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Dred Scott decision still haunts country, professor says (Mega Barf Alert)
Austin American Statesman ^ | 3/31/06 | Paul Thissen

Posted on 03/31/2006 7:20:24 AM PST by Cat loving Texan

Analysis of an almost-150-year-old U.S. Supreme Court decision — the Dred Scott case — is important because it helps answer a contemporary question, said Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy: "Why are black people so angry?"

Part of the answer is the racism inherent in the foundation of our government, he said, and it's not a historical artifact.

"Do we still live in a pigmentocracy? Yeah, we live in a pigmentocracy," Kennedy said Thursday night. "Until it is a (case) that one can read and feel that it is repudiated, it will continue to have . . . a certain potency."

Kennedy's comments came in a public conversation with Duke law professor Walter Dellinger during the kickoff event for a symposium on the Dred Scott case at the University of Texas School of Law. The 1857 case denied Scott his freedom and said black people could never be American citizens.

The symposium continues today and Saturday with discussions by 11 law, history and political science professors from across the country.

The case matters today because of the issues it raises about the roles of the Constitution and the U.S. Supreme Court, said UT law professor Sanford Levinson, the symposium's organizer.

Dellinger used the case to frame discussion of current immigration debates as Congress is considering denying citizenship to children born to illegal immigrants. The Dred Scott case was about deciding who got to be a U.S. citizen, he said, warning of the dangers of defining in laws and courts who is or is not American.

Both scholars agreed that the primary importance of the case is that it lays bare the prevailing attitudes about black people in early U.S. politics. "It makes us look at how race and racism are at the basis of the Constitution," Dellinger said.

A Virginia-born slave, Dred Scott was suing only for his own freedom, based on the argument that he could no longer be a slave because he had been taken to a free state. He had initially tried to buy freedom for himself and his wife, but his owner refused.

In March 1857, more than 10 years after he filed his lawsuit, the Supreme Court ruled on his case. The wide-reaching 7-2 decision denied citizenship to all black people and declared the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, allowing slavery in all states.

Black people "had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations," Chief Justice Roger Taney wrote in the court's decision. "They had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; the Negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit."

The decision, along with its soaring racist rhetoric, fueled the public debate on slavery, leading to Abraham Lincoln's election as president in 1860 and contributing to the start of the Civil War.

Kennedy said he sees Taney nearly every day in Harvard's library, where his portrait hangs on the wall among other historical figures. Despite the justice's opinion backing slavery, Kennedy said, he would not take the portrait down.

"In a way it's useful for Taney to be up on the wall," he said, because it can lead to conversation about him. "The problem is general ignorance."

If you go

The Dred Scott symposium is free and open to the public and will be held at the Eidman Courtroom, 723 Dean Keeton St. Parking is available at the San Jacinto garage.


TOPICS: Front Page News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: curtis; dredscott; racialsegregation; racistdemocrats; rogerbrooketaney; ruling; scotus
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1 posted on 03/31/2006 7:20:28 AM PST by Cat loving Texan
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To: Cat loving Texan

I wonder what percent of black teens (or white teens) could identify the case? Probably not a very high percentage. It has nothing to do with problems facing the black community today and has nothing to do with the solution to these problems.


2 posted on 03/31/2006 7:22:25 AM PST by SmoothTalker
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To: Cat loving Texan

But how do the blacks feel about losing their leading minority status to the Mexicans?


3 posted on 03/31/2006 7:24:52 AM PST by digger48
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To: Cat loving Texan
Yeah, we live in a pigmentocracy,"

The whole world is that way. America is no exception, we just handle it relatively better.
4 posted on 03/31/2006 7:25:06 AM PST by P-40 (http://www.590klbj.com/forum/index.php?referrerid=1854)
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To: Cat loving Texan
. "Until it is a (case) that one can read and feel that it is repudiated, it will continue to have . . . a certain potency."

I can read it and feel that it's repudiated. And its "potency" exists only in the minds of the race hustlers who have leveraged it into a cottage industry.

5 posted on 03/31/2006 7:25:50 AM PST by IronJack
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To: Cat loving Texan
Part of the answer is the racism inherent in the foundation of our government, he said, and it's not a historical artifact.

Racism is only inherent in the foundation of our government because liberals screwed with laws and entitlements long enough to make it so.

6 posted on 03/31/2006 7:27:58 AM PST by SaveTheChief ("This one goes to eleven.")
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To: IronJack

Its potency was forever crushed by the Union Army, and the destruction of the Old South.


7 posted on 03/31/2006 7:29:32 AM PST by proxy_user
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To: Cat loving Texan

Actually, I read something recently that suggested that, although on its face an outrage, the decision was, intentionally or not, a historically brilliant legal maneuver. By counting each slave as less than a full person, it kept the official population of the southern states from artificially ballooning, thereby inflating their representation in Congress and making the goal of freedom a slower and more difficult goal to achieve.


8 posted on 03/31/2006 7:31:23 AM PST by william clark
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To: SmoothTalker
I wonder what percent of black teens (or white teens) could identify the case?

Isn't the Dred Scott Case the case where Scott keeps his dred locks? Erie!

9 posted on 03/31/2006 7:32:21 AM PST by pikachu (Why are all my rich Nigerian relatives dying but none of them can get a will made?)
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To: Cat loving Texan
"In a way it's useful for Taney to be up on the wall," he said, because it can lead to conversation about him.

Further proof that the modern "civil rights" movement is ballasted by 150-year old injustices long since put right.

10 posted on 03/31/2006 7:32:35 AM PST by Caveman Lawyer (Cluckin' defiance)
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To: Cat loving Texan
African-Americans have a legitimate cause for anger in regards to the invasion of illegals from Mexico.

Consider the white Southern California "Yuppies". Most of them consider themselves "moderates" in the Los Angeles Times sense of the word - which is to say they are actually liberals. They are the ones hiring illegals as nannies, maids, and gardeners. Why? Because they prefer smiling brown faces to unsmiling black faces.

The chiseling business owners who run the garment district sweatshops also prefer those brown faces over black. Their racism is joined with an interest in acquiring a quick buck. They are apolitical for the most part and their concept of the "American Dream" is a warped pursuit of material wealth -- not patriotism and liberty.

As for the farmers up in the Big Valley (solid conservatives many of them) -- seems they would rather have brown faced migrants than share the Tule fog black faced permanent residents.

A young black student was interviewed on a local television station and asked his reaction to this weeks barrage of immigration 'discussions' in the public schools. He said he didn't care -- it wasn't about him. But it is about him, his family and his neighbors. Very much about him indeed.
11 posted on 03/31/2006 7:33:30 AM PST by BenLurkin (O beautiful for patriot dream - that sees beyond the years)
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To: Cat loving Texan
"a pigmentocracy?"
When I was a child my parents and siblings laughed in my face for making up ridiculous new words. Today I've learned why; I'm not black and I don't have a doctorate.
12 posted on 03/31/2006 7:45:53 AM PST by kublia khan (Absolute war brings total victory)
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To: Cat loving Texan
"The problem is general ignorance."

I agree -- Ignorance by the sleazy legal profession that continues to stir up problems where there are none.
13 posted on 03/31/2006 7:48:17 AM PST by C Knotts
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To: digger48
Out with the old, in with the new?

It will be interesting to see how Democratic policy changes to pander to the new minority class versus the old. Hell, they're already calling it the new civil rights movement and they're not even legal citizens yet. I guess the early bird gets the worm.
14 posted on 03/31/2006 7:55:18 AM PST by TheForceOfOne (El Chupacabra spotted near U.S./Mexican border feeding on illegal immigrants. Pass it on..)
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To: TheForceOfOne

The Democrats will probably start by trying to give back Texas


15 posted on 03/31/2006 7:59:48 AM PST by digger48
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To: william clark
"...thereby inflating their representation in Congress and making the goal of freedom a slower and more difficult goal to achieve."

If you are insinuating that the US Congress was working on freedom for slaves in 1861, sadly you are mistaken. Perhaps you have not heard of the Corwin Amendment to the US Constitution.

The Corwin Amendment to the United States Constitution, Number 13, Would Legalize Slavery throughout the Country.

2/28/1861 Congress wrote and passed the Corwin Amendment, also known as the Slavery Amendment. In a remarkable attempt to keep Southern States from leaving the Union, a 13th Amendment to the Constitution, was whittled out of the Crittenden Compromise of the second session of the Thirty-sixth Congress.

It would legalize slavery everywhere in the Union.

It was submitted to both houses of Congress on February 28, later approved, and submitted to the states for ratification on March 9, 1861. It declared in part that:

“No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give Congress the power to abolish or interfere within any state, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor service by the laws of said State”.

Before being sent to the states, during the last hour of President Buchanan’s tenure, he affixed his signature to the document

The President’s signature was considered unnecessary because of the constitutional provision that on the concurrence of two-thirds of both Houses of Congress, the proposal would be submitted to the States for ratification.

Newly inaugurated President Lincoln later signed the document’s letter of introduction to the state governors, and asked for their approval.

It was quickly ratified by Maryland and Ohio. Its passage by other states was haulted by Lincoln's call for troops.
16 posted on 03/31/2006 8:01:59 AM PST by PeaRidge
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To: william clark
By counting each slave as less than a full person

I do not believe the Dred Scott Decision had anything to do with the three-fifths provision. The people in the North actually wanted to count slaves as zero and the people in the South wanted to count them as one, but this was only for the purposes of deciding the apportionment of representation in the House of Representatives.

ML/NJ

17 posted on 03/31/2006 8:03:00 AM PST by ml/nj
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To: digger48

Give it back. Give it back. To us.


18 posted on 03/31/2006 8:04:51 AM PST by BuglerTex
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To: Cat loving Texan
But the case has been repudiated. The case was based on diversity jurisdiction. Back then you're citizenship was according to your state, not the national government. Therefore a slave escaping to a free state was still a citizen of the slave state he came from and subject to its laws. Now we have national citizenship and unless the 13th amendment has been repealed, I believe we do not have slavery anymore. I don't think you can get greater repudiation than that.
19 posted on 03/31/2006 8:09:33 AM PST by Stag_Man (Hamilton is my Hero)
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To: BenLurkin

I totally agree BenLurkin. These so-called "moderates" would welcome the brown people as long as those brown people do their landscaping for a low price.

Oh wait... you mean not only are they bringing landscaping tools in, but drugs as well? Who cares. Some of these men probably have felonies? Who cares.

Meanwhile, while black Americans continue to struggle for an education and to do away with the biased, gangster image they are constantly bombarded with on liberal entertainment television, these illegals are getting a free ride...

Oh the logic of a liberal... wait that's an oxymoron...


20 posted on 03/31/2006 8:16:42 AM PST by AmericanRepublican (There are fools on both sides. Only the true Americans will prevail.)
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