Racialized Space and the Culture of Segregation: "Hewing a Stone of Hope from a Mountain of Despair"

Abstract

t Professor of Law, Loyola Law School, Los Angeles. My subtitle is taken from Martin Luther King's speech, Have a Dream. MARTIN LUTHER KING,JR., I HAVE A DREAM: WRITINGS AND SPEECHES THAT CHANGED THE WORLD 105 (James M. Washington ed., 1992). This Paper was generously supported with a Loyola Law School Research and Scholarship Grant. I also received valuable research assistance from Michael D'Angelo,J.D. Candidate 1996, Loyola Law School. This Paper was earlier presented on February 24, 1995 at the University of Pennsylvania Law Review's Annual Symposium, ShapingAmerican Communities: Segregation, Housing & the Urban Poor. The Paper is in effect a Part II to John 0. Calmore, Spatial Equality and the Kerner Commission Report: A Back-to-the-Future Essay, 71 N.C. L. REV. 1487 (1993), which was part of a symposium entitled The Urban Crisis: The Kerner Commission Report Revisited, 71 N.C. L. REV. 1283-1785 (1993). My critical orientation and normative reflection here are influenced by critical race theory. See MARIJ. MATSUDA ET AL., WORDS THAT WOUND 3-7 (1994) (discussing early themes of critical race theory); Kimberle Crenshaw, A Black Feminist Critique of Anti-Discrimination Law and Politics, in THE POLITICS OF LAW: A PROGRESSIVE CRITIQUE 195, 213-14 n.7 (David Kairys ed., rev. ed. 1990) (same); Angela P. Harris, Foreword: TheJurisprudence of Reconstruction, 82 CAL. L. REV. 741 (1994) (discussing the development and promise of critical race theory); see also Anthony E. Cook, The Spiritual Movement Towards Justice, 1992 U. ILL. L. REV. 1007 (setting out a framework for critical race theory to construct an effective synthesis between particularism (nationalism) and universalism (integration)). I intend this writing to be consistent with Iris Young's admonition that social description and explanation should be critical-that is, aim to evaluate the given in normative terms. Without such a critical stance, many questions about what occurs in society and why, who benefits and who is harmed, will not be asked, and social theory is liable to reaffirm and reify the given social reality. IRIS M. YOUNG, JUSTICE AND THE POLITICS OF DIFFERENCE 5 (1990). 1 Michael P. Seng et al., Counseling a Victim of Racial Discrimination in a Fair Housing Case, 26J. MARSHALL L. REV. 53, 54 (1992). 2 Kenneth B. Clark, Epigraph to DOUGLAS S. MASSEY & NANCY A. DENTON, AMERICAN APARTHEID: SEGREGATION AND THE MAKING OF THE UNDERCLASS at xi (1993).