Abstract
The psychological comfort of white Americans is essential to the sustenance of white supremacy. The relationship between white psychological comfort and the U.S. Constitution is rich, and yet it has gone almost entirely unexplored in legal scholarship. In fact, the term “white comfort” is grossly undertheorized in law journals; few even mention the phrase, and none define it in a context outside of DEI trainings.
This Article uses leading models of psychological stress, American constitutional history, and Robin DiAngelo’s exposition of white fragility to build out an original theory of constitutional white comfort. The psychological comfort of white people influenced the Constitution’s formation in the 1780s and has impacted constitutional interpretation from the time of its ratification to the present. In that time, the constitutional right to white comfort would be impliedly recognized in a key 1876 Supreme Court case, and it would later be exercised during the Jim Crow era, liberally transformed during the civil rights era, and crystallized in the post-civil rights era. Central to the safeguarding of constitutional white comfort has been an alliance between the white citizenry and the nation’s highest tribunal. This Article contributes to racial justice scholarship by highlighting a
formidable barrier that must be broken for racial salvation to be realized.
