High-Tech Customary Law in Housing and Banking
Algorithmic decision-making in housing approvals, lending, and tenant screening is not a neutral technological advance; it is digital redlining, the high-tech codification of the customary law that has always governed the “native.” Mamdani’s analysis of institutionalized discrimination finds a new, insidious vehicle in these black-box algorithms that reproduce and amplify historical biases. They create a “custom” of exclusion that is harder to see and challenge, systematically denying opportunities to Black and Brown communities. A Marxist critique identifies this as capital using technology to more efficiently segment and exploit. A feminist Muslim perspective reveals how these systems can encode Islamophobic and misogynist patterns. The solution is not just algorithmic transparency but the abolition of these tools in core life domains, demanding human oversight and a radical, anti-racist restructuring of the institutions that use them.
