Haney Lopez The Construction Of Race

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Haney Lopez: Legal Construction of Race
Definition:
The law plays a substantial role in constructing race. By serving, as a system of coercion and control as well as an ideological system, the law is able to create laws that maintain racism and change the way people understand racism. The legal and non-legal actors that carry out or abide with the law can also be characterized as individuals who maintain the growth of our race today. All of these processes create, declare and enforce the legal construction of race, according to Haney Lopez.
Sociohistorical Contextualization: Haney Lopez argues that race has become a social establishment; instead of legal institutions trying to make sense of racial oppression they are constructing the social systems. Haney Lopez …show more content…

The Declaration of Independence describes that “all men are created equal regardless of race,” and thus abolishing slavery. As for the involvement of the Constitution, the concept of race is nowhere to be found in the document. The slave term is not in the Constitution and it was portrayed as a state of shame that men could be described as property. Rather than using the term slaves, “other persons” was used as a delicacy for their group.

Significance:
The Declaration of Independence is significant to our nation because it led individuals to gain independence; also, it justified rights that the original government no longer guaranteed certain rights. If it were not for the words written in this document all races now would not be treated equally and women would not have the right to vote. The Constitution laid out the prototype to assemble the American society and the rules that citizens of the nation should abide by.

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