Sharay Rapozo

Honors 345
February 5, 2019
Reading Response #2

The overarching hierarchy that is prevalent in the United States is not a new concept. In

fact, the power structure that favors whites has arguably been put into place since the creation of

the nation. For decades, people of color have been facing harsh treatments as a means to protect

white supremacy. The institutions set into motion, especially targeted acts of legislation, has

provided a legal backing to maintain white power. Using the works of Kelly Lytle Hernandez in

chapter 3 of The City of Inmates and Talitha LeFlouria’s chapter “The Gendered Anatomy of

Negro Crime” from Chained in Silence: Black Women and Convict Labor in the New South, I

will argue that the United States has provided legal loopholes to continue the acts of repressing

people of color.

There is a sense of common knowledge that the United States has been treated black

people with a sense of disdain. However, other minorities are often left out of the picture.

Hernandez sheds some light on the situation of Chinese immigrants in California during the late

nineteenth century. It is particularly important to bring attention to the ruling of U.S. Supreme

Court case Wong Wing v. the United States. It is stated that “Wong Wing decriminalized unlawful

residence within the United States… prohibited imprisonment as a practice of U.S. immigration

control by establishing that neither the rights nor the punishment of the U.S. criminal justice

system were to be mixed in the project of U.S. immigration control” (Hernandez, 2017: 88-89).

The law may seem straightforward; however, the Supreme Court was sure to allow a loophole.

Despite declaring that U.S. immigration control should not be left up to the criminal justice

system, the Supreme Court deemed it acceptable to detain and hold immigrations undergoing the
deportation process (Hernandez, 2017: 89). This is because the issue of deportation is beyond the

Constitution, it is merely an administrative procedure (Hernandez, 2017: 88).

Deportation may not be a criminal issue, but those facing deportations are certainly being

treated as if they were criminals. Immigrants facing deportation are held in detention, more

specifically, in the words of Hernandez, they are “caged in county jails, federal prisons, and

immigration stations…” (Hernandez, 2017:89). Deportees are locked away in an institution that

is similar to prison but is technically not. On its face, the difference between detention and

imprisonment may seem outstanding; yet, in action, there are overwhelming similarities.

Furthermore, detention became an indicator to show that immigrants do not belong in the U.S.,

reinforcing an idea of otherness and difference, that immigrants were less than their white

counterparts. A technicality allows for the U.S. to lock away immigrants in carceral settings in an

act beyond the legal system.

Unsurprisingly, recently freed slaves were also subjected to an unfair loophole to their

disadvantage. The sharecropping system implemented after the Civil War, allowed for white

planters to maintain a sense of superiority over recently freed slaves. In the sharecropping

system, “the inability of black sharecroppers to meet their expected crop quotas, and satisfy their

contractual obligations, resulted in bondage for those who could not leave the land until their

debts were settled” (LeFlouria, 2015: 25). Thus, resulting in white planters receiving legal

authority to purchase black farm labor (LeFlouria, 2015: 25). Sharecropping had notable

elements of slavery: a white man in power, black laborers exploited and taken advantage of, and

support of the U.S. legal system. In this sense, slavery was illegal, but slavery actions were not.

Slavery was legal if placed under a different name.

 The two instances named above prove that legal loopholes are used throughout the

United States to obtain an objective. The objective being to keep racial minorities at the bottom

of society. Throughout history, the United States has upheld time and time again the idea of

white supremacy. The means of preserving white supremacy requires legal backing. However,

through the design of the Constitution, racists actions cannot be obvious and overt. Legal

loopholes come into play to keep up a sense of equality at the surface level but allow for racist

and questionable actions to proceed in actuality.

The creations of detention centers and sharecropping are just two examples of legal

loopholes the United States implemented to sustain a prominent racial hierarchy. Detention

centers originally were designed to keep Chinese immigrants locked away from society.

Sharecropping contracts were intended to keep freed black slaves under the authority of whites.

These concepts were nothing short of repression for minorities. The legal technicalities within

the creation of both detention centers and sharecropping have allowed for white supremacy to

continue its reign.