These next words, though, memorialized for all time in the High Court decision, put flesh on the bones of the pro-slavery argument: “[Blacks] had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect;”

Maybe I’m wrong, but I believe this sentiment, however much it has been relegated today to the trash heap of unspoken utterances, is still alive and well in America.

Black folk have drank deeply of ‘the Kool-Aid of no respect’ for generations, and have internalized the same view of themselves that the Supreme Court expressed 163 years ago; the same view expressed by the first American slavemasters back when Plymouth Rock landed on us.

According to data compiled by Mapping Police Violence, a research and advocacy group, blacks are 2.5 times as likely as white Americans to be killed by the police, but make up only 13 percent of the population.

While California, Florida and Texas have the highest numbers of killings of Black people by police officers, when you adjust for population size and demographics, blacks are more likely to be killed by police officers than whites in just about every state in the nation.

The institutional nature of this attitude results in minorities like Hispanics (like Jeronimo Yanez– who killed Philando Castille), Asians (like Tou Thao– who stood guard while Derek Chauvin, Thomas Lane and J. Alexander Kueng squeezed the life out of George Floyd) becoming part of historically all-white police forces and taking on the same disdain and lack of respect.

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