Friday Open Thread ~ "What are you reading?" edition ~ The Second
When Kyle Rittenhouse shot and killed two people and wounded a third with an assault rifle on the night of August 25, 2020, the police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, let him just walk away. The white seventeen-year-old was even able to drive from Kenosha to his home in Illinois before finally being arrested.
By contrast, Philando Castile, a thirty-two-year-old Black man, was shot to death during a traffic stop in Falcon Heights, a suburb of Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 2016 for simply telling the officer that he was carrying a firearm.
Do African Americans have Second Amendment rights? That’s the question Emory University professor Carol Anderson set out to answer in her new book, “The Second,” which looks at the constitutional right to bear arms and its uneven application throughout U.S. history. She says she was prompted to write the book after the 2016 police killing of Philando Castile, who was fatally shot during a traffic stop after he told the officer he had a legal firearm. Anderson says the Second Amendment was always intended to be a means of arming white people to control the Black population. “There was this massive fear about these slave revolts, Black people demanding their freedom, being willing to have an uprising to gain their freedom,” says Anderson. “What I saw was that it wasn’t about guns. It was about the fear of Black people.”
Carol Anderson on the Racist Roots of the Constitutional Right to Bear Arms
Comments
Turn the page
Thanks for the OT, phillybluesfan, and also for the link to the interview with Professor Anderson, it was a good read about the relevant history.
I recently decided to re-read some of my favorite books from childhood and am presently moving very slowly through The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper, which is book two of five in a series of the same name. This is the first time I'm reading them in the proper order and it's such a treat.
Also (and always) reading about tao and chi which are fascinating to me and which have no real parallel/equivalent concepts in western theory. Currently about 2/3 of the way through Living Tao by Ilchi Lee.
Also (and always) reading philosophy, and right now that's Nietzsche. While I was in school no one was teaching Nietzsche, all my philosophy profs sort-of presumed we'd already read him, but I hadn't read anything besides excerpts lacking sufficient context. The past couple years' worth of pop culture has continued to bring obviously shallow/incorrect interpretations of him to my door (same as with Hegel) (except I took a rigorous Hegel class so I get why those are wrong already) so I finally settled in to read The Gay Science. Only maybe 50 pages in and it really does seem like Nietzsche has gotten an unfairly bad rap...but I should definitely finish it before opining further, lol, my interpreter has been a bit broken lately, c'est la vie.
Happy Friday to all the readers!
edited for wrong word
Good morning philly et al.
I haven't looked at the book in question but it is known that the police forces, in this country, grew largely out of slave patrols. Also, most socio-politically aware Californians of a certain age know that the state wen't from relatively free wheeling about guns to having the most restrictive gun laws in the country pretty much overnight once the Panthers began openly exercising their Second Amendment Rights.
I personally haven't been reading much of anything of late beyond to-do lists and the instructions for fixing, installing and/or using this, that and the other as well as some of my journals when I get time. Proviso - that's outside of c99, of course, which I read somewhat regularly and assiduously, but that's something different than regular reading.
All that said, it's time to head out to the hardware store and get back to today's project list.
Be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Birds of a Feather
An interesting collage would be to combine photos of armed "American" mobs with similar photos from the middle east, Somalia, Iran, etc., to provide some perspective.
Mlitarization of Police = Repression of Dissent
You are correct. This is a problem that knows no borders. Police behavior toward peaceful protesters has become increasingly standardized [showing up in full body armor and carrying tear gas, etc]
Few are guilty, but all are responsible.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets
Seeing that it is an open thread . There is this.
Just finished
Andrei Martyanov's "Losing Military Supremacy". Facinating read and a sober look at the Russian people and their tortured history. An amazingly different perspective.
Just beginning Sharyl Attkisson's "Slanted". I haven't alway agreed with her investigative reporting, but she is definitely a real investgative journalist.
Still doing Handmaids Tale "watch parties" with my granddaughters. We laugh, we cry, but mostly get really pissed off at the Waterfords, Aunt Lydia, and the Gilead regime.
Good times.
Thanks for the OT, phillybluesfan.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
Although I agree with the concept of defunding the police.
There is a viable alternative.
That would be completely ending "qualified immunity".
This would make them think twice before carrying out rogue behavior that til now has allowed for the most part egregious behavior that goes unpunished.
Free From Consequences
Few are guilty, but all are responsible.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets