My first reaction to Antonin Scalia's claim that the Voting Rights Act is a "racial entitlement" was pretty much the same as the author of this New Yorker article.
While I continue to believe that Nino (as Scalia's friends call him) is a racist (for lack of a better word), that does not fully explain what he said.
How does requiring federal scrutiny of changes to voting laws in states that historically used their voting laws to prevent blacks from voting result in a "racial entitlement"?
Well, the only way you can solve this riddle is by recognizing that race is not the only variable at play in its equation. The other variable is class.
So what Unka Nino actually meant was that there is no impediment to screwing poor white people out of their vote in states that don't have a history discriminating against racial minorities. Screwing poor people out of their vote is the real goal, and the Voting Rights Act makes that harder to do in states that have a history of screwing poor racial minorities out of their vote. But for the fact that the po' folk tend to be black in such states, they would-- and should-- be fair game.
So says Unka Nino.
