ABSTRACT
Lawyers and judges like to think of the legal system as race neutral, except in those areas like the civil rights laws where the legal system has determined that race should be given specific consideration. But historically, both judicial interpretations of the Constitution and many of our laws have been explicitly racist, or at the least, have been affected by our national preoccupation with race. We all know, for example, that people of African descent were held in bondage or sevitude by a system of law, and that laws were used to remove American Indians from areas in which they resided. That system of explicitly racial decision making by the courts and legislatures has been replaced by an ideology that disfavors race-based decision making. However, some would argue that the prevailing ideology of interpreting the Constitution and laws in an allegedly color-blind manner continues to foster a system of White racial domination (Gotunda, 1991; Harris, 1993; Williams, 1991).
