1. Equal in the Eyes of the Law:
Colorblind Racism in the US
Legal System
Katy Collins

2. Loving v Virginia, 1967
• interpreted by future court cases to perpetuate colorblind racism
• allowed interracial marriage & is now used to justify anti-affirmative action cases
Lawrence-Garner v Texas, 2003
• erased Blackness from the narrative to perpetuate colorblind racism
• “decriminalized homosexuality” & future gay rights litigation shows how the queer
community invests in White supremacy
Shelby v Holder, 2013
• directly upheld colorblind racism by contending that racism is over
• voting discrimination case that overturned a key provision of the Voting Rights Act
Different Times & Laws
Similar Narrative

3. • My positionality
• Sources
• Scholarly work on colorblind racism
• Sources on colorblind racism outside of the scholarly sphere
• Content analyses of each case
• What language & analysis is being used by the judges?
• Legacy of each case
• Where are these cases cited? What are the results of the narrative produced by this case?
Methodology

4. What’s Colorblind
Racism?
• “I don’t see color. I treat everyone the same.”
• “Affirmative action is reverse racism.”
• “We live in a post-racial society.”
• “[x] is the new Black.”
An “ideology, which acquired cohesiveness and dominance in the late
1960s, [and] explains contemporary racial inequality as the outcome of
nonracial dynamics” (Bonilla-Silva, 2014, 2).

5. • Immense power, authority, & influence
• Provides an opportunity to challenge the status quo
• Perpetuates ideology in the creation of laws & dispensing of
rulings
• Reconfigures individuals’ relationships with one another like
in Brown v Board of Education where Chief Justice Warren
ruled that segregation was unconstitutional.
Why the Legal System?

6. • Mildred Loving, a Black woman & Richard Loving, a White
man got married in violation of US anti-miscegenation laws
• Chief Justice Warren
• Since the laws against interracial marriage “ ‘prohibit only
interracial marriage involving white persons,’ ...this
demonstrates that the racial classifications are ‘designed
to maintain white supremacy’ ” (Bell, 2000, 329).
Loving v Virginia,
1967

7. Loving & Anti-
Affirmative
Action
• Cited as precedent 78 times by the US Supreme Court, 362 times by federal district cases & continually cited
in anti-affirmative action cases
• Regents of the University of California v Bakke, 1978
• Citing Loving, Chief Justice Warren Burger stated:
• “ ‘preferring members of any one group for no reason other than race or ethnic origin is discrimination for
its own sake’ ” (Roberts, 2014, 205).
• Justice Lewis Powell wrote an assenting opinion:
• “The clock of our liberties...cannot be turned back to 1868. It is far too late to argue that the guarantee of
equal protection to all persons permits the recognition of special wards entitled to a degree of protection
greater than that accorded others” (Regents of University of California v. Bakke, 1978).

8. Lawrence-Garner v
Texas, 2003
• John Lawrence, a White man, & Tyron Garner, a Black man, were arrested under Texas'
"Homosexual Conduct" law
• Racism was used to get police in the door & colorblind racism allowed the Court & the
newspapers to ignore the plaintiff of color throughout the trial’s duration
• Case is commonly referred to as Lawrence v Texas or Lawrence et al v Texas.
• The court did not take race into account at any point
• The general public did not know that the couple was interracial until photos were displayed
in the media after the case had been resolved. This case was in court for 5 years.

9. Lawrence-Garner &
21st Century Gay
Rights Strategy
• Gay rights strategies have included an appeal to Whiteness & appropriation of the Civil Rights Movement
• 2008 & Prop 8
• The Advocate headline: “Gay is the New Black: The Last Civil Rights Struggle”
• “At present we [gay people] are the most socially acceptable targets for the kind of casual hatred that
American society once approved for habitual use against black people” (Gross, 2008, emphasis mine).
• Same Justice Kennedy from Lawrence-Garner ruled in Obergefell v Hodges, 2015
• Cited Loving 9 times
• White gay couple

10. Shelby v
Holder, 2013
• Shelby County of Alabama filed to have Section 4 ruled unconstitutional
• Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act lays out the formulas for enforcing Section 5
• Section 5 requires jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination needs to get federal
approval before changing a voting law
• Chief Justice John Roberts:
• “Nearly 50 years later, things have changed dramatically...the conditions that originally
justified these measures no longer characterize voting in the covered
jurisdictions...Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes speaks to current
conditions” (Shelby County v Holder, 2013, emphasis mine).

11. Who’s Affected By Voter
Restriction Laws?
• Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law 2006 statistics
• 13 million individuals do not have easy access to citizenship documents
• More than 21 million individuals do not have government-issued photo
identification
• Elderly citizens, minority citizens, and citizens with low incomes are less likely
to possess government-issued photo ID
• 25% of African-American voting-age citizens have no current government-
issued photo ID, compared to 8% of White voting-age citizens

12. Aftermath of Shelby
• Galveston 2013
• a plan to consolidate precincts and diminish the voting capacity of racial
minorities was put into place two months after shelby
• this plan had been rejected by the doj in 2011
• After Shelby, the lawyer's committee for civil rights under law led a commission
to gather records of racial voting discrimination from 1995 to 2014.
• they found 171 successful lawsuits & almost all of them were in formerly
precleared states

13. • "Black people remain the most racially isolated group in America based on measures of residential and
marital segregation" (Moran, 2001, 166).
• As of 2014 Black-White marriages constitute 4% of all marriages.
• Whites are "more likely to oppose interracial marriage than any other form of interracial association"
(Bonilla-Silva, 2014, 164).
• Bert Rein was the prosecuting attorney for Abigail Fisher & Shelby
• In the summer of 2016, PRIDE organizers decided to increase police presence at PRIDE parades after
the massacre at Pulse
• The 2016 presidential election was the first without full coverage of the VRA
Continuing Legacy of
These Legal Cases

14. Listen & Learn
• Legal scholar Patricia Williams argues that “the goal is to find a political mechanism
that can confront the denial of need” (2001, 89).
• Civil rights lawyer Michelle Alexander argues that the law is not enough to fix racial
injustice
• “We cannot ‘fix’ the police without a revolution of values and radical change to
the basic structure of our society” (2016).
• Participate in anti-oppression initiatives.
• If you’re looking for a place to start: http://simmons.libguides.com/anti-oppression

15. Assist & Advocate
• Call out microaggressions
• If you’re looking for a place to start: Open The Front Door:
• Example:
• You’re sitting with a group of friends who each have different racial identities. A person of color
states frustration at being tokenized in class. A White person responds: “You can’t assume
everything is about race.”
• Response from Ally:
• “When you say something like that you invalidate their experience and their feelings (observe). I
(think) you should take the time to listen instead of feeling compelled to comment, and I (feel)
like you could learn by listening to people who have different lived experiences from you. I would
like you to consider how you can be supportive instead of denying something you haven’t
experienced (desire).”

16. Boycott Injustice by signing up for daily action items at
injusticeboycott.com
Plan & Participate