"Slavery is with us still. We are haunted by slavery. We are animated by slavery. White-over-black is slavery _and_ segregation _and_ neosegregation _and_ every situation in which the distribution of material or spiritual goods follows the colorline. The movement from slavery to segregation to neosegregation to whatever form of white-over-black it is that may come with post-modernity or after is not toward freedom. The movement from slavery to segregation to neosegregation is the movement of slavery perfecting itself. White-over-black is neosegregation. White-over-black is segregation. White-over-black is slavery. All of it is white-over-black, only white-over-black, and that continually. The story of progress up from slavery is a lie, the longest lie. The story of progress up from slavery is told juridically in the form of the rule of law. Slavery is the rule of law. And slavery is death. The slave perfects itself as a slave when it bows down before its master of its own free will. That is the moment in which the slave accomplishes the impossible reconciliation of its freedom with its unfreedom by willing itself unfree. When exactly does this perfection of slavery take place? The slave bows down before its master when it prays for legal relief, when it prays for equal rights, and while it cultivates the field of law hoping for an answer. The slave's free choice, the slave's leap of faith, can only be taken under conditions of legal equality. Only after emancipation and legal equality, only after rights, can the slave perfect itself as a slave. Bourgeois legality is the condition wherein equals are said to enter the commons of reason or the kingdom of ends or the New England town meeting of the soul to discuss universalizable principles, to discuss equality and freedom. Much is made of these meetings, these struggles for law, these festivals of the universal. Commons, kingdom, town meeting, there are many mansions in the house of law, but the law does not forget its father, as Maria Grahn-Farley observes: 'The law of slavery has not been forgotten by the law of segregation; the law of segregation has not been forgotten by the law of neosegregation. The law guarding the gates of slavery, segregation, and neosegregation has not forgotten its origin; it remembers its father and its grandfather before that. It knows what master it serves; it knows what color to count.' To wake from slavery is to see that everything must go, every law room, every great house, every plantation, all of it, everything." — Anthony Paul Farley, _Perfecting Slavery_