Quiana Rodriguez Week 3 Response

Within Whiteness as Property there are discussions of the two cases,  Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education, the malleability of identity in the United States, and how policies through history reinforced an environment of racial discrimination. In the piece, it becomes evident that Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education are cases that demonstrate the United States attempt to implement change that works toward racial equality but due to vague language and lack of actions that work to create equitable change, society remains stagnant and people of color continue to face racial discrimination embedded within the society. This connects to the idea that “Whites have come to expect and rely on these benefits, and over time these expectations have been affirmed, legitimated, and protected by the law” (1713). Instead of creating a system in which all are uplifted and receiving the same resources, historically and in the present the United States has created a system in which those that are White are able to benefit the system more due to decades of racial discrimination. Along with discussion of specific cases, Harris discusses how identity is interpreted differently throughout time, especially racial identity where depending on the identity groups you have to prove your identity in order to access or be prevented from having access to resources (1714). The government’s intention of categorizing humans in order to decide the access to resources connects to the principle that Whiteness as Property means that policies and implementation of policies work to aid White people and it becomes an asset that those not of the racial identity group can access. These observations by Harris are important to understand due to it currently affecting present day life, the way different identity groups navigate, and to be informed of new policies that dismantle this racist agenda or support it. One of the topics I enjoyed reading in Harris’s writing is the discussion of affirmative action as she connects the historical connections of White privilege and its intent to “remove the legal protections of the existing hierarchy spawned by race oppression” (1779). It is an important topic especially due to recent government actions to eliminate affirmative action which opens a conversation about different methods to approach ways to implement changes in the system that benefit racial equity.