Allow me to retort A Black guy's guide to the Constitution

The Nation contributor Mystal debuts with a pugnacious and entertaining critique of conservative interpretations of the Constitution. Contending that the Constitution and its amendments "were designed to create a society of white male dominance," and that conservatives "use the law to humiliate people, to torture people, and to murder people," Mystal refutes the idea that the First Amendment protects people from being "canceled" for "spew racist, sexist, or homophobic slurs," and notes the irony that Republicans who express outrage over "cancel culture" didn't speak up when Peter Thiel financed a series of lawsuits against Gawker and Donald Trump's Justice Department harassed a woman who laughed during Attorney General Jeff Sessions's confirmation hearings. Elsewhere, Mystal points out that Republicans passed gun control legislation when they were concerned about the Back Panthers openly carrying loaded weapons, contends that the conservative justices on today's Supreme Court are hypocritically using the same logic of "unenumerated" constitutional rights they've critiqued in liberal decisions "to gut labor laws and regulations on businesses," and argues that laws restricting access to abortions don't make sense "if you assume that women are people and thus deserving of equal protection." Buttressed by Mystal's caustic wit and accessible legal theories, this fiery takedown hits the mark. (Jan.)

An irreverent refutation of a document many profess to revere. Mystal, an analyst at MSNBC and legal editor for the Nation, reads the Constitution from the point of view of a Black man keenly aware of the document's origins in a slaveholding nation. "It is a document designed to create a society of enduring white male dominance," he writes, "hastily edited in the margins to allow for what basic political rights white men could be convinced to share." As the author abundantly demonstrates, people of color and women have always been afterthoughts, and recent conservative applications of constitutional doctrine have been meant to further suppress the rights of those groups. "The law is not science," writes the author, "it's jazz. It's a series of iterations based off a few consistent beats." Conservative originalists know this, but they hide their prejudices behind the notion that the text is immutable. Mystal shows how there's plenty of room for change if one follows a rule hidden in plain sight: "There's no objective reason that the Ninth Amendment should be applied to the states any less robustly than the Second Amendment. The only difference is that the rights and privileges that the Ninth Amendment protects weren't on the original white supremacist, noninclusive list." Article by article, amendment by amendment, Mystal takes down that original list and offers notes on how it might be improved as a set of laws that protect us all, largely by rejecting conservative interpretations of rights enumerated and otherwise. Although he writes offhandedly at times and certainly off-color at others--"Being an asshole is not a protected class, which is lucky because I discriminate against them all the time"; "ammosexual is the scientific categorization for a person who fetishizes firearms and can't win at Scrabble"--it's eminently clear that the author knows his constitutional law and history inside and out. There's something to learn on every page. A reading of the Constitution that all social justice advocates should study. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.