The Democratic Party Wasn’t Ready for a Black President

There is something that has been tossing around in my head for now almost four years.  I think it crystalized tonight when I saw that liberals had created a hashtag on Twitter: #Negrospotting.

Words cannot express how infuriated I was (although I tried).

For those less embedded in the Twitter world, a hashtag is a way of marking a subject and aggregating comments on that subject.  So apparently liberals thought it would be funny to spot how many black people were in the audience at the Republican National Convention.  I tried to put my anger into words on twitter:

*facepalm* I can't believe that libs are so un-self-aware as to create a hashtag called #negrospotting cc @michellemalkin @twitchyteam (fix)
— Aaron Worthing (@AaronWorthing) August 29, 2012

Hey libs, can you hear THIS dog whistle? #negrospotting most racist hashtag ever.
— Aaron Worthing (@AaronWorthing) August 29, 2012

If twitter existed in the 1930's #jewspotting would have been a hashtag. Shame on libs who created #negrospotting cc @michellemalkin
— Aaron Worthing (@AaronWorthing) August 29, 2012

And of course Michelle Malkin, who has had more than a little experience with liberal racism, had her own thoughts.

SHAME SHAME SHAME on all you racist progs playing the #negrospotting game. Dear God, you people are sick. #gop2012 #rnc2012
— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) August 28, 2012

And I liked Stevie J. West’s commentary too.

.@wilbs999 Liberals are finding black people at the RNC and calling it #NegroSpotting. #BecauseActualRacism
— Stevie J. West (@StevieJWest) August 29, 2012

(Sometimes hashtags are also used as a way of making a side comment, often sarcastically, which is what she did when she said “#BecauseActualRacism”)

And there is more coverage of this vileness over at Twitchy.  But then I wrote out something that might seem like a non sequitur to most of you:

It is becoming increasingly clear to me that Democrats wereNOT ready for a black president.
— Aaron Worthing (@AaronWorthing) August 29, 2012

Well, twitter only allows 140 characters, so I will explain what I mean by that.

The Seating of Hiram Revels and the Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment

You know, I have told this story several times privately and it occurred to me that it was the perfect kind of thing for my blog, given my general legal and history geekery.  I thought I would tell you about the first black man seated in the Senate, the Reverend Hiram Revels.  This is him at the right.

One of my side projects when I was an undergraduate student was studying the history that surrounded the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment.  I was keenly interested in what the anti-discrimination principle meant to them.  That is why, for instance, I learned so much about Thaddeus Stevens.

And one of the veins I studied was the story of the seating of Hiram Revels.  For a day or two I sat in the library at my school reading the congressional record as they considered the issue and it actually is a fascinating story.

The year was 1870, and this was to be the first year that Mississippi was to be allowed to have representation since the Civil War.  Back in that day, senators were chosen by the state legislature.  That is, instead of choosing your Senator by direct election, the legislature voted for its choice to be your senator.  So when you hear of Abraham Lincoln running against Stephen Douglas, what he actually was doing was he was campaigning for his party as a whole in the state, so that they would have enough power in the legislature to make him the Senator.

That is important because that meant that when Mississippi was let back into representation in Congress, they had two choices of seats to offer Mr. Revels, and it was up to the Mississippi legislature to choose which one they offered.  And whose seat did they give him?

Yes, Diabetes is Probably a Disability; A Response to Ed Morrissey

So this morning we get news via Kevin Drum that the Obama administration is claiming some kind of victory in giving us the first Supreme Court justice who was confirmed with a disability, which everyone takes as a reference to Sonia Sotomayor’s diabetes.  This led Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air to wonder if diabetes counts as a disability.  And he doesn’t say this uncaringly, but with indeed sympathy toward people with diabetes because, as he discloses, his wife had Type I diabetes up until recently.  But he felt that it was ridiculous to treat it as a disability even when she had it, because as long as she took her medicine, she is fine.  At least that is how I read his argument.

As a lawyer, speaking about statutory construction, I would say, that under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) diabetes is “almost certainly” a disability.  But to talk about it and the policy behind this, I have to get a little philosophical about the ADA.

You see in a very real way, the ADA is an upside down law.  And it is the upside down nature of the law that has led to a lot of confusion.

Let’s start with the paradigmatic example of wrongful discrimination: skin color.  Most normal people (with the recent exceptions of John Derbyshire and Marion Barry) recognize that it is wrong to judge a person by the color of one’s skin; that one should be judged by the content of one’s character, to riff off of Dr. King’s immortal phrase.  Now why is it wrong to judge people by the color of their skin?  Because, most sane people will say, there is no significant* difference between the races.  So it is considered wrong to discriminate based on color because it truly doesn’t matter; it’s irrelevant.

(I have often said that the only relevance of race is the existence of racism, and nothing I am saying here is meant to contradict that or the implications of that.)