Publication Date
1-1-2023
Document Type
Article
Organizational Units
Sturm College of Law
Keywords
Legal History, Property Law, Race and Law, Law and Society, Local Government, Settler Colonialism
Abstract
This article interrogates the ongoing denial and erasure of the legacy of settler-colonialism and White supremacy in the color-lines created by Colorado property law. While Colorado has long been venerated as forward and future thinking, especially when it comes to matters of race relations, its system of property law has structured deeply embedded institutional and systematic racial inequities. In short, property has created a conundrum about how we collectively think of, talk about, and deal with race, its origins, and legacies arising out of settler-colonialism and White supremacy. The color(blind) property conundrum is detailed in three ways in this article.
First, I situate the emergence of Colorado’s property regime in the context of the racialized wars of aggression that would literally shape the boundaries of the state. Anchored in the Mexican-American War, and soon thereafter in the forced and often violent removal of the Tsitsistas (Cheyenne), Inun-ina (Arapaho), Nuche (Ute), and other Indigenous peoples from the land, Colorado’s property was and continues to be defined by the legal logic of color(blind) notions of conquest, progress, policing, and exclusivity. From the re-ordering of notions of property and related concepts of personhood in land and people to the naming of mountains, landmarks, and neighborhoods throughout the state, settler-colonialism and White supremacy lurk behind and inform so many pieces of property throughout the state.
Second, I turn to a familiar form of White supremacy found in real property all throughout the United States: racially restrictive covenants. The article shows how Colorado courts repeatedly and consistently upheld the constitutionality of racially restrictive covenants as one of the main mechanisms in which to maintain the color line. Segregation and the consequence of the color line was also reinforced by public actors in the state. From the open segregation of public beaches, swimming pools, and other pieces of public property by local authorities to the use of martial law to terrorize and keep Mexicans and Mexican Americans out of the state, private and public actors conspired to make real and permanent Colorado’s color divide in its homes, schools, and other public places.
I conclude the article by briefly exploring the on-going maintenance of color(blindness) in Colorado’s property regime. From gentrification to property foreclosures by homeowner associations, settler-colonialism and White supremacy continues to reinforce patterns and practices of racial inequity. Nevertheless, activists, policy makers, and property owners are identifying new ways that those living in Colorado can move beyond the colorblind conundrum found in properties all throughout the state. In so doing, they are taking some of the first tentative steps required to unwind the dilemmas posed by a property regime forged in settler-colonialism and maintained through White supremacy—despite all assertions that claim otherwise.
Publication Statement
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Originally published as Tom I. Romero, The Color(Blind) Conundrum in Colorado Property Law, 94 U. Colo. L. Rev. 459 (2023).
Recommended Citation
Tom I. Romero, The Color(Blind) Conundrum in Colorado Property Law, 94 U. Colo. L. Rev. 459 (2023).