Peter Irons
- Published in print:
- 2022
- Published Online:
- November 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780190914943
- eISBN:
- 9780197582923
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190914943.003.0014
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This epilogue, written after the 2020 elections and the inauguration of President Joe Biden, first looks at the refusal of former president Donald Trump to accept his electoral defeat and his ...
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This epilogue, written after the 2020 elections and the inauguration of President Joe Biden, first looks at the refusal of former president Donald Trump to accept his electoral defeat and his incitement of his hard-core supporters to disrupt the counting of electoral votes in the Senate chamber of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Their violent storming of the Capitol, resulting in five deaths, prompted the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives to impeach Trump for “incitement to insurrection.” However, only seven of fifty GOP senators joined all fifty Democrats to convict Trump, short of the required two-thirds majority of sixty-seven. One major consequence of Biden’s victory was his pledge, in a document entitled “Lift Every Voice: The Biden Plan for Black America,” to focus on “rooting out systemic racism” in American institutions. The epilogue then looks at the impact of Trump’s (and his followers) racism on two major social and political issues: the greater infection, hospitalization, and death rates of Blacks from the coronavirus pandemic, and racial justice and police reform after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in May 2020. Attempting to arrest Floyd, a forty-six-year-old Black man, for allegedly trying to pass a counterfeit $20 bill, Police Officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for almost ten minutes while he was handcuffed and prone on the street. The jury verdict in Chauvin’s murder trial, unknown at this writing, will play a significant role in determining how Americans will support, or oppose, programs and policies to “root out systemic racism,” as President Biden has pledged to combat. The reign of White Men’s Law must end.Less
This epilogue, written after the 2020 elections and the inauguration of President Joe Biden, first looks at the refusal of former president Donald Trump to accept his electoral defeat and his incitement of his hard-core supporters to disrupt the counting of electoral votes in the Senate chamber of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Their violent storming of the Capitol, resulting in five deaths, prompted the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives to impeach Trump for “incitement to insurrection.” However, only seven of fifty GOP senators joined all fifty Democrats to convict Trump, short of the required two-thirds majority of sixty-seven. One major consequence of Biden’s victory was his pledge, in a document entitled “Lift Every Voice: The Biden Plan for Black America,” to focus on “rooting out systemic racism” in American institutions. The epilogue then looks at the impact of Trump’s (and his followers) racism on two major social and political issues: the greater infection, hospitalization, and death rates of Blacks from the coronavirus pandemic, and racial justice and police reform after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in May 2020. Attempting to arrest Floyd, a forty-six-year-old Black man, for allegedly trying to pass a counterfeit $20 bill, Police Officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for almost ten minutes while he was handcuffed and prone on the street. The jury verdict in Chauvin’s murder trial, unknown at this writing, will play a significant role in determining how Americans will support, or oppose, programs and policies to “root out systemic racism,” as President Biden has pledged to combat. The reign of White Men’s Law must end.
Peter Irons
- Published in print:
- 2022
- Published Online:
- November 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780190914943
- eISBN:
- 9780197582923
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190914943.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
White Men’s Law recounts and explores the legal and extralegal means by which systemic White racism has kept Black Americans “in their place” from slavery to police and vigilante killings of Black ...
More
White Men’s Law recounts and explores the legal and extralegal means by which systemic White racism has kept Black Americans “in their place” from slavery to police and vigilante killings of Black men and women, from 1619 to the present. The book argues that African Americans have always been held back by systemic racism in all major institutions—especially the legal and educational systems—that hold power over them. Based on a wide range of sources, from the painful words of former slaves to Supreme Court decisions and test scores that reveal how our education system has failed Black children, the book examines the various ways White racists justify and perpetuate their superior position in American society. The book is framed around the lynching of Rubin Stacy in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in 1935. An illiterate Black farmhand, Stacy was accused of assaulting a White woman and was lynched by a deputy sheriff and a mob that fired seventeen bullets into his lifeless body. White Men’s Law poses a critical question: What historical forces preceded and followed this and thousands more lynchings that show the damaging—and often deadly—impact of systemic racism on Black Americans? After recounting struggles over racism from the first shipment of slaves to colonial Virginia until the present, it concludes with a look at efforts by President Joe Biden to “root out systemic racism” in both public and private institutions and the barriers those efforts face from entrenched racism in those institutions.Less
White Men’s Law recounts and explores the legal and extralegal means by which systemic White racism has kept Black Americans “in their place” from slavery to police and vigilante killings of Black men and women, from 1619 to the present. The book argues that African Americans have always been held back by systemic racism in all major institutions—especially the legal and educational systems—that hold power over them. Based on a wide range of sources, from the painful words of former slaves to Supreme Court decisions and test scores that reveal how our education system has failed Black children, the book examines the various ways White racists justify and perpetuate their superior position in American society. The book is framed around the lynching of Rubin Stacy in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in 1935. An illiterate Black farmhand, Stacy was accused of assaulting a White woman and was lynched by a deputy sheriff and a mob that fired seventeen bullets into his lifeless body. White Men’s Law poses a critical question: What historical forces preceded and followed this and thousands more lynchings that show the damaging—and often deadly—impact of systemic racism on Black Americans? After recounting struggles over racism from the first shipment of slaves to colonial Virginia until the present, it concludes with a look at efforts by President Joe Biden to “root out systemic racism” in both public and private institutions and the barriers those efforts face from entrenched racism in those institutions.
