Archer on How Racism Persists In Its Power @DeborahNArcher @nyulaw @michlawreview

Deborah N. Archer, New York University School of Law, is publishing How Racism Persists in its Power in volume 120 of the Michigan Law Review (2022). Here is the abstract.

The current moment is not unprecedented. Every generation has experienced the rage, urgency, anger, and exhaustion that drive demands for change. Every generation has collectively and publicly grieved racialized brutality and the loss of Black lives. Every generation has been viscerally reminded of racism’s grinding pain and the systems designed to contain, isolate, and crush Black people, physically and psychologically. Every generation is reminded that our systems are still founded on the white-supremacist belief that Black people have “no rights or privileges” beyond those that white people “choose to grant them.” As this country is forced to confront, once again, the truth of who we are and how we got here, James Baldwin’s searing examination of the architecture and consequences of racism, The Fire Next Time, offers a framework for understanding how racism persists in its power. In many ways, Baldwin’s essays were prophetic, diagnosing the ways racism would continue to manifest, day after day, year after year, and generation after generation. It is a lens that connects the injustices of the past to those of today. The Fire Next Time can offer truth and comfort to those of us seeking to understand the cycles of resistance and retrenchment that allow racial inequality to not only persist but thrive.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.