1/x I know there’s been a lot of comments on this story and folks are trying to to put the puzzle together using the original video, the Facebook statement from the police commissioner and emerging witness statements. If I may let me put this in a broader legal context.
2/x The right to have equal access to public spaces was one of the most hard fought rights of the post civil war era. For a time after the civil war, in dealing with newly freed slaves, the country broke down rights into a three part taxonomy of rights.
3/x First, there was was we called civil/political rights such as the right to vote, the right to serve on juries, the right to testify in court. Second, there was what we called economic rights such as the right to buy and sell property, the right to enter into contracts etc.
4/x Last, there was what we called social rights such as the right to equal access to places of public accommodation (stores, theaters). Begrudgingly and slowly, the country conceded that blacks should have access to the first two categories of rights but said no on the third.
5/x That is to say, the country agreed in principle (though often not in practice) that blacks should be able to vote, or buy property, but strongly objected not just in practice but also in principle that blacks should have the right to occupy the same public spaces as whites.
6/x The debate over that third category of right took place between 1872 and 1875 over a bill called the civil rights act of 1875, which was narrowly passed and granted blacks equal access. In 1883 SCOTUS overturned the act and between 1883 and 1964, when Congress passed
7/x the civil rights act of 1964, for all intents and purposes blacks did not have a legal right to access public establishments. And while most Southern places had de jure policies excluding blacks, lots of northern places had de facto policies that did the same thing.
8/x So if you want to be technical (but accurate) about it, black people have had a legal right to public places since only 1964. In other words, in a republic that’s about 250 years old, black people have been able to claim equal access for only about 50 of those 250 years.
9/9 I don’t have the full Starbucks story yet, but whatever the story turns out to be, it will be incomplete unless it includes the understanding that it’s only been “a minute,” as they say, since we’ve been able to walk into a place like Starbucks and claim a seat of our own.
