Race Huckstering Goes Stark Raving Mad

In my view, criminal law properly conceived has nothing to do with race and everything to do with behavior.  When I was a federal prosecutor (as an appellate lawyer), I typically did not know and did not care to know the defendant’s or the victim’s race.  The only thing that mattered was that they were human beings entitled to fair-minded and sober application of the law.

But then, I’m decidedly un-woke.  Trying to write on a criminal law blog without discussing race has become, in the moment, a hopeless enterprise.  Thus it’s not because I prefer it, but because it’s been shoved in all our faces, that I feel constrained to point out that the concern (some might say obsession) with race has now officially gone nuts.

The central proposition presently in public discussions is that the United States is a fundamentally indecent place because of its ingrained and systemic racism  —  racism imposed for centuries, and now, by whites against blacks.  In the course of this discussion, commentators have started in on what “blackness” and “whiteness” mean.  We now have the official answer on the “whiteness” issue, courtesy of the publicly funded National Museum of African American History & Culture (located on the National Mall about four blocks from the Department of Justice).  Here it is:

As a Facebook friend of mine said, this is something David Duke would have been embarrassed to write.  But this is where we are.