Racism and Dred Scott
Dred Scott
The Dred Scott case, described by legal scholars as the worst Supreme Court decision ever, forms the legal foundation for Obama denialist definitions of Natural Born Citizen.
We have bantered about some on the question of racism and whether it plays a role in Obama denialism and the denialist views on citizenship. Whether that is so or not, Justice Taney’s decision in Dred Scott v Sandford [sic] was a clearly racially motivated decision, because it said that Negroes could not be citizens and white people could. It was as much racist as the laws (such as the Act of 1790) which said that only “free whites” could be naturalized as citizens. Taney tried to justify excluding a class from citizenship using criteria solely aligned with race.
Following is what James Kettner said about Taney’s decision in The Development of American Citizenship, 1608-1870 (pp 327-8), something I think bears directly upon Mr. Apuzzo’s natural born citizenship arguments that appear elsewhere on this site:
Taney’s conclusion that blacks could not enjoy the privileges and immunities of citizenship under the Constitution rested upon two premises. First, one had to accept the separation of state and national citizenship not only in theory but in fact. For Taney, the guarantees made to the “citizens of each state” in Article IV, section 2, protected only those members of the national community, and the clause must be therefore interpreted to read “the United States citizens of each State.” [That is one state recognizing a Negro as a citizen did not make him a national citizen.] Second, this national citizenship could not be held to derive automatically from birth “within the dominion and jurisdiction of the national government”. Rather those citizens who created the Union in 1789 formed a closed community which membership was restricted to descendants of the founders and to aliens co-opted by the process of naturalization [which incidentally was open only to free whites.] (more…)
Is racism the new “cool”?
Conservative intellectual theorist Irving Kristol when derisively called a “neoconservative” said: “the sensible course, therefore, is to take your label, claim it as your own and run with it”.
On one side, the Obama Conspiracy debunkers have embraced “Obot” (see Obots.org) and Birthers have embraced “Birther” (See TheBirthers.org).
Is “racist” the next negative label to be adopted and worn proudly?
When Jimmy Carter called opposition to Obama “racist”, he opened the door for those who automatically ridicule anything they can label with “Jimmy Carter”. (Certainly Carter has long embraced the label “Jimmy Carter”.)
Leo C. Donofrio has published reference to a racist anti-Chinese article, calling it the “Holy Grail”, Mario Apuzzo is fond of citing the Supreme Court’s decision sayings slaves cannot be citizens in Dred Scott v. Sanford, and to top it off a truly amazing article was just published by J. R. Dieckmann in The Great American Journal, Embracing Racism.
Dieckmann tries to set up a straw man attack, and then says roughly, “if this is racism, then I’m a racist.” Nevertheless, are we looking for a new political theme from the far right: “hey what’s so bad about racism anyway?” (more…)
