Rick Kelly - From the Shadows into the Sunlight

From the Shadows into the Sunlight

Making Racial Discrimination Irrelevant

Rick Kelly

Copyright 2020 by Rick Kelly

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

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Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Introduction

E ach sunset heralds the prospect for a better tomorrow. But for the new world in America slavery for ages has cast a dark shadow over the bright hope of freedom promised in the US Constitution and documents founding America because freedom was not provided to all those who would come to find themselves on American shores. America itself was to become another painful illustration of the tangled human history of frightening and disheartening oppression existing alongside peaceful and uplifting liberty.

The twentieth century is replete with American history critics who pillory the American founders of 1776. Plausibly, the founders can be compared somewhat to the fictional characters of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It was author Robert Louis Stevenson who depicted the horrors of human nature in his celebrated 1886 novel of that period that explored the opposing extremes of both good and evil that coexist in the same person ( The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ). The same extremes of both good and evil would also be seen struggling for dominance early in the American nation and among the people of America. Therein may lie the ongoing inner struggle of the human conscience that continues as long as humans inhabit this earth.

It was on July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence proclaimed, We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Thus, during the United States Constitutional Convention in 1787 under the Three-Fifths Compromise, state representation and tax status were determined by counting three out of five slaves as people to be included for the population count by using the ruse of incorrectly or falsely labeling slaves as all other persons so the words slaves or slavery would not actually be mentioned in the U.S. Constitution. The United States principles of liberty declared on July 4, 1776 were compromised by acquiescing to the existence of slavery in the new nation. The founders further compromised their collective consciences with the 1787 Three-Fifths Compromise that denied the personhood of slaves and treated slaves as mere property.

Here, the rule of law and liberty was being established in the Constitution in 1776 along with a perversion of that same law by allowing the deprivation of liberty by slavery. It is unlikely that the world will ever see the complete elimination of the typical contrived self-serving racial distinctions that produced the discrimination against blacks in America.

Nonetheless, this book provides an alternative perspective on the possibilities of a better future for all Americans, a future, which is not some magical Utopian ideal of perfection. It is a future that looks to the pursuit of a truly more perfect union, where the sting of slavery and the ravages of racism fade from being all consuming preoccupations in America. However, this future can only be attained through great human will and hoped for divine forbearance. America possesses the capacity to transcend the shadowy shrouds cast by slavery to provide an awakening to the sunrise of new days relatively free of the effects of past institutionalized discrimination.

Chapter 1

An Enduring ProblemA Failure to Correct the Consequences of Institutional Racial Discrimination

I t may be that there are no easy solutions to the seemingly enduring depredation caused by the intentional institutional discrimination against black Americans as a group collectively and individually. However, all Americans should recognize that it was white Americans who established slavery for profit and collectively perpetuated discrimination against black people to benefit themselves and their progeny. It is white Americans who collectively are now either unable or unwilling to completely unravel the consequences of discrimination despite the many claimed efforts to do so.

The failure to correct and lessen the effects of past discrimination on black Americans as a group has led to much of the seething discontent and rage of some black Americans today. It is a form of discontent and rage that few white Americans understand because more than two hundred years have pasts since the days of slavery.

Prior to the 1964 Civil Rights Act becoming effective, employers could chose employees according to race or any other consideration, which allowed employment discrimination against blacks. Most important is the fact that even after less than twenty years of the much debated unintended effects of affirmative action on whites, many outraged white Americans still did not fully grasp the similar outrage of some black Americans for over two hundred years of intentional institutionalized discrimination against innocent black people and the members of their families.

Racial segregation in education has also faced legal challenges in previous years in civil cases like Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954). The US Supreme Courts landmark decision in the Brown case declared unconstitutional those state laws that established separate public schools for black and white students. But similar efforts to remedy the legacy of historically segregated black schools and education are also challenged by white Americans in cases like Grutter v. Bollinger (2003).

In the Grutter case, a white female Michigan student who was not admitted to the University of Michigan Law School brought a lawsuit against the University. Grutter, who had a 3.8 GPA and 161 LSAT score, claimed the following: that the University discriminated against her on the basis of race in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 USC. 1981; that the law school rejected her because the school used race as a predominant factor in student admissions giving minority applicants a significantly greater chance of admission than students with similar credentials; and that the University had no compelling interest to justify the use of race in admissions.

White Americans these days have been separated for decades from the historical institutional system of slavery, enforced segregation, and overt racism established in the past. As a result, many white Americans today feel no responsibility or complicity for slavery, segregation, and racial discrimination against black Americans that was put in place by white people to benefit white Americans. Although the feelings of white Americans today are understandable it does not erase nor correct the damage done to many blacks that persists to this day. The economic and educational disparity between black and white Americans is a documented fact that still defies a solution.