Racially harmful policies are enacted under facially neutral justifications

Evidence

Fortunately, today’s Congress has many more black members and allies, and today’s electorate has many more black voters. We are well positioned to start making the kind of demands that the wealthiest white Americans have made for decades. What we need now is greater understanding of why tax policy matters. When you vote at the federal, state, and municipal levels, remember that the people who created and upheld the racist policies that set black Americans behind rarely said outright that that’s what they were doing. Just look at the voter suppression efforts taking place today, which consistently make it more difficult for black Americans to vote, but never acknowledge that that’s the explicit purpose. Even as we seek justice, we are once again dealing with societal racism that our white peers simply do not face. You need to watch out for their tricks. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 563

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explicitly describes the facial-neutrality mechanism: racist policy effects achieved without ever stating racist purpose, using voter suppression as the recurring example.
• SEED: Could underpin a closing section of the reader’s planned piece: the ‘tricks’ framing — modern voter suppression as the live analogy proving that facially neutral racist mechanism is still operating and being denied.
• XREF: connects to: Environmental racism comprises siting, enforcement, and exclusion of people of color from decisions — David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice:…, 190; Facially neutral ordinances enforced discriminatorily violate equal protection — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 2955; Racial states claim neutrality while acting as agents of the ruling racial class — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1694