Authors
This author discusses how institutional practices and rules perpetuate racial inequality in the U.S., even without the backing of state-sanctioned racial discrimination.
Fredrick C. Harris
A way to systematically exclude communities of color from wealth-building and housing opportunities through government policy
Displacement
A law that authorized the forced removal of Native Americans from their ancestral lands, resulting in the "Trail of Tears".
The Indian Removal Act
The clearest, but least recognized example of government-backed segregation.
The creations of Chinatowns
This author reflects on building modern social movements, focusing on lessons from organizing Black Lives Matter and broader coalitions for change.
Alicia Garza
The human digestive tract, a football team, and global trading markets are all examples of this.
System
Known colloquially as the 1994 “Crime Bill”; this law expanded policing, mandatory minimum sentences, and prison construction in response to perceived crime waves, disproportionately harming Black communities through criminalization and incarceration
The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act
A way movements are often misunderstood, falsely believed to emerge spontaneously rather than through years of organizing.
The Myth of Spontaneous Movements
This author examines how public policies have removed people of color from their homes in the context of American housing disparities.
Danyelle Solomon, Connor Maxwell, and Abril Castro
A form of punishment that extinguishes someone’s civil rights
Civil Death
Forcibly converted communally held tribal lands into small, individually owned lots
The Dawes Act
These 2 methods were used as government-backed segregation
Redlining & single-family zoning
This author analyzes how movements for systemic change succeed over time, focusing on what makes movements sustain and drive policy shifts.
Leslie Crutchfield
The commonly held belief that white settlement and expansion across North America was inevitable and even divinely ordained.
Manifest Destiny
This broadened the definition of grand larceny from a theft of anything valued at more than $25 to a value of $10.
The Mississippi "Pig Laws"
After the colonies became states and wrote constitutions, they established forms of criminal disenfranchisement by citing this.
“purity of the ballot box”