Perpetuation of Racial Entitlement

It’s now widely known that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has referred to the 1965 Voting Rights Act as the “perpetuation of racial entitlement.” Most of the resulting indignation has come from the word “racial” and I’ll have something to say about that. I can’t figure how “perpetuation” fits the case. But I find the notion that the right to vote is an entitlement very interesting.

I don’t believe the signers of the Constitution felt this way when they assigned themselves that right. As founders of a new nation they were simply assuming what was theirs. Yes they were picky in dispensing it, limiting it to land owning white males. But eventually the nation, with rules set up by this document, extended it to the point that women, heavens even women, were granted the right. How and when in did this right become an entitlement?

A Supreme Court Justice should know the difference. It’s small comfort to think that Scalia may actually believe what he says. In either case he has no business on the Supreme Court. His comment has KKK written all over it. If I have my history right, by 1920 when women were given the right to vote, some black men had been voting for years. Does Scalia think of women’s suffrage as “gender entitlement?”

The reason for this controversy is a legal challenge to the Voting Rights Act. Republicans, who figure to gain mightily if the Court strikes down the law, have maintained a discreet silence. The decision belongs wholly to the Court, not public opinion. But we know who’ll be celebrating if the law is struck down.

Like Mitt Romney's 47%, Scalia's words of choice speak the proverbial thousand. I have this fantasy that has five justice in white robes, contrasting nicely with the black worn by the other four. The real fun comes when they learn that each of them only gets three fifths of a vote.