LAUSR

In 2008, I published a theoretical frame of White institutional space beginning with the generalized proposition that social organizations, social institutions, and social structure are fundamentally and recursively related. In other words, individual organizations (like particular law schools) are produced by and function to reproduce racialized social institutions (like the institutions of education and law), just as social organizations and institutions are produced in as an element of and therefore reify the racial social structure—which in the United States is based on White supremacy. Within U.S. social organizations, there exist routine and systematic mechanisms, including racist historical and contemporary institutionalized hierarchies of power, racist institutionalized logics, and racist discourses and ideologies which inform everyday racialized practices, that function synergistically to channel the resources of U.S. organizations and institutions disproportionately to Whites. In this article, I utilize elements of my original research in elite law schools to delineate and demonstrate how mechanisms of White institutional space function tacitly and explicitly to reify White power and privilege.