“It’s kind of trash,” was the response from author and law expert Elie Mystal to a carefully worded question about the Constitution from View co-host Ana Navarro. I watched the View that morning, specifically because Mystal was billed as a guest. Admittedly, I am a fan of Elie Mystal because he is not afraid to challenge convention with an uncomfortable truth. Having said that, the Constitution was a brilliantly conceived document and not a “kind of trash.” I believe Mystal misspoke; he should have said the people who implemented, interpreted, and enforced it, trashed it.
Although Elie Mystal implored the stunned panel members and audience to approach his assertion with thoughtful nuance, ‘Let’s just talk as adults for a second,’ he said, the grown children immediately unsnapped the connectors on their patriotic Legos. If I was an original beneficiary of the Constitution [white and male], I might have thrown my feathered quill when Mystal uttered those words. It took at least three amendments(among others) to the Constitution to grant participation to men of color and women; the 14th, 15th, and 19th Amendment(s). What Mystal said was not wrong, just shockingly candid. When he told the crowd, “It was written by slavers and colonists, and white people who were willing to make deals with slavers and colonists,” it was undeniable. “They didn’t ask anybody who looked like me what they thought about the Constitution,” he concluded.
Following Reconstruction, southern states created Black Codes specifically to avoid rights granted by the Constitution. Lawmakers created laws denying equity, courts upheld unequal treatment, and President(s) turned a blind eye. When blatant discriminatory laws were challenged, the highest court in the land also ignored the Constitution in the Plessy v. Ferguson case—declaring that separate facilities were, in fact, equal. Effectively, the high court’s decision made segregation legal until 1964. Twelve Presidents enslaved people, eight of whom while in office. It is easy to dismiss their cruelty as a consequence of history; after all, Zachary Taylor was the last President to hold enslaved people in office. Former President Dwight Eisenhower was in office when the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, was decided in 1954. Although Eisenhower enforced the ruling, he reportedly was less than enthusiastic. During the court’s deliberation of Brown, Eisenhower was said to have told Chief Justice Earl Warren about the opposition, “These are not bad people. All they are concerned about is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in school alongside some big overgrown Negroes.”
Mystal has assuredly studied these issues, and I dare say his conclusions are from assessing a long and embarrassing record of racial discrimination. Naïve denials of fact and honesty cloaked in the disguise of the stars and stripes like those from Representative Lauren Boebert, who tweeted out, “I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign AND DOMESTIC ...” proves the point. Mystal may be guilty of intentional volatility for clicks and views, but the truth may perfect the union if enough people listen.
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