Inside from the Inside

Here’s part of an invitation for a book discussion in Washington, D.C. today:

With author Karen Greenberg, Executive Director, Center on Law and Security, New York University School of Law

“Legal scholar Greenberg covers the period from December 2001 through March 2002, when Camp X-Ray opened to house suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban operatives captured in Afghanistan….Greenberg’s account is not an expose of Guantanamo horrors; instead, she draws a lesson on the banality of goodness-that dutiful adherence to international law, not personal integrity, is the ultimate guarantor of humane policy.”
–Publishers Weekly

Haven’t read the book, nor even heard of it, but the twenty words that I set to Bold type summarize a large part of the race relations problem.  Some people are good people who do good things.  But many aren’t.  Someone has to MAKE them do good things.  The “banality of goodness” is a brilliant term; why should acting in a non-racist manner be difficult, or confusing, or innovative?  Why not take the brain work out of the equation and have some laws that, like it or not, need to be followed in order to be non-racist?

A law that made racist activity illegal would pass with close to, if not fully, 100% support from both houses of Congress and the Office of the President.  It would fly through more quickly than the authorization to declare war on Japan after Pearl Harbor.  And then nobody could legally engage in racist activity in America any longer.

Whatever that may be.

Tags: Karen Greenberg, race legislation