IP is a social construct in which private interests are upheld and whiteness is the expectation that is the sole requirement for personhood – stripping the racial body of their future

Modern theories of property reject the assumption that property is "objectively definable or identifiable, apart from social context. ' 75 Charles Reich's ground-breaking work, The New Property,76 was an early effort to focus on the function of property and note the changing social relations reflected and constructed by new forms of property derived from the government. 77 Property in this broader sense encompassed jobs, entitlements, occupational licenses, contracts, subsidies, and indeed a whole host of intangibles that are the product of labor, time, and creativity, such as intellectual property, business goodwill, and enhanced earning potential from graduate degrees.78 Notwithstanding the dilution of new property since Goldberg v. Kelly79 and its progeny80 as well as continued attacks on the concept,81 the legacy of new property infuses the concept of property with questions of power, selection, and allocation. Reich's argument that property is not a natural right but a construction by society8 2 resonates in current theories of property that describe the allocation of property rights as a series of choices. This construction directs attention toward issues of relative power and social relations inherent in any definition of property. 3. Property and Expectations. - "Property is nothing but the basis of expectation," according to Bentham, "consist[ing] in an established expectation, in the persuasion of being able to draw such and such advantage from the thing possessed."8 3 The relationship between expectations and property remains highly significant,8 4 as the law "has recognized and protected even the expectation of rights as actual legal property. 8 5 This theory does not suggest that all value8 6 or all expectations give rise to property,8 7 but those expectations in tangible or intangible things that are valued and protected by the law are property. In fact, the difficulty lies not in identifying expectations as a part of property, but in distinguishing which expectations are reasonable and therefore merit the protection of the law as property.8 8 Although the existence of certain property rights may seem self-evident and the protection of certain expectations may seem essential for social stability,89 property is a legal construct by which selected private interests are protected and upheld. In creating property "rights," the law draws boundaries and enforces or reorders existing regimes of power. 90 The inequalities that are produced and reproduced are not givens or inevitabilities, but rather are conscious selections regarding the structuring of social relations. In this sense, it is contended that property rights and interests are not "natural," but are "creation[s] of law."91 In a society structured on racial subordination, white privilege became an expectation and, to apply Margaret Radin's concept, whiteness became the quintessential property for personhood. 92 The law constructed "whiteness" as an objective fact, although in reality it is an ideological proposition imposed through subordination. This move is the central feature of "reification": "Its basis is that a relation between people takes on the character of a thing and thus acquires a 'phantom objectivity,' an autonomy that seems so strictly rational and all-embracing as to conceal every trace of its fundamental nature: the relation between people." 93 Whiteness was an "object" over which continued control was - and is - expected. The protection of these expectations is central because, as Radin notes: "If an object you now control is bound up in your future plans or in your anticipation of your future self, and it is partly these plans for your own continuity that make you a person, then your personhood depends on the realization of these expectations.