition for desirable resources like jobs, (12) education, (13) housing, (14) and wealth. (15) Moreover, the argument continues, after unfairly acquiring market power, white Americans instituted racist practices that reproduced their ill-gotten advantage. (16) Racist behavior, however, is not the central point of Roithmayr's argument: "This book is about why racial inequality persists," (17) even if there is no ostensible racist behavior.

After describing the historical backdrop of unfair play through which whites gained an early advantage, Roithmayr then considers in the second part of her argument how the initial leg-up has reproduced itself over time across several domains (wealth, education, social networks, and housing) through family and other feedback loops. (18) The third part of the argument turns to a more theoretical discussion of her lock-in model and develops the claim that the model provides new insight into America's persistent racial inequality. (19) The fourth and final part focuses on the responses and remedies that might arrest and counter the unmeritorious, essentially automated and mundane patterns of distributing advantage. (20)

1. MODELS AND METAPHORS

   Before turning to the details of the book's argument, a word of clarification about the title is warranted. Roithmayr is largely concerned with everyday choices that reproduce inequality. The inequality that these decisions perpetuate is correlated with race, and importantly so, (21) but racist ideologies are not themselves motivating those decisions. She does not assert that racism is a thing of the past. (22) Far from it. Roithmayr's argument, rather, is that the racism of the past is no longer required, even if it is still present, to maintain the differences it initially brought about. (23) Moreover, her argument allows that racist ideologies may be maintained or reproduced indirectly through these everyday choices, (24) but her primary targets of concern are path-dependent mechanisms that reproduce inequality. (25)

   To make the idea of path-dependent racial inequality broadly accessible, Roithmayr relies on a number of metaphors throughout the book. From Polya urns (26) to QWERTY keyboards, (27) she draws liberally and frequently on various models, examples, and analogies. Her master metaphor, however, is monopoly, or, more precisely, unfairly acquired, self-perpetuating market power. (28) Unfair competition, she urges, is the basic source of persistent racial advantages, the justification for intervention, and the best means for appreciating the remedies that ought to follow. (29) "In the context of monopoly," Roithmayr concludes on the last page, observers "understand quite quickly the need for significant government intervention." (30) Before arriving at that conclusion, however, she devotes a significant portion of the book to advancing a particular anti-competitive narrative-the lock-in account of racial inequality--that she has over a number of years developed in law review articles. (31)

   Monopoly wrongly acquired and then ossified through network externalities is the core of Roithmayr's racial lock-in argument. Microsoft's antitrust ligation from the 1990s provides a key illustration. (32) "According to the allegations, Microsoft engaged in a range of very bad (and illegal) behavior," Roithmayr writes with an intentional colloquialism that runs throughout the book. (33) "Microsoft's bad behavior," (34) combined with the basic network structure of the software industry, (35) "went on to trigger a 'positive feedback loop' in the operating systems market." (36) Thereafter Microsoft's early unfair "advantage snowballed" and eventually "became locked in." (37) Today, Roithmayr argues, "white economic advantage has become institutionally locked in, in much the same way as Microsoft's monopoly advantage did." (38)

   Microsoft's anti-competitive behavior is not, however, an ideal fit for Roithmayr's argument. Strictly speaking, Microsoft was a single, hierarchically organized entity, not a horizontal cartel of multiple actors, as Roithmayr characterizes "whites [who] formed racial cartels during slavery and Jim Crow to gain monopoly access to key markets." (39) Yet, cartels do organize to exert market power like a monopolist, (40) so the analogy, while not perfect, provides some insight. This close-but-not-quite-exact quality holds for many of the models, metaphors, and analogies that Roithmayr uses. A large part of the reason for this misalignment is that Roithmayr is attempting something novel and distinctive for which there are no canned applications. Still, Roithmayr presents a compelling array of supporting arguments and analogies to make her points effectively for the lay reader.

   To preserve scope for broad analogical connections, Roithmayr at times glances past legal details and definitions. For example, although she draws at times upon actual cartel conduct, she spends little time presenting and parsing legal arguments that could have been used to generate liability for this anticompetitive behavior, historically or in the recent past. (41) Monopolization is more metaphor than legal fact here. Similarly, while much is made of the state's role in facilitating residential racial discrimination, (42) there is surprisingly little discussion of the state action doctrine. (43) No doubt the publisher's interest in not sacrificing the general...