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62 Minn. L. Rev. 1049 (1977-1978)
Legitimizing Racial Discrimination through Antidiscrimination law: A Critical Review of Supreme Court Doctrine

handle is hein.journals/mnlr62 and id is 1063 raw text is: Legitimizing Racial Discrimination Through Antidiscrimination Law: A Critical Review of Supreme Court Doctrinet Alan David Freeman* if it will kindly be considered that while it is in our interest as tormentors to remain where we are as victims our urge is to move ont -Samuel Beckett, How It Is THE LAW: Black Americans, rejoice! Racial discrimination has now become illegal. BLACK AMERICANS: Great, we who have no jobs want them. We who have lousy jobs want better ones. We whose kids go to black schools want to choose integrated schools if we think that would be better for our kids, or want enough money to make our own schools work. We want political power roughly proportionate to our population. And many of us want houses in the suburbs. THE LAW: You can't have any of those things. You can't assert your claim against society in general, but only against a named discriminator, and you've got to show that you are an individual victim of that dis- crimination and that you were intentionally discrimi- nated against.1 And be sure to demonstrate how that discrimination caused your problem,2 for any remedy t Copyright 1978 by Alan David Freeman. * Professor of Law, University of Minnesota Law School. I wish to express my gratitude to the Law Alumni Association of the University of Minnesota for its gener- ous support of the research leading to this Article. The views expressed in the Article are, of course, mine alone. I am most grateful to Peter Gabel, Duncan Kennedy, Karl Klare, Mark Tushnet, and everyone associated with the Conference on Critical Legal Studies, without whose emotional and intellectual support neither this Article nor its forthcoming sequel ever would have left its author's head. I also wish to thank Mike Becker, Morris Clark, Marcia Gelpe, and Erich Russell for their helpful comments and willingness to take the time to help; all of the students who have taken my course in Civil Rights over the past five years for proving through this Article that teaching'and scholarship can be the same enterprise; Jeff Ring, whose thought-provoking research got this project moving at the outset; and the editors and staff of the Minnesota Law Review for their patience and support. 1. See, e.g., Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Hous. Dev. Corp., 429 U.S. 252, 264-65 (1977); Washington v. Davis, 426 U.S. 229, 239-42 (1976). 2. See, e.g., Pasadena City Bd. of Educ. v. Spangler, 427 U.S. 424, 430 (1976); Rizzo v. Goode, 423 U.S. 362, 371-73 (1976); Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 497, 502 (1975). 1049

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