Revisiting Dred Scott vs. Sandford
Was the SCOTUS’s most infamous ruling really off the mark?
…They had no rights the white man was bound to respect…
I see this quote a lot, especially in the writing of anti-racists. But far-right, “race realists” cite it, too. It’s from paragraph 36 of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney’s infamous 1858 rejection of Dred Scott’s bid for freedom.
That clause is cited to demonstrate that black people in the time of Scott v. Sandford, whether born free or having obtained their freedom by other means, had no enforceable rights.
That is not what it means at all.
Taney wrote it as background, describing the circumstances under which slavery originated in North America. The complete sentence reads: They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.
