Damon Root Discusses Dred Scott's Revenge with Judge Andrew Napolitano

June 18, 2009

Associate Editor Damon W. Root will be speaking today at noon at a Cato Institute Book Forum on Judge Andrew Napolitano's Dred Scott's Revenge: A Legal History of Race and Freedom in America. From the official event description:

The Declaration of Independence proclaimed America's belief in legal equality and inalienable rights. But American governments legally suspended the free will of blacks for 150 years and then denied blacks equal protection under the law for another 150 years. How did this happen in America? How were the Constitution and laws of the land twisted so as to institutionalize racism? How did it—or will it—end? In his new book Judge Andrew P. Napolitano takes a no-holds-barred look at the role of the government in the denial of freedoms on the basis of race. Juan Williams of NPR, author of Eyes on the Prize and of a biography of Thurgood Marshall, calls it "the best history of the law and race I've ever read." Damon Root and Jason Kuznicki, both of whom have written on the history of race and the law, will comment.

Click here to watch a live stream of the event starting at noon. Click here to read an excerpt from Dred Scott's Revenge that recently appeared on Reason.com.

Comments

dhex|6.18.09 @ 10:18AM|#

"How were the Constitution and laws of the land twisted so as to institutionalize racism?"

if all people don't fit into the category of "people" then...voila!

(also lofty words mean jack shit.)

..|6.18.09 @ 10:23AM|#

The Declaration of Independence proclaimed America's belief in legal equality and inalienable rights. But American governments legally suspended the free will of blacks for 150 years and then denied blacks equal protection under the law for another 150 years

Let's do the math. Declaration (first American government): 1776. Add 150 years of "suspended free will": 1926. Add another 150 years of "denied equal protection": 2076. Are things really that bad in the black "community"?

Paulie Carbone|6.18.09 @ 10:27AM|#

That excerpt was great. Did anyone else notice that you can tell from her face that Sonia Sotomayor is a long-term, heavy drinker?

|6.18.09 @ 10:30AM|#

you can tell from her face that Sonia Sotomayor is a long-term, heavy drinker?

Tab'll do that to ya.

Shannon Love|6.18.09 @ 10:30AM|#

How did this happen in America? How were the Constitution and laws of the land twisted so as to institutionalize racism?

Well, I'm just going out on limb here but maybe it's because morals and the political systems they create evolve instead of existing ex nihilo. The history of civilization has been one of increasing the bounds of cooperation. We start out cooperating only with blood relatives and then gradually evolve cultures with moral systems that require us to treat all humans fairly and compassionately. Actually, making cooperation work in the real-world is very difficult and takes a lot of time. Even the words freedom and liberty had different meanings 400 years ago than they did now.

In the 1600's, most people in the world cared little for people outside their extended families and their social class. In world in which every cultures elites treated the underclasses as little more than animals, the enslavement of people from thousands of miles of way seemed to poise no significant moral issue.

When talking about slavery and the Western world, we shouldn't ask why Westerners had slaves. They had slaves because every human society had slaves and no human society questioned the morality of doing so. The question we should ask is why Western, democratic and capitalistic societies were the first human societies to see slavery as immoral. Slavery is the norm. Anti-slavery is the anomaly. We should study the anomaly and not the norm.

|6.18.09 @ 10:32AM|#

On a serious note, it could just be rosacea.

Rip Van Winkle|6.18.09 @ 11:09AM|#

Let's do the math. Declaration (first American government): 1776. Add 150 years of "suspended free will": 1926. Add another 150 years of "denied equal protection": 2076. Are things really that bad in the black "community"?


2076! wtf, I must have fallen asleep again.

Graham|6.18.09 @ 11:23AM|#

"Sotomayor is a long-term, heavy drinker"

Given that 10% of Americans abuse alcohol, it's about time they saw some representation in the Supreme Court.

|6.18.09 @ 11:53AM|#

Given that 10% of Americans abuse alcohol, it's about time they saw some representation in the Supreme Court.

Based on the Court's work product, I would say they are already over-repesented.

|6.18.09 @ 1:57PM|#

RE: Shannon Love
"The question we should ask is why Western, democratic and capitalistic societies were the first human societies to see slavery as immoral. Slavery is the norm. Anti-slavery is the anomaly. We should study the anomaly and not the norm."

Totally in agreement with you. It's not like out of the blue a bunch of people went around saying hey lets make some laws that deny people there freedom. Slavery & discrimination existed on this continent way before the constitution. Laws make traditions legal or illegal like child brides which used to be the norm for a long time.

|6.18.09 @ 3:12PM|#

The program was excellent and worth watching.

Brett Stevens|6.20.09 @ 3:45PM|#

There is no historical evidence to suggest "diversity" is anything other than a stage before collapse into third-world status.

This applies to "diversity" within the same race, if the groups are not closely enough related, as well as it does to religion, race, political outlook (Haidt, Huntington cover this), etc.