The Color of the Constitution (Part II)

Even many blacks argued that Brown is not constitutional, because it says, in effect, that blacks are not equal to whites. By claiming the only way blacks could be equal to whites was to be in their schools was in fact insinuating that blacks are not equal. Others also argued that the probability was much higher that blacks were going to be inconvenienced more by the ruling than whites by spending more time traveling to schools to meet integration requirements (which was true – even though it was argued that Linda Brown had to travel many more miles to go to an all-black school when an all-white school was just down the street).

The most logical explanation to rule in favor of Brown was the 14th amendment’s definition of citizenship: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” In probably one of the most famous of dissents of all time, Justice John Harlan in Plessy wrote: “Our Constitution in color-blind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved....” (Remember, Brown overturned Plessy so Harlan’s dissent is now actually the winning argument and still cited in cases today). This argument was much more justifiable than the use of “due process”, especially since due process did not apply to the District of Columbia (DC) integration cases. Today, liberals hail the Harlan dissent in Plessy but, in future cases, these same liberals will view the constitution in terms of black and white – in their view the constitution is not colorblind. This may explain why the Court did not go this route in its ruling. Since the Brown ruling and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Supreme Court heard numerous cases on racial issues. The court ruled that affirmative action is Constitutional (hence, the constitution is not color-blind) so long as it does not include quotas. But how can anyone truly apply affirmative action and claim that it is NOT part of a quota system at schools or corporations. The court was deeply dedicated to integration that in Green v. County School Board it decided that freedom of choice in school systems was not an effective policy to integrate school systems. This, in effect, outlawed the freedom of allowing parents a choice in school systems for their children. In Swann v. Charlotte School Board the Court ruled that busing students was an appropriate means to integrate schools. Of course, many blacks were inconvenienced by spending several hours each day traveling to distant schools (as pointed out earlier, the opposite argument was used in the Brown case where Linda Brown claimed to be inconvenienced by having to travel a long distance to an all-black school). Lower courts even desegregated teachers. In other words, the Court was doing anything including violating people’s right to choice, making it acceptable to have rules and regulations favoring blacks over whites, and making hypocritical decisions, to integrate schools. The Court was using social justice to compensate for prior atrocities against blacks, but it was doing it in a matter that discriminated against whites and even inconveniencing blacks.

The bottom line, the Court discriminated by violating “equal protection” (citizen) rights of whites in an attempt to find social justice for blacks from 1954 to the present. Today, protestors do not know all the sacrifices made by Warren court and the Court since the Brown decision to provide social justice for blacks. Our history is far from perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but blacks and liberal whites want to eliminate or stifle free speech as well as showing prejudice towards whites and the police. In fact, these same people’s ignorance of history and their inability to take advantage of the Courts activism, which is now skewed in favor of black citizens, is not the fault of whites or the police in general, but the fault of failed liberal policies since the passage of Civil Rights Act in 1964. For instance, welfare has worked to keep blacks oppressed. And the way these protesters are acting would bring shame to Martin Luther King and all the Supreme Court Justices in the Brown case who would want nothing to do with their lawlessness. They would certainly be disappointed as to how far the race issue has digressed under Obama presidency. Maybe knowing what we know today, the Court would have rethought some of their activist rulings to acquire social justice.

There is no question that the Constitution protected whites and kept blacks as slaves until the Civil War. One could say the Constitution was white the first 75 years of its existence. The addition of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments protected blacks by giving them their freedom, but Jim Crow laws still treated blacks unfairly. The next 75 years added a bit more color to the Constitution. It wasn’t until after the Brown decision that the Constitution has gradually turned black over the last 75 years.

The Constitution should be colorblind as proposed by John Harlan, but to some degree I can understand why the Courts became more activist to incorporate social justice. It is not so much the fault of the Courts as it was the fault of humanity to accept blacks in society. Unfortunately, all of this activism set some bad precedents allowing the Court to intervene in cases beyond race. Courts should not be influenced by external factors, but it is hard to look the other way when there is hate.

It pains me to see the Black Lives Matter movement pushing for prejudice and other protests trying to silence the first amendment. How is this behavior any different than the prejudice that blacks faced the past century? There is no difference, hate is hate. It is sad. It seems the Courts efforts to bring justice and peace by adding color to the Constitution has only worked to create more prejudice, hate and lawlessness within the black race.