Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution

by Elie Mystal

government having a “monopoly of violence”

In the real world, the strength of your Fifth Amendment protections depends on your level of legal education or exposure to the law. I know to never talk to the police without an attorney present, because I’ve been to law school.

If the police suspect you of a crime, get a lawyer. If the police don’t suspect you of a crime, shut up before you talk yourself into becoming a suspect.

Without the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments (and the Nineteenth Amendment, which finally acknowledged women’s fundamental right to vote), the Constitution is a violent piece of shit that can be used to justify or allow the legalized supremacy of white men over all others.

The equal protection clause still gives the government wide latitude to pass laws that discriminate against most classes of people, but only a limited and highly controversial ability to discriminate against suspect classes.

Many of the rights explicitly protected in the Constitution don’t make sense unless this unenumerated right to privacy is also protected.

nearly 25 percent of our constitutional updates since the founding of the country have been expended on trying to secure and expand the right to vote.

As someone who has read the constitutional amendments several times having it described this way shocked me