The Devil Is In the Details

[Reprinted from Issues & Views Summer/Fall 1999]

Ellis Washington's book, The Devil Is In the Details: Essays on Law, Race, Politics and Religion, is hard to describe in a few words. Each of the nine essays handle a different subject, yet are tied together by the subject of race.

A reader might not care much about a discussion on the grammatical usage of the terms "black" or "African-American" (the first essay), but will probably find provocative the next chapter discussing the determination by liberals to remove all religion from the public square. (Writes Washington: "The Framers knew that unless a society had a sincere belief and reverence for God, any government created by man was doomed to fail.")

Washington is a pragmatist in his study of the various philosophies employed in interpreting the Constitution, especially in regard to the controversial subject of judicial activism. He is convinced that the promoters of egalitarianism, "have perverted two once great and respected bodies of knowledge: Law and Science," and he has much to say about the politicizing of academic disciplines by those he refers to as "the so-called intellectual classes."

But it is in his carefully thought out critiques of the issues raised in Dinesh D'Souza's book, The End of Racism, that Washington hits his stride. D'Souza's book, published in 1995, set off a small firestorm in some circles because of the author's explicit and often brutally truthful assessments of the dysfunctional aspects of black culture and black leadership.

In explaining the areas in which he agrees or disagrees with D'Souza's well researched and documented theses, Washington offers his own sober perspectives. Following are excerpts from The Devil Is In the Details: Essays on Law, Race, Politics and Religion, by Ellis Washington.

Today, in America, racism, where it is found is dealt with in a very punitive and drastic way. However, America's (and by analogy the West's) approach to eradicating slavery is markedly different than non-Western countries of which the abolition of slavery was a non-issue. I challenge the reader to find any non-Western country with any history whatsoever of fighting to end slavery in their country to any degree. You won't find any examples because in most non-Western societies, no semblance of democracy existed. On this issue, D'Souza writes: 'In most parts of the world, slavery was uncontroversial for the simple reason that the concept of freedom simply did not exist.' Orlando Patterson writes, 'Indeed there was no word for freedom in most non-Western languages before contact with western peoples." . . .

Black activists, in their struggle against White racism, have substituted racism and discrimination with their own unique brand of exclusionary and equally immoral twin ideologies--Afrocentrism and Multiculturalism. . . . Multiculturalism seeks to view all races as equal despite the obvious substandard performances of some races, in practically every category of intelligence and mental development. Liberal activists, rather than addressing such disparities honestly, attribute them to White racism or charge that Whites are unfairly judging minorities by Eurocentric standards. But this is precisely what Afrocentrists and Multiculturalists seek to do by viewing world history through the ahistorical, rose-colored lens of Afrocentrism.

-- Ellis Washington holds a Doctorate in Law from John Marshall Law School and has studied International Law at Harvard University. The Devil Is In the Details can be purchased from Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com, and from Vantage Press, 516 W. 34th Street, New York, NY 10001; (212) 736-1767.

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