Cobb

The idea of a document opposing racism as the Declaration of Independence opposes monarchism is an appealing one, but there is an important distinction between racism and monarchism. Monarchism is a phenomenon in and of government. Racism is a phenomenon which has its mechanisms distributed through all of the elements of society.

The Declaration of Independence is a manifesto which protests a form of government and calls for a transformation in government. A Declaration of Anti-Racism would have to be a manifesto whcih protests a form of society and proposes a transformation in society, which is a much taller order. The two are not directly comparable ...

"...certainly the authors of the Three Fifths Compromise are racist."

Then you don't understand the three-fifths compromise. The Southern delegates, who regarded slaves as chattel, wanted blacks to be counted as whole persons for the purposes of apportionment and representation. Why do you suppose that was? What could the South possibly have to gain by counting blacks as persons when it came time to assign congressional seats and yet treating them as property otherwise? Compromise is, by definition, imperfect. The three-fifths compromise ensured that the Constitution would be passed, while putting off the resolution of the slavery question for almost 100 years.

The Three-Fifths compromise guaranteed political rights for white southerners disproportionate to their actual population with no provisions whatsoever for enfranchisement black southerners.

It Constitutionally codified the value of owning slaves into congressional voting rights, not for the slaves but for the slave owners. Essentially, the more slaves you own, the more seats you get in Congress by dint of the fact that your human population is larger than your citizen population. Furthermore it rewarded the South by giving them a political incentive to breed slaves, which was much less expensive than purchasing them outright from the Trade.

The framers essentially said, "We did not care if you ever give them the right to vote, it is not a condition of your right to vote." How that isn't racist is beyond my comprehension. Whether or not the South ever intended to grant voting rights to Africans had no effect whatsoever upon the conditions of the compromise. The framers thus granted these rights in perpetuity without regard to the conditions or rights of the slaves which smacks dead center in contradiction to their own stated principles of liberty.

There had to be some specific reason why no enfranchisement for slaves was granted on any basis and I contend that reason was already established in the jurisprudence of the day which reduced the standing of Africans in colonial courts. This difference in standing is well documented by Judge Leon A. Higgenbotham in his works on the legal systems of the time.

I understand that racism operates in many different ways through society, but I think Americans tend to forget how much of the letter and spirit of the law favored white supremacy.

I think that the best way to illustrate this is by asking the questions about how racism might come to be illegal and how all institutions would be shaped by anti-racist law. So I was suggesting that had the framers included racist offenses in their complaint, it would have come as a natural circumstance that the nation's laws and institions would be significantly different simply because the burdens of proof would have favored plaintiffs in civil cases and that prosecutors would be able to investigate in those areas deemed criminal.

Even had these laws been passed as recently as 1900, it would have made a huge difference in the labor movement which would have had very significant economic and political consequences for people of color.

I agree, but let me quibble over a turn of phrase: how "racism might come to be illegal" is an awkward way of describing a legal system with anti-racist values at its core. I believe you could have "racism systematically countered by law." But the expression "make X illegal" suggests something you can do to a thing (like a contraband product) or an action (like a criminal act). "Racism" is too diffuse to qualify as either of these.

I still manage to wake up without a law degree and respect myself in the morning, but I agree with your quibble. I'm in that twilight area in which I believe my logic is strong enough to do law, but I lack a handy vocab of well-defined nuances.

What I've been angling towards is a set of anti-racist principles as distinguished from anti-discrimination laws. Consider this document on the persistence of institutional racism. I think if you had a set of principled (ick - dare I say it?) regulations, you could no sooner have institutional racism in business, than you could have institutional communism in banks. The two simply couldn't co-exist.

I think about what it means to a company when auditors come in and verify the books, or to a rancher when a government inspector comes to grade his beef. We submit to such scrutiny because in the end we believe it is better for our society that we do. And yet to suggest that we initiate similar regimes in service of anti-racist principle remain politically untouchable.

I honestly believe that Americans feel that it is their right to be racist and so oppose advancement of anti-racist ethics and law. I'll dig up something in a separate post.

"The Three-Fifths compromise guaranteed political rights for white southerners disproportionate to their actual population with no provisions whatsoever for enfranchisement black southerners."

Indeed, it did. But three-fifths is two-fifth less than one whole, which is what the Southern delegates wanted, for the very reason you state. The compromise was struck in part to keep the Southern slave power in check. It may have given Southerners an incentive to breed slaves. But then so did the provision to end the importation of slaves.

The question you have to answer is this: was the Constitution worth compromises such as the three-fifths? Or would disunion have been preferable?

Certainly, this Constitution was compromised. It was a compromise acceptable to the framers because, as I said, anti-racist principles were unsupported. The territorial integrity of the Union was more important than human and civil rights for these gents, none of whom we are aware of took any pains to publish any notable dissent on those grounds. I think it is a lack of such a dissent that leads many to conclude that our standards are 'modern' and it is therefore unfair to call the framers racist. I should like to find such a dissent.

I think that the example of African American history demonstrates the importance of anti-racist principle to the fundamental requirements of a pluralistic society. Therefore it comes as no surprise that constitutions penned since ours have adopted such principles. Without them and open borders, there is no reason to believe any nation could grow and prosper as our has without an express policy of imperial conquest, not that we are strictly innocent of that.

I am convinced that our future depends upon the fortification of anti-racist principles after the fact of the Constitution. This requires a kind of perspective I find lacking in debates about race. Indeed it could be said that most Americans have never seen clearly to principle in this regard and rather have only approached the matter facing in the right direction yet with relatively low standards. This is precisely the kind of misdirected reasoning that stands as the new law of the land vis a vis Affirmative Action. For the improper and spongy principle of 'diversity' we rule.

At this late date, we have already born many great costs for our lack of diligence, and it doesn't seem likely that any forseeable great trouble will force us to do right. But I'll keep watching and pushing.