'Reproducing Racism: How Everyday Choices Lock In White Advantage' by Daria Roithmayr

Daria Roithmayr’s acuity and focus are incredibly helpful in advancing the discussion about economic inequality based on race in the United States today.  Most notable in Reproducing Racism:  How Everyday Choices Lock In White Advantage is Roithmayr’s ability to identify events in the past and trace—perhaps longer than anticipated—how they are still meaningful in propagating injustice in the present.  But something problematic about her analyses (chapter three "Racial Cartels in Action" and throughout the entire book) is her fierce commitment to agnosticism with respect to how or why these events in history happened in the first place.  Her tenacious attachment to ‘objectivity’ creates a hindrance to her ability to objectively see that something other than sheer economics is what propelled and expanded the system of White Supremacy.  The zeal with which the author egregiously elides racial animus as a culprit in creating the circumstances which have gone unchecked for so long, now they further reinforce what she terms “positive feedback loops,” perpetuating economic inequality, still primarily based on race is curious (p. 71).   Malice, spite and pathological pettiness created these historic events which continue to keep Black people at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder.  For example, her thorough and detailed breakdown of how the Chicago Real Estate Board worked in collusion with Chicago homeowners’ associations to collect, record, and track the tomes of documentation necessary to uphold and maintain de jure and de facto racial segregation suggests that something more than just business imperatives were at play (pp. 43-6).  Even before the “beneficial economics” of banning Blacks surfaced as a viable excuse for a reasonable course of action (a real estate agent and homeowner’s singular shared interest should have been to find a buyer who can pay for the home, irrespective of race), the sheer hatred and revulsion for Black agency and autonomy was the principal driver for why a system of racism (created, maintained and enforced by private citizens and public officials alike) against Black people would be erected in the first place.

The author goes out of her way to come up with sanguine, socially acceptable rationales for why earlier acts of crimes against humanity, including terrorism and brutality, could be committed so thoroughly and completely against a specific population solely as economic and/or political expedients.  And while she does address why she deliberately avoids the "racial animus" argument in favor of one governed by economic or political incentives, her argument is hardly compelling.  She claims that two distinct, but all white voting blocks in a Texan town deployed cartel strategies to bar Blacks from voting for political and economic incentives.  Oddly, this “legal scholar” (as per her book jacket…) states directly: “Homeowners’ associations and Texas political parties used a potent mix of violence, harassment, and legal coercion (p. 53).”  Pardon me, is not each of these tactics a crime?  These crimes were orchestrated specifically to deny Black people 1) equal protection under the law, and 2) access to opportunity, governance and the pursuit of prosperity.  As well, these crimes frequently were committed by those hired to uphold the law (police officers, justices of the peace, constables, etc.).  Madame Counselor, would that not constitute human and civil rights’ violations?  Were any of said crimes every adjudicated or redressed?  A proponent of the Third Reich might argue that sequestering Jews in death camps and confiscating the inmates’ lives, labor, and material assets was useful to the German state, providing immediate relief to the Nazi regime which had stumbled into an unfortunate credit crisis.  It was nothing personal against the Jews, just business.

It would have made more sense—and been far more digestible—to claim the obvious:  a sheer vitriol on the part of whites against Black autonomy and independence incited a caustic campaign, based heavily on the commission of crimes—frequently never tried or even charged-- against Black people throughout the course of American history.  This hatred is most dramatically evidenced by the sustained and coordinated prevention of Blacks by whites and the white hegemony to ingress into the US political and capital structures; examples of which, thankfully, Roithmayr so meticulously details.  These efforts proved far costlier to Blacks (and therefore, far more valuable to whites) than today’s American citizenry, both white and Black (and all other Colors) could have ever imagined.

Roithmayr’s arguments in chapters six, “Not What You Know but Who You Know” and seven, “Please Won’t You Be My Neighbor” seem to be from outer space.  The vortex of racial animus, brutality, terrorism and the suite of other evils generated by White Supremacy on earth, inside this country called the United States of America is what created the inequality her book attempts to skirt around, and by default, justify.  The nexus of white private citizen, white policy maker, and white enforcer alike, each conspiring and collaborating with the other is what generated and maintained the centripetal force catapulting Black and Brown people to the margins.  In this context, the “You”, “Who” and “Neighbor” referenced in the chapter titles were all but guaranteed to be 1) white, 2) propertied, and 3) protected, in stark contrast to what Black and Brown citizens were experiencing.  “Not What You Know, But Who You Know” (chapter six) asserts that one’s social network is a meaningful contributor to personal success, providing valuable resources such as access to quality education, employment and employment referrals meaningful enough to lead to actual employment.  “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” (chapter seven) synopsizes a study wherein two hypothetical neighborhoods’ property values were analyzed over time based on each of the respective community’s decision to consistently increase investment in the local school system or not.  The community which did, saw increased property values as homeowners from the community which did not strove to acquire enough wealth to be able to afford to move their children to the school district into which the most investment had been made.  My concern is not with the basic premise of either of these arguments (though I did find some of the details questionable). The problem is that the two groups always being compared in these various scenarios (education, employment, neighborhoods, social networks, etc.) are Black people in America and white people in America.  In all cases, it is misleading and poor science and disingenuous to the point of being blatantly false to compare these two specific groups without duly considering the legally supported apartheid separating the two populations, creating vastly different circumstances and opportunities for one group, while strategically denying the same to the other.  It is as though she is comparing the juiciness and crispness of grapes vs. raisins without establishing the natural relationship between grapes and raisins: raisins are those neglected grapes left to rot on the vine.

Black people did not receive the same support from society to purchase homes wherever they could afford as did their white fellow citizens (in fact, Black people didn’t receive any support), were not afforded the opportunity to access the necessary education to gain lucrative employment, often could not gain lucrative employment even if they happened to have the necessary educational qualifications, and just generally were completely blocked from all aspects of social, political, and economic life which would lead to advancement for themselves and/or their children beyond what White Supremacy permitted.  Black people could not even reasonably guarantee their own safety against the virulence and violence of white oppression. While her arguments attempt to address the virtuous cycle, which she terms “positive feedback loops” that a network created for and by agentic participants (bedrocked and buttressed by a superstructure created for and by white citizens) would produce over successive generations, she fails to acknowledge the equally obvious point: the passage of time over generations further oppresses those consistently blocked from the virtuous cycle type of network by default, thus relegating them into the hinterlands of marginalization and its vicious cycle, compounded over the same number of generations such that heirs of the former are bequeathed assets whilst those of the latter liabilities…in both cases, potentiated over multiple lifetimes.   All the concomitant dynamics of a network in terms of facilitating economic access for its members (whether positive or negative), financially impacting them (positively or negatively), and socially influencing them (positively or negatively) are at play in both the virtuous cycle and the vicious cycle.   But with the virtuous cycle—the white ecosystem—the coordination and confluence of all those positive vectors enmesh to prevent a bottoming out that regularly threatens those flung to the margins.    In this way, white Americans overwhelmingly enjoy a financial put, below which strike price they shall forever be protected.  Meanwhile, Black and Brown people remain at constant risk of economic freefall.  Given this context, it is irrelevant to conclude, as the author does, that Black people would still be marginalized absent overt discrimination.  There was sufficient overt discrimination facilitated by criminality, malice and greed for the first 350 years of sustained Caucasian presence in these contiguous 48 states to establish and fortify White Supremacy, that it freed today’s white people in America, whether direct descendants of the perpetrators of the brutality against Black and Brown people, or newly arrived white immigrants from needing to rely upon “Colored Only” drinking fountains, “Whites Only” signage or any other egregious examples of White Supremacist sentiment publicly funded and displayed to maintain what was always intended to be the status quo: ‘Blacks on bottom’.

As well, Roithmayr in a single bound, leaps over the political, social, and economic realities of housing segregation with respect to how it would negatively impact network-formation for those denied this amazing opportunity.  Firstly, the FHA supported $120 billion worth of mortgages just between the years of 1934 and 1964, virtually none of which benefited Black people (Painter, Nell Irvin, PhD.  The History of White People. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010 p. 366).  This is a massive handout for white people in America, and one any scholar should have acknowledged if she is analyzing economic inequality between Blacks and whites.  To be sure, the dollar amount grows exponentially when we consider FHA support beyond 1964.  This is an incredible privatization of public moneys, coming in at $4 billion/year over the first 30 years of its existence.  It is doubtful that the entire stock of residential real estate in all of the United States in 1934 would have approached $4 billion.  Had Black people received their fair share of this support—which would have better positioned them to continue to receive an equitable stake throughout the life of the FHA—Roithmayr’s agnosticism about how racial inequality reproduces itself might make sense.   But the reality is that Black people were completely barred from the capital structure in that they 1) could not access FHA (and predecessor) mortgage funding, 2) were physically discouraged/prevented from moving into predominantly white neighborhoods with unindicted threats and acts of violence against them (see Cicero, IL riots of 1951), and 3) could not rely on the same structural protection for their assets as could their white counterparts.  For example, one Dr. Alexander Turner, a Black surgeon attempted to move into an all-white section of Detroit.  Before he could finish unpacking, an angry mob 1,000-deep gathered and began raining bricks and rocks on his private property.  While Detroit police officers looked on "he was compelled to sign a deed and relinquish ownership of [his home]" (Anderson, Carole, PhD. White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide. New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2016, p. 55). In this milieu, Black people have nowhere else to go but further down the chute of economic uncertainty than most other members of society.   Add to this noxious cocktail predatory law enforcement, the inability to receive social security benefits, and the difficulty of securing gainful employment and adequate housing and education, and ghettoes turn into cesspools for the dispossessed.  This is network formation for Black people in America, the ingredients for which are all copiously supplied by White Supremacy and administered by its agents, again private citizens and the hegemony, alike.

Though the author briefly references some of the effects of the nation’s war on drugs (pp. 105-7), she does not delve deeply enough into how, predatory as it has been on Black people already living in deindustrialized, economically impoverished zones, it would dramatically change the character of any neighborhood such that all householders would feel compelled to move to a healthier environment as his/her finances permitted, Black or white.  Great questions to ask in furtherance to scholarly inquiry would be 1) how is it that illegal substances not native to this country, which are required to be flown or ferried into this nation’s borders consistently wend their way to inner-city, predominately Black communities? (Is there something amiss with this country’s border patrol?) 2) Why is it costlier for Blacks to handle illegal substances than it is for whites under the current criminal justice framework? 3) Why is it that even though “the majority of illegal drug users and dealers nationwide are white, three-fourths of all people imprisoned for drug offenses have been Black or Latino?” (Michelle Alexander, Esq. The New Jim Crow. New York: The New Press, 2012, p. 98).  Black people represent 12.5% of the population.  White people comprise a whopping 77.7% of the U.S. population, outnumbering Blacks by more than six to one (https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045216/00).

The author’s discussion of “lock-in” and “switching costs” as it relates to why Blacks persistently find themselves in poverty more frequently than do Whites is flawed and completely toxified by White Supremacy.  In a dynamic free market, new products, services and ways of doing business appear all the time.  Individual market participants are incented regularly to introduce the ‘next best thing.’  Depending on the utility and accessibility of the product/service being introduced, it will take hold, irrespective of what conniving established business owners might try to do to discourage innovation.  Think mp3 to replace cd to replace cassette to replace eight-track to replace vinyl.  Cars in the 1980s went from leaded to unleaded gasoline.  In all cases, there was a “switching cost” involved which market participants overwhelmingly absorbed to accommodate radical changes in the marketplace (pp. 116-8).  In 1980, drinking water was thought to be “free” in perpetuity, as was listening to the radio, now it is almost impossible to receive either in the United States without expecting to pay some cost.  Roithmayr’s concept of “switching cost” is entirely wrongheaded; it seeks to excuse wrongdoing which has endured so long, she now accepts it as axiomatic.  White Supremacy against Black people in this country is a human rights’ violation.  It is a crime.  It was always wrong and it will be always wrong.  It should be eradicated immediately, irrespective of whatever are the “switching costs” to do so.  We should not even be thinking in terms of “switching cost,” but instead restitution and reparations for the fact of the crimes of racial apartheid having been committed in the first place.

Rothmayr’s use of the term “historic discrimination” to refer to specific discriminatory tactics which may have been more popular in the past (may have phased out of existence contemporaneously) is still another problem.  Discrimination in the United States is not preterit, it is not action over and done with in the past.  This society is built on discrimination—discrimination which was never dismantled nor its Black victims ever redressed.  The purpose of the specific types of racial discrimination to which she refers was to create and foster inequality based on race.  In this case, all of society’s mechanisms which maintain the same intended inequality are vestiges of that same “historic discrimination”; and therefore, still just plain old discrimination.  As with fruit from the poisonous tree, advantage—like evidence—obtained illegally i.e. by crimes against humanity such as systematic multi-generational racial terror and exploitation should be inadmissible, any benefits derived thereof disgorged…and most certainly acknowledged.  Despite the authors attempts to sanitize horrific actions and attitudes in the past, “historic discrimination” should be thought of as racial apartheid to favor whites which was never dismantled because it was never redressed, then festered, then metastasized and has now thoroughly permeated most every aspect of American society. 

Let me reiterate, of all Roithmayr’s arguments, the one she proves most effectively (though it may not have been her intent):  Black people were strategically engineered into the dire political and economic situation in which they find themselves by the consistent and varied ways that a super-majority called white citizens colluded, conspired and confabulated informally and structurally to bar Blacks access.  The author specifically discusses ways Black citizens were blocked from the polls and from homeownership.  American history and America today provides additional examples of how Blacks were blocked from education: local citizens paroxysming in Oxford, MS as James Meredith matriculated to Ole’ Miss, requiring a U.S. marshal escort of more than 500; Dr. George Washington Carver, Jr. being denied entry to doctoral programs in Tennessee, requiring him to leave the state, settling in Iowa for his PhD;  six-year-old Ruby Bridges’ requiring a security attaché of four deputy U.S. marshals, safeguarding her entry into first grade in Louisiana).  Even just being has been lethal for Black people. Both Emmet Till and Trayvon Martin were children being when they were stalked and murdered by private adult citizens inside this country. Given these societal dynamics across time and space, it is irrelevant what Black people do or do not do, did or did not do.  Black people would have always been on the bottom, preyed upon and terrorized by unscrupulous private citizens and reprehensible law enforcement agents who are never brought to justice, the latter evidencing by their behavior that they can and do attack and kill Black people as they see fit.

Overarchingly, Prof. Daria Roithmayr is attempting to claim that inequality predicated on race “innocently reproduces itself” inside the United States.  This assertion is not new, it is not original, and it is also patently false.  As well, it is pathological.  It attempts to justify pathology, criminality and corruption; or more correctly, it attempts to overlook all the ways these known ills have long gone unindicted, untried, unpunished and most assuredly unredressed when in service to racial apartheid in America.  Meanwhile, the principal victims of these crimes have been excessively indicted, tried, and for certain, cruelly and unusually punished.  It does not appear that Roithmayr ever wanted to solve the issue of racial inequality in America, so much as attempt to justify its presence based on a sordid, universally irredeemable past.  Ironically, the author’s effort to paint racial inequality in the modern era as an unfortunate accident, perhaps an unintended consequence of a bygone era, most effectively proves her own complicity and expertise in reproducing racism by way of disseminating distracting disinformation and calling it scholarship.  Her book should have been called Excusing Racism Reproduces Racism, or simply Racism Reproduces Racism.