As James Madison once said,
“If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”[1] But men are not angels, and, being imperfect, in spite of legislation, in spite of a documented, systemic policy, some people will ignore the system and act by their own, reimagined, anecdotal volition. But such individual and sub-group action cannot ever be blamed on the systemic construct. Blame the one or the few who violate the system. As the author, Richard Bach, wrote,
“Argue for your limitations; they’re yours.”[2]A scholastically-sourced definition of racism by the OED is, “beliefs that members of a particular racial or ethnic group possess innate characteristics or qualities, or that some racial or ethnic groups are superior to others; an ideology based on such beliefs.”
By this scholastically-accepted definition, even a phrase like “Black Lives Matter” must be cast in suspicious light, particularly in light of the following statement as a policy of BlackLivesMatter.com:
“We are working for a world where Black lives are no longer systematically targeted for demise.”[3]The quoted statement above, let alone the movement’s title, represents a policy of singling out Blacks as an unprotected class, specifically, as if to say the other racial entities do not matter, and declaring, without evidence provided, that Blacks are “systematically targeted,” and not just for generic prejudice, but for specific “demise.” Alleged systematic targeting is a claim made without properly interpreting the definition of systemic. There are proper, scholastically-accepted definitions, and there are re-imagined, wish-balloon definitions. The former prevails, or, rather, it should but apparently does not.
If Blacks are “systemically targeted,” by definition, it must be demonstrated by those advocates that the U.S. Government has, by legislation and policy, demonstrated a denial of at least the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment [1868], which declares the Equal Protection Clause: “..nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” It follows that every federal, state, and local statute must be in accordance with this Clause, or it is unconstitutional.
I offer from a list of 10 Supreme Court cases directly concerned with the Equal Protection Clause [EPC] of the 14thAmendment the following three cases having race as a substantive issue demonstrating the Court’s consistency in compliance with the 14th:
1. Plessy v. Ferguson [1896] found that there was systemic discrimination against Blacks in Louisiana by that state’s enforcement of a rule marking trolley cars with signs, “for blacks only,” and “for whites only,” because the signs, themselves, demonstrated unconstitutional violation.
2. Brown v. Board of Education [1954] based on a proper interpretation of Plessy, the Court found that some States had incorrectly applied Plessyto allow segregation of schools if the school facilities were “equal.” Brown overturned unconstitutional state laws, applying the notion in Plessythat “separate but equal” was not even equal just because the facilities were “equal,” but that even by signage, alone, segregated facilities are unconstitutional.
3. Loving v. Virginia [1967] overturned Virginia’s state law prohibiting interracial marriage. Virginia argued that their case did not violate the EPC because their argument applied penalty to both marriage partners, the Lovings. The Court determined that the EPC required strict scrutiny to race-based classifications where a ruling was a consequence by racial discrimination.
These cases demonstrate evidence of the negating argument, that impose a disclaimer on the Black Lives Matter policy quoted above.
These cases also demonstrate that even in the apparent innocuous effort to achieve racial equality, an organization declaring that one race matters at the exclusion of others [i.e., Black Lives Matter] may be found to be in violation of the EPC. Whereas, given a total of 10 Supreme Court cases over the 230-plus years of the Court’s existence, in cases specifically concerned with racial issues, the three cases highlighted demonstrate the consistency of the Court’s [part of the system, after all] compliance and protection of the EPC, and all citizens’ rights to expect equal protection by the system.
[1]James Madison, Federalist Papers #51 [2]Richard Bach, Illusions, The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, Dell, 1977