Melissa Harris-Perry: Dear Justice Scalia, Voting is No 'Racial Entitlement'
MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry had a few words for old Fat Tony after the remarks he made during this week's Supreme Court hearing on the Voting Rights Act -- Voting is no ‘racial entitlement,’ Justice Scalia:
Dear Justice Scalia,
It’s me, Melissa.
By now, we know you well enough that there’s not much you can say or do that would come as a surprise. We can set our watches by your decisions that, predictably, will be in alignment with the Court’s most radically conservative reasoning. We know that unlike your friend Justice Clarence Thomas, who has a permanent mute button on, you will always voice an opinion, and it will be heavily influenced by your political agenda..
But even given all of that, what you had to say during Wednesday’s oral arguments still came as a genuine shock.
Commenting on Congress’s nearly unanimous re-authorization of the Voting Rights Act in 2006, you said, “I don’t think that’s attributable to the fact that it is so much clearer now that we need this. I think it is attributable, very likely attributable, to a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement.”
You went on to say, “I am fairly confident it will be re-enacted in perpetuity…unless a court can say it does not comport with the Constitution…It’s a concern that this is not the kind of a question you can leave to Congress.”
Racial entitlement? Not a question you can leave to Congress? Even for you, Justice Scalia, this is a particularly willful misreading of the Constitution you claim to adore.
