Republicans Cite Racist ‘Dred Scott’ Decision In Resolution to Block Harris Candidacy
19th century Supreme Court ruling denied citizenship to Black Americans
In a stunning display of overt right-wing racism, a group of Republicans unanimously adopted a resolution trying to deny the eligibility of Vice President Kamala Harris to run for president.
The resolution, by the National Federation of Republican Assemblies (NFRA), has been circulated on social media by a number of attorneys, including former US attorney Joyce Vance.
Billing itself as the “Republican wing of the Republican party,” and oppose those that the organization deems as “RINOs,” or Republicans In Name Only, NFRA is a longstanding right-wing organization that boasts through its history such right-wingers as President Ronald Reagan, and activists like Phyllis Schlafly and Grover Norquist, as well as current Sens Rand Paul, of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas.
Rather than criticize Harris on policy grounds, the NFRA is taking a xenophobic and racist attack on the vice president by questioning her eligibility to run for president at all in an echo of the racist “birtherism” used against the Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president.
The NFRA resolution claims — falsely — that Harris is not a “natural born citizen,” as the US Constitution mandates.
The first Black woman to be president, if elected, Harris was born of immigrant parents. But she was born in Oakland, Calif, and as such is a natural born citizen under the terms of the Constitution.
However, the NFRA resolution is even more racist than that.
It specifically cites the US Supreme Court’s infamous Dred Scott decision from 1857 that denied US citizenship to Black Americans.
Legal scholar Bernard Schwartz said that it “stands first in any list of the worst Supreme Court decisions,” and a future chief justice, Charles Evans Hughes, called it the high court’s “greatest self-inflicted wound.”
Yet NFRA members clearly include it among other court decisions it uses to try to justify its baseless and racist resolution.
When she posted the resolution on her social media account, Vance — a US attorney during the Obama administration — commented: “Dred Scott. I am gobsmacked. And that is saying a lot after the last 16 years.”
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