Criminality itself is defined through racialized legal power structures

Evidence

Which behavior constitutes a crime in our society often has racialized roots. It was once a crime to teach an enslaved person to read, but not to enslave, buy, or sell that very same individual. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 275

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes Milgrom’s law-merchant point that law is infrastructural: here law itself manufactures crime categories in service of racial-economic order.