Hi @FiniteBanjo@feddit.online, would you mind editing this comment to point out that you are referring to African Americans? I think a chain of midunderstandings in this thread are causing people to think your comment was meant to be racist. Looking through your posting history, I don't think that was your intent.

For anyone else that is coming across this thread, here is my interpretation of what happened:

• Some users are seeing this post as it was originally intended, which is that current laws are not necessarily a good reflection of a fair/just/ethical society. Others are speaking to the idealized side, where an ideal system can slowly align the legal system to what the community sees as ethical. I think those two different views led to the argument in this thread, where multiple people were arguing against a position that the other person was not actually putting forward.
• I think BillyClark came at this post arguing for the first position, and misunderstood your comment to suggest that the current system is just (which you didn't intend). Meanwhile, I see that FiniteBanjo was engaged with users that argued against voting in this weeks midterm election (or voting third party), and I think FiniteBanjo misunderstood BillyClark's position thinking it was against voting, and thus grouped them in with "tankies"
• With these two comments in particular, BillyClark was referring to how the enslaved population in the US couldn't participate in the democratic process (and thus couldn't influence the legal system), but they used present tense ("don’t get to vote" vs "didn’t get to vote") while discussing slavery.
• When FiniteBanjo then quoted that part of the comment and linked to the Obama's, it looked like they were calling the Obama's as "Africans" (rather than the intended rebuttal of "African Americans can indeed vote"). I don't think FiniteBanjo meant it that way based on the posting history (source 1 source 2)