02/12/2022
Just in time for Black History Month
One word we should all come to grips with, "equal"
We saw it used in Plessy vs Ferguson (1896), where a Black man named Homer Adolph Plessy challenged the constitutionality of separate but equal railroad cars in Louisiana. The US Supreme Court ruled that railroad cars where equal and the 'separate but equal' doctrine was born in public accommodations, transportation, etc. Jim Crow laws proliferated thereafter.
Ever since the Court's decision, lawyers had been challenging the "equal" part of the 'separate but equal' doctrine to challenge Jim Crow-era laws. That all changed in Brown vs [Topeka] Board of Education (I) when the focus was switched to the word 'separate' after the writings of a Howard law grad named Pauli Murray, a Black woman, whose peers laughed at her arguments 10 years earlier.
Brown vs the Board of Education set the basis for ALL subsequent civil rights legislation regarding 'equal' protection under the law.
Today, this one word, "equal" still causes much confusion and frustration among many US citizens, especially among conservatives - even the Black ones who can be found on any given day scratching their heads and asses around whether equality exists in this country. For them it does, but they miss the part about conservative whites consistently challenging civil rights laws and liberal whites and others using them for their benefits. But equality still alludes us. Critical race theory (CRT) was created to challenge so-called laws which where equal on the surface but practically racist in their application.
I can think of no other people, Black people, who have contributed so much for equality, which today benefits all people, even corporations which have many of the rights as people.
So when you see conservative whites like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis challenging CRT and making claims that all things are 'equal' for all people realize that he is challenging the work of the people who are the champions of 'equality'. YOU!
