Jim Crow Lives in the Jury Box
>> Friday, June 04, 2010
It's dismaying. While it doesn't seem to get discussed much, the dissent in Miller-El is part of the context that makes Parents Involved so infuriating. Invoking glib tautologies in defense of a "color-blind constitution" becomes pretty hard to sustain when you're unable to find any racial discrimination in a case in which prosecutors systematically excluded black jurors for transparently pretextual reasons. But that's modern conservatism: Brown v. Board has been reinterpreted on the one hand to constitutionally legitimate school systems that are segregated and unequal, while on the other it can prevent school boards from trying to integrate their schools.
In related news, former Time Blog of the Year calls the 14th Amendment "an anachronism."
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4 comments:
I take small comfort in the fact that for a small portion of my life, America at least aspired to equality and justice for all.
It pains my very soul that we're rapidly sliding back to where we were in 1948.
"Fuck you Scott Johnson, fuck you sideways with a chainsaw" is just so inadequate to capture my disdain for that kind of sentiment.
I agree with some of my fellow commentators: your personality definitely comes through in your writing. I agree with you in that we should be able to find juries which are more racially diversified. If we are unable to do so, we are virtually guaranteed to have a slanted version of justice in our courtrooms. http://www.martinlawyers.ca
oh.my.we need to write and expose what no one knows .
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