Conservatives tend to think that racial discrimination ended with the Civil War. Lincoln freed the slaves, and there were some problems with Jim Crow, sure, but all that racism stuff ended in 1865. We likewise conclude on the same basis that it's been so long since slavery that nobody need reparations. Oh, and the reason more blacks are in prison is because they commit more crimes than whites, so the system is being fair because they're committing the preponderance of the crimes.

This book shakes all that (okay, I added the topic of reparations). It's by a conservative-leaning libertarian judge and published by Thomas Nelson, one of the biggest Christian publishing houses. It's the perfect book to give out to folks for that reason. Napolitano isn't a liberal. Far from it, actually. He just doesn't back down from the actual history of race and law in our country.

Essentially, he argues that

1) there was slavery in America.

2) Abraham Lincoln used slavery as a convenient screen for his political agenda.

3) The civil war, reconstruction, and the heavy intrusion of federal power in the South made racism much, much worse.

4) Because equality was forced by military might on the South, they passed the Jim Crow legislation and reinforced their prejudices.

5) The Jim Crow laws were hurt in 1954, but alive and kicking until 1965. And Mississippi did not officially repeal them until 1995. That's not a typo.

6) Racism and discrimination continues in police departments and lawyering circles to this day - and has a huge amount of statistics and cases to back this up. He argues that through poverty and the intentional creation of the ghetto, our institutions continue to repress black people. Because they live in close proximity and live in poverty, they are more likely to engage in criminal activity (and he cites statistics that shows no matter what race you are, if you are below the poverty line in an urban culture of poverty, you are three times more likely to break the law).

This is shocking stuff. After some lynchings, the bodies would be cut up and pieces sold as souvenirs. That's the sort of story that you'd believe about Nigeria or Saudi Arabia, but not Georgia or South Carolina. But we fool ourselves. There are still people alive today who remember Jim Crow. And they're not that old. 1965 was only 45 years ago. We are a lot more at fault than we want to believe. Does that mean reparations? I don't know. I do know that I was blessed enough to live in a family that believed and taught us to believe Acts 17:26: "And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place." We're all the same race. And now my brother is courting a black girl who is simply wonderful.

The biggest flaw of the book is the fact that Napolitano appeals to "natural law" as the solution to slavery, and suggests that slavery is against the natural law. Well, the Bible doesn't know anything about natural law; it's not a doctrine taught in Scripture. In the Bible we get all our morality from God, not from an abstract "Creator" who only manifests himself through "nature." If we're being honest with ourselves, its actually natural to hate, repress and enslave other people who aren't like us. Just a part of sin. Only way out is Christ.

The book is also a great companion to Thomas Dilorenzo's The Real Lincoln which is cited a few times in this one and some of the civil war content overlaps.