America loves to tell itself a comforting lie—that with each march, each speech, and each new law, we're bending toward justice. But look around. The same structures that built white supremacy remain standing, reinforced by policies wearing new disguises. The laws that once shackled Black bodies and marginalized Indigenous, Asian, and Latino communities haven't disappeared. They've simply evolved.
If we're serious about freedom, it's time to stop tinkering at the edges and start tearing down the systems built to oppress. This isn't about reform—it's about reckoning. The unfinished business of American democracy is past due.
1. Native Sovereignty: Treaties Broken, Lands Stolen
From the start, America's legal system was built on land theft and Indigenous erasure.
- Johnson v. M'Intosh (1823) declared that Native lands belonged to European settlers under the so-called "Doctrine of Discovery."
- The Indian Removal Act of 1830 led to the brutal Trail of Tears.
- The Dawes Act of 1887 dismantled tribal nations under the lie of "assimilation," stealing millions of acres of Native lands.
Today, Native communities are still grappling with the enduring consequences of historical injustices. They are fighting for basic recognition of their sovereignty, their water, their lands, and their lives. Yet, America continues to treat these as negotiations, not rights.
2. Citizenship and the Lie of "Who Belongs"
From the very first immigration law, America made it clear: this country was built for white people.
- The Naturalization Act of 1790 restricted citizenship to "free white persons."
- The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 made racial exclusion a core policy.
- The Immigration Act of 1924 put quotas in place to favor Northern Europeans and block everyone else.
And here we are, still fighting these same battles. Efforts to end birthright citizenship, anti-immigrant hysteria, and the Muslim Ban (Executive Order 13769)—are all built on the same foundation: America belongs to whiteness. But we continue to resist, to demand change, and to fight for a more just society.
3. The Homestead Act: Free Land for Whites, Dispossession for Everyone Else
- Homestead Act of 1862: White settlers were handed 270 million acres of stolen Indigenous land, free or nearly free.
Black Americans, even after emancipation, were locked out through systemic violence and legal barriers. That's how you build a white middle class and engineer a racial wealth gap that still hasn't closed.
4. From Slavery to Jim Crow to Economic Apartheid
- Black Codes (1865–1866) made Black freedom illegal in practice.
- Jim Crow Laws enforced segregation, upheld by Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).
And when legal segregation finally fell, the economic chains stayed tight. Redlining and housing discrimination robbed Black families of wealth and stability. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 came too late to reverse the damage. And the results? The median Black family still holds less than one-tenth the wealth of the median white family.
4A. From Jim Crow Policing to Mass Incarceration: The Unbroken Chain of Racial Control
American policing wasn't designed to protect and serve—it was designed to patrol and control.
- Slave Patrols (1700s–1865): Created to hunt and punish enslaved people who dared to seek freedom.
- Black Codes (Post-1865): Criminalized Black life to keep bodies in chains under the 13th Amendment's punishment clause.
- Jim Crow Era: Police enforced segregation with violence and terror, often alongside the Ku Klux Klan.
When the Civil Rights Movement tore down legal segregation, the system didn't collapse—it adapted.
- The War on Drugs turned policing into a tool for mass incarceration.
- The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 locked up Black communities for crack cocaine while white powder cocaine users walked free.
- Stop-and-frisk, Broken Windows Policing, and Three-Strikes Laws kept Black and Brown communities trapped under constant surveillance and threat.
Prison labor—legalized under the 13th Amendment exception—became modern-day slavery. And felony disenfranchisement laws continue the political silencing once achieved by poll taxes and literacy tests.
This isn't a broken system. This is a system doing exactly what it was designed to do.
5. Indian Boarding Schools: Cultural Genocide in Plain Sight
For more than a century, Native children were stolen from their families and forced into schools where the mission was clear: "Kill the Indian, save the man."
- The Indian Civilization Act Fund (1819) and the Dawes Act (1887) fueled this assault on Native identity.
Today, Native communities are still living with the trauma of cultural genocide—and the graves of stolen children continue to be uncovered.
6. Interracial Love as a Crime
Until Loving v. Virginia (1967), it was illegal for people of different races to marry in many states.
That law may be gone, but the mindset lingers. Multiracial families still face bias, and the old obsession with racial "purity" is alive and well in the way we police identity and belonging.
7. Racial Classifications: The "One-Drop Rule" Never Really Died
- Virginia Racial Integrity Act of 1924: Codified the "one-drop rule," classifying anyone with any Black ancestry as Black.
Today, society still pressures multiracial people to fit into rigid categories, especially if Black ancestry is part of their lineage. The myth of racial purity hasn't left—it just changed its language.
8. The GI Bill: A Middle Class for Whites, Exclusion for Black Veterans
- Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944 (GI Bill) gave returning white veterans the path to college degrees, homeownership, and middle-class stability.
Black veterans were denied those same opportunities through redlining and segregation. The result? Another massive transfer of wealth to white families—and another generation of Black families locked out.
9. Japanese American Internment: A Blueprint for Modern Racial Profiling
- Executive Order 9066 (1942) forcibly incarcerated over 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II.
The government apologized decades later—but the playbook remains. You see it in post-9/11 surveillance of Muslim communities, the caging of migrants at the southern border, and the ongoing demonization of anyone deemed "foreign."
10. Federal Highways: Bulldozing Black Communities
- Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956: Progress for some, destruction for others.
Highways tore through Black neighborhoods—Detroit's Black Bottom, New Orleans' Tremé, and so many others—displacing families and erasing thriving communities. Today's concentrated urban poverty? This is where it began.
11. Plessy v. Ferguson: "Separate but Equal" Is Still the Rule
- Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) legalized segregation.
- Brown v. Board of Education (1954) supposedly ended it.
Yet today, America's schools remain as segregated as ever, with funding tied to property taxes and Black and Brown children locked into underfunded, overcrowded schools. Separate remains unequal—by design.
12. The 13th Amendment: Slavery by Another Name
- The 13th Amendment (1865) abolished slavery—except as punishment for a crime.
That exception gave rise to convict leasing, chain gangs, and today's billion-dollar prison labor industry. Incarcerated people—disproportionately Black and Brown—still work for pennies while corporations profit.
13. The War on Drugs: Criminalizing Black and Brown Survival
- Controlled Substances Act of 1970 and the Anti-Drug Abuse Acts of 1986 and 1988 created the modern carceral state.
Despite similar rates of drug use across racial lines, Black and Brown people remain locked up at staggering rates. And while they rot in prison, a legal cannabis industry makes billions—without them.
14. Voter Suppression: The Old Game with New Rules
- Voting Rights Act of 1965 was supposed to protect the right to vote.
- Shelby County v. Holder (2013) gutted it.
Since then, voter suppression tactics have exploded—strict ID laws, voter roll purges, closed polling stations, and gerrymandering—all disproportionately targeting Black, Latino, and Indigenous communities.
Conclusion: Dismantling, Not Just Reform, Is the Only Way Forward
This isn't a broken system—it's a system that has delivered exactly what it was designed to deliver: control, exclusion, and the protection of white dominance.
Enough with the empty apologies and symbolic gestures. The time for bold, unapologetic action is long overdue.
We must:
- Enact comprehensive reparations—not someday, but now.
- Restore and expand the Voting Rights Act to protect democracy for all.
- Abolish the prison industrial complex and end legalized slavery under the 13th Amendment.
- Fully honor Native sovereignty and return stolen lands.
- Dismantle anti-immigrant policies and embrace America's true multicultural reality.
Every generation before us has delayed this reckoning. We must not be the generation that does it again.
Justice delayed is justice denied. And America has delayed long enough. The time for radical, unapologetic change isn't tomorrow—it's right now.
Vernellia R. Randall, Professor Emerita of Law, University of Dayton School of Law.
