hanges because the legacy of past discrimination by their employers left them with less seniority than white workers. (Lipsitz, 203) This proves that history is reconstructed to form racial identity, oppressing minorities. Also, even with these employment policies, minorities were still found to earn less than whites with the same family structure. (Lipsitz, 207)This family structure, however, was much harder to attain due to the racism evident in education. Not only do oppressed minorities have less money to pay for school due to the previous policies but discrimination in schools is highly evident. Lipsitz provides the example of Medical Schools admissions boards which were found to protect admissions for white people, yet not for blacks. He analyzes the decision of the case against the boards by arguing that the Supreme Court nullified affirmative action programs because they judged efforts to help blacks as harmful to whites: to white expectations of entitlement, expectations based on the possessive investment in whiteness they held as members of a group. (Lipsitz, 210) The expectations are attributed to the identity which has been formed due to historical governmental policies which provided benefits for whites.Together, these authors explanations for the formation and definition of racial identity provide an accurate representation of my theory. My ideas concerning racial identity consist of a combination of Hall and Lipsitzs theories. I consider racial identity to be reliant on an outside force; a process through which one comes to see the self as a result of differentiation from the Other. This differentiation also depends on the self, however ones personal position. (Hall, 10) Yet this definition is not complete without an understanding of the historical policies that attribute to the identity of whites by making them an economically advantaged group. Therefore it is a combination of the Halls theoretical ideas combi...
