Equality before the law is fiction

Oh, the fear of being that which I was. The terror analogous to that of the American people, illusorily construing themselves as unlike savages, propellers of chaos, uncivilized campers across the Atlantic residing in “shit-hole” countries. My perception of identity was once synonymous to the ‘patriot’ who reveled at the golden words of the framers; skewed. “Constitution, constitution, oh the law ... the people are equal, aren’t we all?” the patriot bellowed.

Yet, equality before the law is legal fiction. It is a false assumption of truth, which is unnatural to the law. A law that has historically been created by white males, interpreted by white males, and enforced by white males cannot reasonably be thought to innately deliver equal opportunities to minorities. The assertion that people are equal before the law is but a disposition that conceals the offensiveness of a society which propels the white male view as the American view.

If the patriot looked past his hegemonic standpoint, the reflection of the constitution would glare through the eyes of the American people and the history of civilization; he would see the flaw in his judgment. He would recognize that the American people are the Hutu’s that mass murdered Tutsi’s, the Kony’s that gave children guns, the Al Shabaab’s that threw stones at women. American brutality disguised with sophisticated procedures and complex terminologies does not negate the inimical impact on minorities. Consequently, the patriot’s false perception of justice does not translate into reality.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was perhaps one of the few who understood the antithesis between fantasies and realities. The view that equal protection encompasses all Americans is fiction. The reality is that African Americans are unequal recipients of police brutality, death penalty sentencing, and mass incarceration. However, this disparity is far from shocking. If anything, it is congruent with the hegemonic function of the law. White male power is reinforced by the legal institution’s seemingly abstract and formalized system. Genovese in Roll, Jordan, Roll, identified the contradictions in the law of American slavery where courts debated on whether slaves were property without free-will or rational thinkers punishable for their actions. The arbitrary rulings favoring the white bourgeoisie are no different from that of today.

The patriot is puzzled by perception

If the patriot replaced his myopic lens’, he would realize that on American soil lies a genocide not waged by soldiers in camouflage but driven by his civilian counterparts; jurors four and one half more likely to impose a death penalty sentence on black defendants than white defendants. But having clear vision involves experiencing cognitive dissonance about his great country, displacing everything he has learnt about the law. So, for the sake of repose, comfort, and continuity, the patriot lounges in his expensive New York apartment, shaking his head at CNN broadcasts about bloodshed in Northern Nigeria while black men like Eric Garner are choked to death by law enforcement officers on Staten Island. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

The patriot frowns, irked that his commitment to justice for African Americans goes uncredited. He argues that he marched in Ferguson, created a ‘diversity’ scholarship in his firm, had one or two African American friends on retainer, and yet he is unappreciated; there are yet to be awards in his name, medals of honor for his unwearied support of the African American community. To him I ask, how comfortable are you sharing the power your ancestors delivered to your cradle? Are you truly satisfied with relinquishing the superiority bequeathed to you because your hair is blonde and your eyes are blue? Understandably, the cognitive dissonance he experiences is jarring. The fear of accepting his “self-deception and comfortable vanity” cuts across time and place. Like him, white clergymen identified as supporters of African Americans when they wrote to Martin Luther King Jr., criticizing his actions in Birmingham Alabama. Like him, “the majority of white Americans consider themselves sincerely committed to justice for the Negro; believing that the American society is essentially hospitable to fair play.” Like him, even African Americans have become content with the system.

The force is you

Similar to African American forefathers in the paternalist slave era who subdued themselves to ensure protection from slave masters, many of my brothers and sisters have restricted their opposition to the white hegemony because of the seeming ‘privileges’ they have been given. The fight for equality before the law is no longer priority for the African American student who gets to learn in classrooms once reserved for whites. The African American banker who walks in custom Tom Ford suits has lost interest in the racial profiling of his counterparts in hoods. Many of my people have become comfortable with being the token for fictional equality. They seem elated to be tools employed by the dominant hegemony to reify white superiority. No wonder the patriot is of the false perception that the people are equal!

But equality in the law is mythical. My African American people, let us not be satisfied with being the one minority hire, silencing our agency in exchange for wages our fellow sisters in the Bronx would never have the opportunity to earn. Let us resist becoming passive cover girls or poster boys for diversity quotas. Let us not sacrifice the movement for civil rights with the distorted notion that America is a post-racial country without the chaos attributed to “shit-hole” countries. Rather, let us embrace the force that we are; march on hills with tightened fists and negotiate in houses with comprehensive lists. After all, as Judge Day asserts, “real power exists outside the courts.”