ABSTRACT
Societies make rules deemed necessary to protect their enfranchised members. Usually, the control group represents those in power at any given time. However, the control apparatus need not represent the majority of its members (South Africa under apartheid and numerous examples during the European and American colonial eras). Even when those who hold power and authority (power elite) within society are in the majority, minority members of the general population may suffer from discriminatory rules that favor those who hold the reins of control. These control mechanisms are then maintained through a law enforcement apparatus, one that has special authority to use force in controlling the population. In the United States, the legal control apparatus consists of laws (statutory or case) made by legislative bodies and monitored by the judiciary, at both the state and federal levels, that are, in turn, enforced through the criminal justice system via police, prosecutors, judges, and correctional officials. The power of the criminal justice system is considerable, given that it is vested with the authority to deny the accused their liberty and even their life. Bias, prejudices, and corruption have long been staples of U.S. jurisprudence. Laws have been written with the specific intent of discriminating against certain groups, such as during the Jim Crow era in the southern states, a process rubber-stamped by grand juries, law enforcement, prosecutors, judges, and wardens. Even when laws are changed to correct past injustices, often a core subcultural component of law enforcement, from prosecutors to the street cop, continue to discriminate against those who they perceive to be undesirable members of society. Historically, race, ethnic, religious, gender, and class biases were the hallmarks of police and judicial discrimination. American Indians/Alaska Natives, Asians, blacks, Hispanics, and other minorities of color or of different religions have all suffered
under the so-called due process model of American jurisprudence in an attempt to preserve the white supremacy of Anglo-Protestant males. Enforcement of discriminatory laws and customs relied mostly on the police, but has also involved the U.S. military in certain instances, such as the internment of Japanese on the U.S. mainland during World War II; the deployment of the National Guard and U.S. Army during school integration and the race riots of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s; and the use of the National Guard along the U.S.–Mexico border in the twenty-first century under the guise of homeland security. Nonetheless, the most blatant use of both the military and the police in the enforcement of racial discrimination in the name of ethnic cleansing, a process that included both physical and cultural genocide, involved the United States’ efforts at controlling its Indian problem. This often-overlooked aspect of American jurisprudence is the topic of this book.
