Something happened to me yesterday that reminded me once again that not only is life unfair (as Pres. Kennedy said) but life is also unjust. Justice is something people have to bestow on one another.

The “justice system” does not bestow justice. The government does not bestow justice.

The not-guilty verdict in the murder trial of Sharron Chason proves that only people can bestow justice—and also that people are often less just than random chance.

Ms. Chason was hounded into court by vindictive relatives and friends of her husband. Had her circle of friends and family been larger than her husband’s or more powerful, I have no doubt that the medical examiner’s office would never have been called into the hospital while her husband was still alive.

I wonder how many people have relatives and in-laws who are willing to go to such lengths to hurt them.

I had a grandmother who did everything but have my father thrown in jail for marrying her daughter. My maternal grandmother was a racist. My paternal grandmother probably was, too, but she had the misfortune of being Cherokee/Choctaw.

It’s a mistake to think that only whites can be racists or can be unjust. The Cherokees have a long history of racism (I don’t know that much about other tribes, so I can’t say whether this is true of them). Though the Cherokees make much of the sad Trail of Tears episode, the fact is that they are as much to blame as Andrew Jackson. Corrupt tribal chiefs sold them out in expectation of receiving vast tracts of land (Indian Territory). What’s more, the Cherokees dragged along with them on the march from Georgia to the Mississippi their own black slaves.

That’s right. The Cherokees owned slaves in Indian Territory.

And if you look at photographs of those early Cherokee settlers, you will probably find as many blue eyes among them as brown.

It’s no accident that now there are no Cherokee reservations in Oklahoma—the end of the Trail of Tears. The only Cherokee reservations now are in the Carolinas (where a few Cherokees were left behind.) The Cherokees of Indian Territory understood well the importance of private property. They owned the land where they lived. They owned slaves to work the land.

The other tribes were duped into giving up the most fundamental right granted in the Constitution: the right to private property. Private property is the source of privacy and liberty. The other tribes are, as a consequence, now confined to reservations (federal land, not private property).