The New Slave Masters

Welcome to the new, more egalitarian America: we are all niggers now.

Wendy McElroy has a piece about the horrifying case of a badged criminal killing two sisters by crashing into the car carrying them with his police car at high speed. The officer, who was driving 126 mph without sirens at the time of the crash, had been sending emails and talking on the telephone seconds before the crash. Despite the clear evidence of criminality, the family could not be certain of a conviction, and opted to accept a plea bargain by the officer. While convicted of a felony, the officer will not have to spend a day in jail. Instead of the lengthy prison sentence which would await any of us, the criminal in this case received 10 years of probation.

While many people who have not concerned themselves with the police will be surprised to hear it, the simple fact is the police are a special class of person in the United States. Not since the era of slavery and the subsequent Jim Crow era have we seen second-class citizenry displayed so unashamedly. And do not think that the comparison between police and slaveholders and oppressors of the past is overstating the case. It is not overstating the case in the slightest. The family of the victims in this case had concerns over whether or not the officer would be convicted at all. The evidence in this case is even stronger than in many of the shameful murders of blacks in the past, yet being able to secure a conviction against the new massahs was a dubious matter.

Police, for all practical matters, have rights far beyond those which ordinary citizens enjoy. Police may request identification from people, detain people, beat people, and even kill innocents, with little or no fear of the negative repercussions which any of us would expect were we to do any of those things. My father described similar experiences in Birmingham in the 1950s. Welcome to the new, more egalitarian America: we are all niggers now. Just as in the past, convictions were difficult to obtain against people who were clearly guilty of assault and murder, so today is it difficult to obtain such convictions. Just as in the past, blacks had nearly no ability to exercise self-defense without severe negative repercussions, so today do people of all races have nearly no ability to defend themselves against thuggery from the elite class.

In light of the new reality, why don’t we reinvigorate some proud American traditions? Police departments already cooperate in apprehending fugitives, so the fugitive slave laws won’t fill the bill. We still have them, as anyone who has been pursued for tax evasion or any number of other phony crimes could tell you. What then? Well, how about just establishing a new 3/5th rule for those of us not in the oppressor class? It would not only be an appropriate reflection of America as it is, but it would also be a constant reminder to us field hands and house slaves of who really runs things around here.