As the NY Times observes in its "On This Day": http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0306.html#article
For those unfamiliar with the "Dred Scott Decision", there is an entry on Wikipedia (standard disclaimers apply): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott_Decision Quoting from the Wikipedia entry: |Dred Scott v. Sandford,[1] 60 U.S. (How. 19) 393 (1857), was a decision |by the United States Supreme Court that ruled that people of African descent |imported into the United States and held as slaves, or their descendants[2]-whether |or not they were slaves-were not legal persons and could never be citizens of |the United States, and that the United States Congress had no authority to |prohibit slavery in federal territories. The Court also ruled that slaves could not sue |in court, and that slaves-as chattel or private property-could not be taken away |from their owners without due process. The Court in the Dred Scott decision sided |with border ruffians in the Bleeding Kansas dispute who were afraid a free Kansas |would be a haven for runaway slaves from Missouri. The Supreme Court's decision |was written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney. Interestingly, as the Wikipedia entry points out, the Dred Scott decision was never *directly* overturned, rather it is *implied* to be overturned by subsequent decisions and the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. However, it is important to keep the following in mind (quoting Wiki): |Justice John Marshall Harlan was the lone dissenting vote in the 1896 |Supreme Court Plessy v. Ferguson which legalized racial segregation |and created the concept of "separate but equal." In his dissent Harlan |wrote that the majority's opinion would "prove to be quite as pernicious |as the decision made by this tribunal in the Dred Scott case."[8] Perhaps it's a good day to have students participate in the Implicit Association Task (IAT) either at the http://opl.apa.org or at https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/ to see how far we've come since those days. It might also be useful to have them read this Op-Ed: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/21/opinion/21blow.html?_r=2&scp=1&sq=%22A%20Nation%20of%20Cowards?%22&st=cse or http://tinyurl.com/b9nvae It might also be time to put "C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America") in the Netflix queue. See: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0389828/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C.S.A.:_The_Confederate_States_of_America Consider the role of psychology in treating a disorder like "drapetomania" in such an alternate history. For those unfamailiar with this once common disorder, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drapetomania -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([email protected])
