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racism in america: the twisted legal history

New Book from Judge Andrew P. Napolitano is NOT Your Grandfather's History Book

Nashville, Tennessee -  April 21, 2009 -   Barack Obama's rise to power and overwhelming popularity may help America take an advanced step away from the kind of institutional racism that is, at least in part, the root of many problems currently facing African-Americans.

Still, it would be naïve to think that poverty, joblessness, crime, drug addiction, and disproportionate incarceration rates will somehow vanish because the first black president occupies the Oval Office.

What is needed is a fundamental understanding of how we got here.

In Dred Scott's Revenge: A Legal History of Race and Freedom In America (Thomas Nelson, April 14, 2009) Judge Andrew Napolitano provides a no-holds-barred look at the role of the government in the denial of freedoms based on race.

"The real culprit throughout our racial history has been the government," writes Napolitano.  "At every level, at virtually every turn, in every generation, the government selectively chose to enact and enforce laws and inevitably condoned and protected the most horrific abuse imaginable to blacks, and to some of the whites who protested."  

Readers of Dred Scott's Revenge will learn:

• about the seeds of American slavery

• how the country's framers failed to adhere to the principles the nation was founded upon

• how appointed judges enforced two sets of laws (fair treatment for whites, unfair treatment for blacks)

• the difference between Natural Law and Positivism and how the latter gives power to the majority and heaven help the minority

• the origins of Jim Crow Laws

• of segregation and rules (for blacks only) in the U.S. military

• the truth about the ugly Tuskegee Experiment

• how both parties have used racial rhetoric to get elected

• how government silence spoke volumes as the nation's pastime was integrating

Dred Scott's Revenge includes stories that some writers have hoped readers would not learn; of people demeaned worse than cattle, denied basic free will, crushed or impeded by the government even up to today.  Further, Napolitano argues that although the governmentÂ’s only legitimate function is to protect freedom, time and time again it strays well outside the Constitution, ultimately putting our very freedoms at risk.

About the Author

Judge Andrew P. Napolitano graduated from Princeton University and the University of Notre Dame Law School.  He is the youngest life-tenured Superior Court judge in the history of the State of New Jersey.  He has tried over 150 jury trials and has sat in all parts of the Superior Court.  For eleven years, he was Adjunct Professor of Law at Seton Hall Law School where he was voted most outstanding professor in three academic years.  Judge Napolitano returned to private practice in 1995 and has been the Senior Judicial Analyst for Fox News since 1998 and co-hosts "Brian and the Judge” on Fox radio.  Judge Napolitano also lectures nationally, and has been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun, and many more.  He is the author of Constitutional Chaos: What Happens When the Government Breaks Its Own Laws, the New York Times bestseller The Constitution in Exile: How the Federal Government Has Seized Power by Rewriting the Supreme Law of the Land, and A Nation of Sheep.

Endorsements:

 "Dred Scott's Revenge makes it impossible for the self-anointed 'experts' on race relations to ever accuse the country of being too afraid to have a national discussion on race. Judge Napolitano lays out 150 years of our national experience . . . and places the blame for much of what's wrong squarely at the feet of those responsible: the federal government and politicians whose plans, policies, and programs trashed the Constitution. Compelling and timely reading written for the layman, not lawyers!"

--Glenn Beck, Nationally syndicated radio talk show host; Host, The Glenn Beck Pr ogram, Fox News Channel

 "The Attorney General ignited a firestorm by suggesting that ours was a nation of 'cowards' when it comes to conversations about race. Judge Andrew Napolitano is no coward. His brave and incisive book takes the calamitous, contemptuous Dred Scott decision, which held slaves to be 'non-persons,' as its starting point. In this sharply written narrative, the Judge shows us how race remains the driving force in almost every aspect of American life, from education to law enforcement. Dred Scott, the person, would have appreciated this graphic and honest appraisal."

--Geraldo Rivera, Fox News Channel

"The best history of the law and race I've ever read . . . Judge Napolitano has written a challenge to anyone who thinks they understand the roots of America's tangled race relations."

-- Juan Williams, National Public Radio