I’m going to have to deeply agree with this insight. It is incredible how large a span it has occurred over. Throughout that time, it was continually reinforced and embedded in culture and police action, courts and laws. There were courts and laws then as now.

But in court back then, for the first 186 years, until the end of slavery, there was no possible way a black man could protest in a group to ask the white perpetrator be prosecuted in certain areas of the country. Instead, they white man who killed a black men, some one else’s property, only had to make compensation for the lost value of the ‘property.’ He was in effect put on administrative leave without pay.

The reinforcing legal mechanisms associated with white in black violence only got further reinforced, deepening the reticence of sheriffs and prosecutors to reflexively arrest whites, while the opposite reinforcement mechanism strengthened at well, that is the assumption that a black American has done something wrong, based some trivial allegation, and force must be used and is acceptable and encouraged, no matter how small the accusation.

Bravo again, professor, for making this connection and inspiring my ramblings. You’re really on a roll!