I've only read The New Jim Crowe, as of now, but the idea that's pressing on me is what race actually is. Before our tearless goodbyes my dad told me about race as a scientific inquiry in plants compared to humans. One species can have many races, distinguishable by the fruit they bear, temperate temperament etc. but there is no such thing in Homo Homo Sapiens, not identified to date anyway. Given his bias to botany, dramatization is natural, as i've seen in every scientist I've encountered; maybe there is a race- my fascination is that I hadn't considered the possibility that there isn't. If i accept the presumption to race simply fall back to ethnicity? And race is only of sociological origin? And what does that make the illusion of race? When I look at people it's obvious that they're different, but ethnicity is an abstraction, a thought. Without society I am still aware that this (me) is not that (let's say the black (we didn't talk about if this word offends anyone, which I may take offense to) blondes off a pacific island (don't remember which). And whether race is sociological, biological or mental (yes) slavery and slaughter are too real.
"He has, as a consequence of his crime, not only forfeited his liberty, but all his personal rights except those which the law in it's humanity accords to him. He is for the time being a slave of the state" (Ruffin v. Commonwealth, 62 Va. 790, 796 (1871). Page 31 of TNJC
Is liberty not a personal right, or just not humane?
