In reviewing ROBERT WILLIAMS, THE AMERICAN INDIAN IN WESTERN LEGAL THOUGHT: THE DISCOURSE OF CONQUEST (1990), an eloquent and meticulous work on the American Indian in Western legal doctrine, Joseph William Singer draws out the organic connections between property rights and race as the pattern of conquest of native lands exemplified:
[P]roperty and sovereignty in the United States have a racial basis. The land was taken by force by white people from peoples of color thought by the conquerors to be racially inferior. The close relation of native peoples to the land was held to be no relation at all. To the conquerors, the land was "vacant." Yet it required trickery and force to wrest it from its occupants. This means that the title of every single parcel of property in the United States can be traced to a system of racial violence.
-Whiteness as property by Cheryl I. Harris Harvard Law Review Pg.1716
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