Ex-Senator Rick Santorum, speaking out on the issue of Obama and abortion on CNS news, said:
Well if that human life is not a person [under the Constitution] then I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say 'now we are going to decide who are people and who are not people.'
Unlike newly elected Alabama Governor Robert Bentley, who offered an apology for saying that anyone who has not accepted Jesus Christ is not his brother or sister, Santorum is definitely not apologizing for this comment. As he explains, Bill Buckley used to say things like this.
Dan, I see Santorum's point. Really. I don't think there's anything particularly surprising or inappropriate about noting that at one time judges defined blacks not to be constitutional "persons" and today judges define fetuses not to be constitutional "persons."
Similarly, I don't think I'm out of bounds when I feel astonishment upon hearing a Jew (given our painful history) defend the racial/religious profiling of Arabs and Muslims.
None of this is to say that I agree on the merits with Santorum's underlying substantive point, which is that the Constitution mandates the same conclusion about the "person-ness" of fetuses as it does about the "person-ness" of African Americans. The two groups can (to my eye obviously) be distinguished for these purposes in a host of meaningful ways.
It's just to say that I don't think there's anything outrageous, or racist, about the expectation that black Americans would be more sensitive to the historical overtones of defining living things as not "persons" than white Americans would be.
Posted by: Eric Muller | January 21, 2011 at 11:45 AM
Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
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