White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race

Chapter 6 turns away from legal theory to focus on white identity. It argues that the whiteness prerequisite cases helped create perpetuates harmful racial identities that must be abandoned to promote racial justice.

Transparency and the Naturalization of Whiteness

Haney López cites a feminist conference to explain the omnipresence of white transparency. The participants were asked to describe themselves in two or three words. All the participants of color chose at least one racial term, while none of the white participants referred to their race. As Haney López observes, whiteness is considred normal and, as such, often remains unexamined.

Transparency relates to and confers privilege. White people rarely think about their race, to their great psychological benefit. They do not experience the indignities and slights of racism, the anger that accompanies it, and the self-doubt it engenders. However, privilege cannot fully explain transparency. Prerequisite cases suggest that the naturalization of whiteness contributes significantly to maintaining transparency. Prerequisite cases naturalized whiteness physically by treating race as biological. The language of In re Knight is informative: The court denied the applicant citizenship because he was of English, Chinese, and Japanese descent, describing him as a “half-breed” (112). Prerequisite cases also naturalized whiteness by linking cultural and cognitive traits to physical appearance.