White Men's Law: The Roots of Systemic RacismA searing--and sobering--account of the legal and extra-legal 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. From the arrival of the first English settlers in America until now-a span of four centuries-a minority of white men have created, managed, and perpetuated their control of every major institution, public and private, in American society. And no group in America has suffered more from the harms imposed by white men's laws than African Americans, with punishment by law often replaced by extra-legal means. Over the centuries, thousands of victims have been murdered by lynching, white mobs, and appalling massacres. In White Men's Law, the eminent scholar Peter Irons makes a powerful and persuasive case that African Americans have always been held back by systemic racism in all major institutions that can hold power over them. Based on a wide range of sources, from the painful words of former slaves to test scores that reveal how our education system has failed Black children, this searing and sobering account of legal and extra-legal violence against African Americans peels away the fictions and myths expressed by white racists. The centerpiece of Irons' account is a 1935 lynching in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The episode produced a photograph of a blonde white girl of about seven looking at the hanging, bullet-riddled body of Rubin Stacy, who was accused of assaulting a white woman. After analyzing this gruesome murder and the visual evidence left behind, Irons poses a foundational question: What historical forces preceded and followed this lynching to spark resistance to Jim Crow segregation, especially in schools that had crippled Black children with inferior education? The answers are rooted in the systemic racism-especially in the institutions of law and education--that African Americans, and growing numbers of white allies, are demanding be dismantled in tangible ways. A thought-provoking look at systemic racism and the legal systems that built it, White Men's Law is an essential contribution to this painful but necessary debate. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 18
Page 1
... sheriff in 1931 at the age of twenty- seven. By 1935 he had already become notorious among the county's small Black ... sheriff's younger brother and chief deputy, Robert, was widely known to have shot and killed a Black woman who ...
... sheriff in 1931 at the age of twenty- seven. By 1935 he had already become notorious among the county's small Black ... sheriff's younger brother and chief deputy, Robert, was widely known to have shot and killed a Black woman who ...
Page 2
... Sheriff Bob Clark . In the back seat she saw a Black man sitting between two White men . Clark's car was followed by several others and a uni- formed officer on a three - wheeled motorcycle , which slowed down in front of the young ...
... Sheriff Bob Clark . In the back seat she saw a Black man sitting between two White men . Clark's car was followed by several others and a uni- formed officer on a three - wheeled motorcycle , which slowed down in front of the young ...
Page 3
... Sheriff Clark once pulled up at the mortuary with the body of a Black man strapped across his car's hood, like a ten- point buck. Dropping the body to the ground, the sheriff had said, “Here's another dead nigger for you, George,” then ...
... Sheriff Clark once pulled up at the mortuary with the body of a Black man strapped across his car's hood, like a ten- point buck. Dropping the body to the ground, the sheriff had said, “Here's another dead nigger for you, George,” then ...
Page 4
... Sheriff Walter Clark pledged his full cooperation with the inquest. Marie called twenty- nine witnesses, including Clark and his brother the chief deputy. The Clarks both testified that Stacy had been apprehended about twenty miles ...
... Sheriff Walter Clark pledged his full cooperation with the inquest. Marie called twenty- nine witnesses, including Clark and his brother the chief deputy. The Clarks both testified that Stacy had been apprehended about twenty miles ...
Page 5
... Sheriff Clark told the grand jurors or present anyone who could defend him. And there is no record of anything Stacy may have said during any “interrogation” by Clark or his deputies. Accounts did circulate, however, that he had ...
... Sheriff Clark told the grand jurors or present anyone who could defend him. And there is no record of anything Stacy may have said during any “interrogation” by Clark or his deputies. Accounts did circulate, however, that he had ...
Contents
1 | |
1 Thirty Lashes Well Laid On | 19 |
2 Dem Was Hard Times Sho Nuff | 39 |
3 Beings of an Inferior Order | 59 |
4 Fighting for White Supremacy | 77 |
5 The Foul Odors of Blacks | 95 |
6 Negroes Plan to Kill All Whites | 115 |
7 Intimate Social Contact with Negro Men | 135 |
9 War against the Constitution | 173 |
10 Two CitiesOne White the Other Black | 195 |
11 All Blacks Are Angry | 213 |
12 The Basic Minimal Skills | 233 |
Rooting Out Systemic Racism | 249 |
Source Notes and Suggested Reading | 261 |
Index | 275 |
8 I Thanked God Right Then and There | 155 |
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Common terms and phrases
American argument Black and White Black children Black students Brown buses Chief Justice citizens civil rights Clarendon County colonial color Confederate Congress Constitution crime decades decision defendants Democrats Detroit disparities Dred Scott Edgewood election equal families Fourteenth Amendment freedom Freedom Rides high school Hispanic House inequality institutions issue Jim Crow laws Judge killed labor later law school lawyers Little Rock lived lynching Marshall Massacre Milliken Mississippi murder NAACP Negro neighborhoods nigger officials opinion Ossian Sweet parents person Plessy police political population President protection public schools race racial Reconstruction Republican ruling school district school segregation Senate sheriff slavery social South Carolina southern Stacy state’s Supreme Court systemic racism Taney Texas Thurgood Marshall Tillman tion Topeka Trump victims violence Virginia vote voters W. E. B. Du Bois Warren White and Black White Men’s Law White students White supremacy Wikipedia wrote