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“The Dred Scott case, also known as Dred Scott v. Sandford, was a decade-long fight for freedom by a Black enslaved man named Dred Scott. The case persisted through several courts and ultimately reached the U.S. Supreme Court…”
“the Court held that the US Constitution was not meant to include American citizenship for black people, regardless of whether they were enslaved or free, and so the rights and privileges that the Constitution confers upon American citizens could not apply to them.”
In “The Vengeance of Vertigo: Aphasia and Abjection in the Political Trials of Black Insurgents”, Frank Wilderson analyzed the case as follows:
“Taney argues that Dred Scott has no standing as a juridical subject because he had no standing as a political subject.
Justice Taney implies that there is a structural injunction precluding the court from hearing Scott’s case because Blacks come from Africa, a place void of political community, and only members of political community can stand before the bar.
‘The question is simply this,’ Taney writes, “Can a negro whose ancestors were imported and sold as slaves, become a member of the political community…?’
Taney is compelled to compare the Black to the Indian as a necessary prerequisite to legitimating the court’s decision to re-enslave Dred Scott. In so doing, he triangulates the dyad between the Human and the Black with the Indian.
[quote from taney follows]
[quote from taney follows]
The situation of [the Black] population was altogether unlike that of the Indian race. The latter, it is true, formed no part of the colonial communities and never amalgamated with them in social connections or in government.
But although they were uncivilized, they were yet free and independent people, associated together in nations or tribes, and governed by their own laws. Many of the political communities were situated in territories to which the white race claimed the ultimate right of dominion.
[end quote from taney]
From the opening of Taney’s tangential pursuit of Native Americans, it would seem that they constitute a defeated and denigrated identity within the Human race, de-valued Humanity as opposed to the embodiment of social death (Blacks).
From the opening of Taney’s tangential pursuit of Native Americans, it would seem that they constitute a defeated and denigrated identity within the Human race, de-valued Humanity as opposed to the embodiment of social death (Blacks).
Taney’s writing speaks of a being with subjective Presence, and of a community with the capacity for ‘perspective of consciousness’ (Lewis Gordon): ‘[u]ncivilized … yet free and independent … associated together in nations or tribes, and governed by their own laws.’
Furthermore, Indians are not natally alienated because their claims to their offspring are recognized by and incorporated into the world. By extension their right to govern is acknowledged beyond their circle, which is to say their claims to temporal presence are recognized.
Just as their spatial presence is recognized and incorporated, which is to say their place-names have resistance in the eyes of the Other. ‘Many of the political communities were situated in territories to which the white race claimed the ultimate right of dominion.’
Chief Justice Taney…labors to substantiate Native American humanity (genocide notwithstanding), in order to reinvigorate Black social isolation (the practice of chattel slavery) and Black ontological isolation (the paradigm of social death),
and thereby stave off a crisis of coherence amongst Humans…”
Keep what taney did--substantiating Native American humanity, *even while furthering genocide*, in order to reinforce Black oppression--in mind when trying to understand why CHOP/CHAZ killed Black people:
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