'I Insist That The Irrelevance Of Black Life Has Been Drilled Into This Country Since Its Infancy'

[kpete]

On the Killing of Jordan Davis by Michael Dunn
TA-NEHISI COATESFEB 15 2014, 10:07 PM ET
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Spare us the invocations of "black on black crime." I will not respect the lie. I would rather be thought insane. The most mendacious phrase in the American language is "black on black crime," which is uttered as though the same hands that drew red lines around the ghettoes of Chicago are not the same hands that drew red lines around the life of Jordan Davis, as though black people authored North Lawndale and policy does not exist. That which mandates the murder of our Hadiya Pendletons necessarily mandates the murder of Jordan Davis. I will not respect any difference. I will not respect the lie. I would rather be thought crazy.

I insist that the irrelevance of black life has been drilled into this country since its infancy, and shall not be extricated through the latest innovations in Negro Finishing School. I insist that racism is our heritage, that Thomas Jefferson's genius is no more important than his plundering of the body of Sally Hemmings, that George Washington's abdication is no more significant than his wild pursuit of Oney Judge, that the G.I Bill's accolades are somehow inseparable from its racist heritage. I will not respect the lie. I insist that racism must be properly understood as an Intelligence, as a sentience, as a default setting to which, likely until the end of our days, we unerringly return.

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http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/02/on-the-killing-of-jordan-davis-by-michael-dunn/283870/

[CincyDem]

1. I'm sure some members of the jury were disappointed that...

...they didn't have the option to find him three fifths guilty of murder. So we ended up with a hung jury (rather than a hung murderer).

Justice. Right.

[TheKentuckian]

2. Inarguable, we were livestock and probably less individually valued than a horse or cattle.

Now, I don't see the value of attacking the founders as invalid unless the aim is to undo our base law and systems. We cannot disregard yet work within the status quo to move forward but I think the basic idea is important to get folks to grasp how baked into the cake this perspective is, as it pre dates the country.
Of course natives weren't even valued like live stock but largely seen as vermin to be wiped out so I think the disdain goes even deeper than the scurge of slavery and might well be the case toward non whites to a frightening extent even without it.

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. Slight correction, Bacon's Revolt

It happened a hundred years before independence. Before Bacon's revolt white indentured servants and black slaves had class solidarity, to use a very Marxist analysts. It fits. After the rebellion was suppressed a whole slew of laws were out in place to create that wedge.

Too much inside baseball, I know