White Law

What I really liked about this piece is how it focused on the way whiteness is socially constructed. I feel like I have read about the ways in which race for people of color has been socially constructed, but no one really writes about whiteness. For example Lopez writes,

White identity exists as the superior antonym to the identity of non-Whites, elaborating a positive White racial identity is a dangerous position. It ignores the reality that Whiteness is already defined almost exclusively in terms of positive attributes....Whites should attempt to dismantle Whiteness as it currently exist...not simply out of guilt or any sense of self deprecation. 

Lopez 548

It made me think further about how the positive attributes associated with whiteness is equally damaging for white people as for the negative attributes associated with blackness for black people. The way that whiteness is constructed serves as an identity that is only a "positive mirror image"(548).  It encourages a notion that the white race  is the superior race. This social construction of whiteness is also destructive to society in general. According to Lopez, this idea of the white race as the superior race is the real stem of racial inequality. He writes that we should dismantle it because it "stands at the vortex of racial inequality in America" (548). 


The way to really deconstruct racism is by talking about the way it is constructed in the first place. It's important to mention the way in which all races are socially constructed. When we recognize the way in which whiteness is constructed we understand more about the way this racial social hierarchy creates these racial injustices.