White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race

White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race is a work of nonfiction by Ian Haney López, an American lawyer and legal scholar who specializes in race, racism, and American law. Using cases from the late 19th and early 20th century, the author argues that race is not biological, but a highly contingent social construction. The first expansive study of the social and legal construction of race, White by Law remains a key text for scholars of race and American law. It was originally published in 1996.

This guide refers to the revised and updated 10th anniversary edition published by New York University Press in 2006.

Content Warning: This guide quotes secondary sources in White by Law that contain racist and outdated language.

Plot Summary

White by Law comprises a preface and eight chapters, each of which contains short, subtitled sections. The preface focuses on the author’s identity as the Hawaiian-born son of a white father and Salvadoran mother, and the ways in which his identity intersected with his interest in and approach to race and law. The preface also includes clarifications to the original text, fresh insights on race and law, and a brief description of a new chapter on colorblind white dominance.

Chapter 1, “White Lines,” introduces key issues that recur throughout the book, such as the legal construction of race and its influence on current notions of whiteness and non-whiteness. In 1790, Congress restricted immigration to “white persons,” creating a racial prerequisite to US citizenship that lasted until 1952. Haney López draws on racial prerequisite cases, where race restricted naturalization, or the process where permanent residents receive US citizenship after fulfilling requirements of the Immigration and Nationality Act. He underscores the unstable nature of whiteness, which shifted as new immigrants arrived in the US and petitioned for citizenship. The mutability of whiteness emphasizes that race is not natural, but a social construct. Whiteness is associated with citizenship, intellect, and dominance, while non-whiteness is associated with deficiency, subordination, and the alien. Moving toward racial equality demands developing white race-consciousness and deconstructing racial categories.

Chapter 2, “Racial Restrictions in the Law of Citizenship,” addresses the role of law in shaping the country’s racial makeup. Haney López argues that law, not global immigration patterns, determined America’s racial composition. The US restricted immigration based on race until 1965, primarily through racial prerequisites and national origin quotas. These legal restrictions excluded people with certain physical features, which impacted who could become a US-born citizen.

Chapter 3, “The Prerequisite Cases,” provides an overview of the racial prerequisite cases brought before US courts between 1878 and 1952. Of the 12 cases heard between 1878 and 1909, only one favored the petitioner. The rationales offered by the courts are as instructive as the verdicts. Courts in early prerequisite cases based their decisions both on scientific evidence and commonly held beliefs. Rifts occurred between 1909 and 1923, when advances in science challenged the validity of racial categories. Contradictory rulings and rationales emerged. Rifts continued until the US Supreme Court decided two key cases: Ozawa v. United States and United States v. Thind.

Chapter 4, “Ozawa and Thind,” focuses on the first racial prerequisite cases heard by the US Supreme Court. In Ozawa (1922), the justices applied standards of race in their ruling against the petitioner, a Japanese man who asserted a white identity based on the paleness of his skin. In Thind (1923), the same justices used different racial standards to reject the Asian Indian petitioner’s claim of whiteness. The Court presented race as natural rather than socially constructed. By rejecting science, the Court legitimized racist beliefs and reinforced racial hierarchies. 

Chapter 5, “The Legal Construction of Race,” describes the conscious and unconscious ways in which law fashions race. Naturalization laws determined who was eligible for citizenship. Anti-miscegenation laws regulated sexual relations, reinforcing racial segregation by making interracial marriage, and sometimes intimate relations between individuals of different races, illegal. Segregation laws promoted racial divisions in public and private spheres. The law is a coercive system, or one that uses threat or force; it enforces rules primarily through punishments. Law also operates on an ideological level, contributing to the production of knowledge and shaping societal views, including ideas of race. Prerequisite cases lent institutional support to the notion that race was natural and a necessary part of human differentiation. The legitimization of race had serious material consequences related to wealth and poverty, all of which remain salient today.

Chapter 6, “White-Race Consciousness,” urges white readers to interrogate whiteness and the privileges it bestows. Haney López presents naturalization and transparency—a term coined by legal scholar Barbara Flagg, where white people have the option not to think of themselves in racial terms—as key obstacles to white race-consciousness. Whiteness is perceived as normal and generally remains unexamined. This hinders white people from understanding how race constructs and maintains hierarchical relationships that support inequality. Dismantling whiteness requires the development of white race-consciousness that rejects whiteness and questions racial myths.

Chapter 7, “The Value to Whites of Whiteness,” describes the social, economic, and political benefits of maintaining whiteness as a racial identity. The value of whiteness to white people explains why judges in prerequisite cases, all of whom were white, maintained racial categories, even as science undermined the concept of race.

Chapter 8, “Colorblind White Dominance,” focuses on the future of American race relations, specifically, on colorblind white dominance. The core aspects of this new racial paradigm are the continuation of white dominance, expanded definitions of whiteness along socio-racial lines, and the continued spread of race neutrality. Colorblind white dominance perpetuates racial inequality, pointing to a bleak outlook for race relations in the US.