Is There Racism in Politics and the Laws They Create?

Let’s stop pretending for a moment. Politics is not neutral. Laws are not neutral. They are written, voted on, and enforced by people. And people bring their biases into everything they do. If a society is built on racist assumptions, then the politics and the laws of that society will reflect those same assumptions. 

If you doubt that, look at the record. Slavery was legal. Jim Crow was legal. Redlining was legal. School segregation, immigration bans based on race — all legal until someone had the courage to challenge them. The question isn’t whether racism exists in politics. The real question is: how could it not? 

Racism in lawmaking didn’t end in the 1960s. Today, we see voting restrictions that disproportionately target communities of color. We see sentencing disparities where a Black person and a white person can commit the same crime and face very different punishments. We see immigration policies that treat certain groups as more “deserving” than others. These aren’t accidents. They’re choices. And those choices protect power — usually the power of wealthy, white, and male elites. 

Politics is the art of protecting the interests of those in charge. If you’ve always had the money, the land, the education, and the connections, laws will be written to keep things that way. That’s why racism is baked into the system: it’s profitable for those who benefit from it. 

Now, I want to be clear. This post focuses on race. That means I'm currently putting less attention on other forces at play — like class, gender, or economics. And I admit, my examples are U.S.-centric, because that’s where I’ve spent my life. Other countries deal with different histories, like colonialism, caste, or religious discrimination. But the pattern is the same: systems of power protect themselves by creating laws that divide people. 

Here's another way of looking at it: if you asked a political scientist instead of me, they’d give you charts and graphs. They’d talk about voter suppression, gerrymandering, or incarceration rates. They’d say racism exists in politics because of historical legacies, blah, blah, blah — not because every lawmaker is a bigot. They’d give you data. I give you the blunt truth. Besides, you don't have to be a racist per se to create a law that negatively impacts a race of people. Sometimes greed is the simple origin of racist laws and not bigotry. "Staying in power" is the goal for a lot of politicians and if that means a few people of color, then so be it.

Yes, there is racism in politics and in the laws they create. Always has been. And unless we face it, challenge it, and rewrite it deliberately, it always will be. The next time you hear someone say, “Well, the law is the law,” remember: so was slavery. So was segregation. The law doesn’t define morality — it reflects who has the power to make the rules.

👉 What do you think: are today’s laws still protecting power at the expense of justice?