Legal Evil

Most systems of oppression/evil are legalized; 'law and order' may, at times, be a codeword for oppression.  Note Isaiah 10:1-2:

"Doom to you who legislate evil,
   who make laws that make victims.
Laws that make misery for the poor
   that rob my destitute people of dignity,
Exploiting defenseless widows,
   taking advantage of homeless poor.

Contrast this with the reason for the coming Messiah, 11:1-4:

"A green Shoot will sprout from Jesse's stump,
   The life-giving Spirit of God will hover over him.
. . . . . . . . . .
He will judge the needy by what is right,
   render decisions on the earth's poor with justice."

Throughout the history of America, presidents, Congress and the Supreme Court have all legislated or legitimated evils such as slavery, segregation and mass incarceration.

Black scholar and activist, Lisa Sharon Harper (The Very Good Gospel) describes how the Constitution, revered by whites, looks to blacks:

"The newly formed United States of America enacted the racialization of power.  Congress passed the three-fifths compromise, which increased the number of members in the House of Representatives who represented slave states.  Congress determined that each enslaved person would be counted as three-fifths of a human being."

"Three years later Northerners got their way on the first national census in 1790.  Enslaved black people were listed as chattel---nonhuman property---along with pitchforks and horses.

"In the same year, Congress passed the Naturalization Act of 1790, which declared that only free white men could become naturalized citizens.  This was significant because only citizens can vote,"

The U.S. census categories have always been racialized.

"Why does the federal government ask for the nations of origin for Asian and Latino people, tribal affiliation for American Indian people, and include 'Africa American' (a specific ethnic group within the racial category of 'black') but does not ask 'white' people to identify their ethnicity or nation of origin."

"It's because of power.  The only category on the national census that did not change from 1790 to 2010 was 'white'.  In the United States, whiteness is the centerpiece around which all else revolves.  That was and is intentional.  In 1751, Benjamin Franklin argued . . . America should be kept an exclusively Anglo-Saxon colony to protect the race."  Harper concludes:

"The core lie of Western civilization is that God reserved the power of dominion for some, but not all.  Since the Enlightenment era, that lie has been racialized. . . . God reserved the right of dominion for white people and no one else."

I fully agree with Harper's perspective.  For a fuller description of legal evil in the U.S., see the book The Color of Law which is a detailed description of how the federal government legalized segregation/oppression in the U.S.  Segregated housing was the major contributor to our current 20 to 1 racial wealth gap; 20 to 1, not 2 to 1.  Federal law and policies resulted in subsidies for whites; in other words, 'affirmative action' for whites on a massive scale.