Chicago
Tribune, Tuesday, March 30, 1999 Section 1 17
Commentary
If America Had only one mixed race
By Geoffrey R. Stone
The Supreme
Court of the United States:
John Powers and Mary Smith vs, director, United States Agency for Mandatory
Miscegenation
June 21,2101
Chief Justice
Harper Delivered the opinion of the court:
Petitioners
John Powers and Mary Smith seek to enjoin the enforcement of the Mandatory
Miscegenation Act of 2100 on the ground that it violates the U.S. Constitution.
The Act provides that: No person who is not genetically certified as
a person of mixed race may procreate with another person of the same
race."Mr Powers and Ms. Smith have both been genetically certified
as members of the white race. They wish to have a child. They may not
do so without violating the Act and thereby risking serious penalty.
The Mandatory Miscegenation Act was enacted by Congress after several
years of public debate. It was hailed by President Muhammad as "the
most important, the most fundamental civil rights legislation in the
history of our nation." When the Act was first introduced in Congress,
its drafters explained the Act as follows: "After centuries of
racial strife and division, after endless failed efforts to eliminate
racism from our hearts, our minds and our social policies, it is time
to bring us all together and to end race once and for all as a divisive
social construct. If all Americans have only one race-the mixed race
that is the one true melting pot of America-then and only then will
we finally be 'one nation, indivisible.' " Petitioners argue that
the Act violates the constitutional right of privacy. This court first
fully embraced the constitutional right of privacy in Eisenstadt vs.
Baird (1972), which announced that the right of privacy includes the
right of the individual "to be free from unwarranted governmental
intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision
whether to bear or beget a child." The following year, in Roe vs.
Wade (1973), the court held that the right of privacy is "broad
enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her
pregnancy." And in Falwell vs. Mississippi (2006), we held that
the right of privacy guarantees the right of homosexual couples to employ
artificial means of reproduction to have children of their own. Although
we have given broad scope to the right of reproductive privacy, we have
also recognized that the right is not unlimited. In Middleton vs. United
States (2038), for example, we upheld the federal Natural Reproduction
Act, which banned human cloning. As the court explained in Middleton,
although the constitutional right of reproductive autonomy is well-established
in our decisions, it is equally well- established that the government
"may limit that right in order to promote a compelling societal
or governmental interest." In Middleton, the court held that the
government has a "compelling interest in preventing future abuses
and tragedies arising out of human cloning like those that have become
so familiar over the last 25 years." The case before us today poses
a particularly vexing challenge. It puts into direct and irreconcilable
conflict the cherished right of the individual "to be free from
unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting
a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child" and
the nation's profound interest in finally achieving racial peace and
harmony. As President Muhammad noted when he signed the Mandatory Miscegenation
Act, our nation has a long and troubled history of racism and racial
strife. Slavery led to Civil War which led to Jim Crows which led to
segregation which led to economic and educational deprivation and urban
isolation. Civil rights l egislation, welfare legislation, voting legislation,
affirmative action policies, anti-affirmative action policies, voluntary
resegregation policies, redistributive policies and reparations policies
have not solved the problem. We remain a nation bitterly divided along
racial lines. Blacks vote for blacks; whites vote for whites. Black
live with blacks; whites live with whites. There are once again universities
for whites, although we proudly proclaim that this is "voluntary."
Whatever progress we make quickly turns back on itself. The Great Society
works, then it doesn't. Affirmative action works, then it doesn't. It
is as if racism has been bred into our souls, if not our genes. Congress
has determined to put an end to this endless cycle of racism in the
most direct and most effective way possible: by creating a nation of
one race-not a race of whites, or blacks, or Asians, but a single, mixed
race of Americans." In one or two or at most three generations,
we can and will do what we have failed to do in almost 500 years-achieve
the truly "color-blind" society. If ever there was a compelling
government of racism in our nation, once and for all. Although we feel
for petitioners, who unquestionably love one another and wish nothing
more than to bear a child together, the interest of the nation is paramount.
It is through such sacrifices, not small, but essential, that we will
finally attain a society in which all people are in fact as well as
in declaration "created equal." At the dawn of a new century,
this is the right promise for the future. We fine that the Mandatory
Miscegenation Act of 2100 is consistent with the United States Constitution
and therefore affirm the decision below. Right results?
____________________________________________________________
Geoffrey R. Stone is provost of the University of Chicago and former
dean of the University's law school. This is the first of two dozen
University of Chicago faculty-written essays about the future that will
appear on the University's Millennium Project home page. The Project,
which starts Tuesday, was designed for faculty members to speculate
on changes that may take placein their fieids of expertise over the
next century. Readers will be able to indicate their agreement or disagreement
with each article and see the results of previous voting. The address
for the web page is: http://www.uchicago.edu/
Note:
From the Editor of the IKA
This could be
our Future! My Brothers and Sisters, What would it be like to never
have a child of our own race? What would it be like to be a one race?
What would it be for the future of man kind? Is this the laws of the
Bible? Or is the the laws of Man? NO, this is the law of the Beast!
A One world Government. A One World Order! A One world Faith! A One
World People! Dose it say in the Bible, "Like kind with like kind"?
These people are putting this information out to see what people will
think about it? I think not. They are putting this out so that we will
start getting use to it. This is all planed for the future of the world.
We not let our government know, that will not put up with it. Each Race
has a RIGHT to live. Each Race has a right to be with it's own kind!
Each Race has the right to love it's own! Please think about what has
been said here. Let local and federal governments know that we will
not be a one Race, Faith or Nation!