Bill Russell on keeping his hands up during a traffic stop.

[BumRushDaShow]

88. That was NOT your original assertion

Post #44 remarked -

The incident in Russell's book doesn't sound like one of those times

which was in response to your Post #31 that proffers that your article about a recent incident between Russell and federal police at an airport purportedly shows "improvement" in relations (where I had argued in a separate subthread that the TSA is not your local LEO - the folks that most POC might have contact with unless they are traveling on a plane).

And in reply to #44 you wrote -

But that was over 30 years ago

I would argue that perhaps things are better today, even though, obviously, there are still very serious problems.

And my assertion continues to say (with various posts and links) that no, things are NOT better because the incidents continue - notably the fact that we have protests going on right now due to POC continuing to be shot down in the street. The fact that more outside of the POC community are expressing outrage is genuinely heartening - but there have ALWAYS been folks outside of our community who have done all they could to help (even going back to the white abolitionists and Quakers and others working the Underground Railroad), so it's not really new and definitely, the more the merrier to help bring an end to this madness.

The disparate treatment - for example, someone who looks like this, who was NOT automatically shot while threateningly waving a gun, while this guy is treated with kid gloves after slaughtering 9 black parishioners. Yet those not looking like him, with no weapon except an "imagined" one, get executed, sometimes in a hail of 137 bullets. And in yet another provocative move, this guy comes sauntering into the crowd by the Alton Sterling memorial while packing heat, yet he is not automatically shot down by police.

All of these examples are just a tiny fraction of what has NOT changed.

This type of disparate treatment illustrates how the 1857 "Dred Scott" decision continues to impact the lives of POC despite its (purported) later overruling. Particularly since the other tragedy that prompted the current protests involved a man who DID have a legal permit, yet was executed before his girlfriend's eyes, and now the NRA's silence on that is apparently causing all sorts of "internal discord".

I.e., that decision in Dred Scott said in part -

<...>

4. [font color="red"]A free negro of the African race[/font], whose ancestors were brought to this country and sold as slaves, [font color="red"]is not a "citizen" within the meaning of the Constitution of the United States.[/font]

5. When the Constitution was adopted, they were not regarded in any of the States as members of the community which constituted the State, and were not numbered among its "people or citizens." [font color="red"]Consequently, the special rights and immunities guarantied to citizens do not apply to them[/font]. And not being "citizens" within the meaning of the Constitution, they are not entitled to sue in that character in a court of the United States, and the Circuit Court has not jurisdiction in such a suit.

6. The only two clauses in the Constitution which point to this race treat them as persons whom it was morally lawfully to deal in as articles of property and to hold as slaves.

7. [font color="red"]Since the adoption of the Constitution of the United States, no State can by any subsequent law[/font] make a foreigner or any other description of persons citizens of [p394] the United States, nor [font color="red"]entitle them to the rights and privileges secured to citizens by that instrument[/font].

8. A State, by its laws passed since the adoption of the Constitution, may put a foreigner or any other description of persons upon a footing with its own citizens as to all the rights and privileges enjoyed by them within its dominion and by its laws. But that will not make him a citizen of the United States, nor entitle him to sue in its courts, nor to any of the privileges and immunities of a citizen in another State.

9. [font color="red"]The change in public opinion and feeling in relation to the African race which has taken place since the adoption of the Constitution cannot change its construction and meaning, and it must be construed and administered now according to its true meaning and intention when it was formed and adopted.[/font]

<...>

https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/60/393

Meaning that none of the Amendments are to apply to POC and you see day after day after day, how that has come to pass - whether it's the right to legally own a gun or try to vote or even peaceably assemble to petition for regress from the government (without being tear-gassed or shot at with rubber bullets).

There are conservative members of our current Supreme court who are "originalists" (like the traitor Thomas and his now-deceased mouthpiece Scalia) who would most likely agree with the above.