Race, Racism, And The American Legal System - 987 Words

Race, racism, and the American legal system grew up together. Racism and racially exclusive practices in elite law schools have more politically significant consequences than racism in public accommodations like restaurants. The construction of race and racist hierarchy was used as a political tool by white elites to justify the exploitation of human beings and land, while simultaneously asserting the rhetorical principles of freedom, democracy, and equality under the law. When the Constitution was written 40% of the 55 delegates were white men that were slave owners. Those that weren’t, profited from the slave driven economy. In the preamble â€Å"We the People†, whites were only people. The United States has only been a free county for the past four decades. Over the course of U.S. history, whites as a group have been unjustly enriched by an economic, political, and legal system of their own crafting. Today, African Americans and other Americans of color are racialize d â€Å"others† and are not fully included in â€Å"We the People.† Until the late twentieth century, African Americans and other Americans of color had virtually no role (apart from a brief Reconstruction era) in making significant state and federal laws. Out of the 110 Justices that served on the Supreme Court, only two were Black. Recent studies have shown that only 2% of important legal officials in major state and federal courts are black. Whites in state and federal governments, have shaped and controlled the majorShow MoreRelatedLetter From A Birmingham Jail And Barack Obama s A More Perfect Union1304 Words   |  6 PagesIn Martin Luther King Jr. s Letter from a Birmingham Jail and Barack Obama s A More Perfect Union, both leaders discussed many of the same issues. 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One of them is unarmed and the other is holding a knife. Then they show another picture, which is one white man with a knife and an unarmed African American man. When they asked the people who was the armed man in theRead MoreWhiteness and Citizenship971 Words   |  4 PagesCaptain Ahab’s eulogy of whiteness shows that the word â€Å"white† implies more than a chromatic description. â€Å"White† is an untenable perfection that has haunted the American psyche since colonial times. The idea of â€Å"white spiritual superiority† can only be enforce by a terrorist politico-legal system, based on brutalizing the non-whites and creating a national fantasy. A national fantasy defined by Lauren Berlant as the means â€Å"to designate how national culture becomes local through the images, narrati ves