Perpetuating Racial Entitlement

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is a very disgusting man.  The country was cursed to suffer this man on our highest court by no other than the pope of conservatism, President Ronald Reagan, in 1986 and has been doing his best to roll back every social gain achieved by this country in the past half century.  Mr. Scalia was never one to hide his disdain for minorities or for anybody who needed advocating on their behalf.  He prefers a strict interpretation of the country’s Constitution.  In this small man’s opinion, if the founding fathers were okay with it, it’s good enough for the rest of us almost two and a half centuries later.  And if the founding fathers thought it was okay for the people of African descent to be less than human or considered white people’s property, it is reasonable to assume that it is Mr. Scalia’s expert justice opinion that the black people of today are just going to have to learn to deal with second class citizenship as their lot in life in the United States.

It has been said that Mr. Scalia is the type of justice that revels in his ability to illicit a shocking reaction to his outlandish statements.  He loves the attention it garners.  Leave it to Mr. Scalia to say something kooky enough to take the nation, if not the world, aback.

But Mr. Scalia’s latest statement for the sake of shock and awe appears to have crossed the line of reasonably acceptable for a justice.  Mr. Scalia made the comment that a key provision of the Voting Rights Act was a perpetuation of racial entitlement.  The law that protected black people’s right to vote, because that right was being routinely sabotaged by white people intent on keeping black people from being able to vote, was a form of perpetual racial entitlement.  Mr. Scalia went on to say that, “Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political processes.”

Now a sense of political entitlement is an assumption of political privileges that don’t apply to everyone.  Racial minorities having their rights protected because some, notably state politicians with an overblown sense of white privilege, wanted to unfairly eviscerate the voting rights of black people, leaving that right as a privilege of being white.  So in a sense, without even realizing how appropriate his words were, Mr. Scalia hit the racial nail on the racial head when he said that it is difficult for a society that adopts racial entitlements to get out of them through the political process.

From the very moment white people felt entitled to lord over black people it has been a fight for them to relinquish that sense of entitlement.  The problem isn’t protecting black people’s right to vote.  Anybody who cares to look at this country’s history of institutionalized racial discrimination will know that people across the racial spectrum had to fight and die for black people to be recognized as white people’s equal.  From the very moment black people were injected into this country’s social makeup against their will, white people had assumed, had adopted a sense of racial entitlement and privilege.  Too many people have adopted the idea that black people wanting what white people have claimed as their own is an attempt to change the status quo and skew our social construct into black people’s favor.  Anything that challenges white people’s sense of racial entitlement is in itself racial entitlement.

This closed circuit circular argument of illogic is the root of Mr. Scalia’s thinking.  In his attempt to point a damning finger at people who understand the need to protect people from the racist whims of state legislators who would have no qualms about using their position of authority to run roughshod over the rights of some for the benefit of others, Mr. Scalia bares his gnarled skewed soul for the world to see.  And to their credit, many people are aghast to see the new depth of injustice that lies at the pit of this man’s heart.

Any other justice in any other court in this country would have the good sense or, at the very minimum, the responsibility to their job to recues his or her self from the trial in question if they had vocalized such a totally biased statement.  But it should be obvious by now that Mr. Scalia has no true sense or understanding of justice.  Or, if there is some kernel of legal propriety within his comprehension, it takes a way back of the bus seat to his need to perpetuate his racial entitlement.  It would be no surprise to see the Voting Rights Act go down in flames under the whim of this current version of our high court.  Indeed, it would be surprising to see the Voting Rights Act survive in its intended form to protect the rights of all people to influence their government in a fair election process.  It will be no surprise to see Mr. Scalia leading Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, John Roberts, and Anthony Kennedy to undo one of the pillars that actually gives meaning to our pledge of justice for all.  If there was ever a case for term limits being given on our Supreme Court, Mr. Scalia has made the case most ineloquently as any single person could.  God deliver us from such small minded people.