White and Secluded = Racist?
Recently, Representative Elijah Cummings (Republican from Maryland) suggested that a Supreme Court nominee’s lack of experience in socializing or living among blacks could be problematic. In Judge Roberts case, if one has grown-up in a secluded environment (meaning little to no interaction with blacks), then that is a “problem” but not a “dealbreaker” for a Supreme Court nominee.
Cummings statement is a gross display of ignorance and in my view, insinuates that Roberts is a racist because he was raised in a small town without a robust minority population. I grew up for most of my life in a small, rural community. There were no blacks in my graduating class of almost four hundred and few (if any) black families in my town. Being from a small, white, homogenous town neither makes me or Judge Roberts a racist.
Would Cummings believe that the opposite was true? Does a black person who lives his entire life in a pre-dominately black community automatically carry racist feelings toward whites? What about a white person who lives in a city of 500,000 but resides in a suburban white neighborhood but the black population of the city is almost 50%? Would he be a racist? How is the latter situation different from that of Judge Roberts’s youth?
Absurdities like those uttered by Cummings weaken the credulity of so-called black leaders who fancy racist rhetoric to play-on racial wedges rather than relying on other substantive criticisms. Cummings and other racist-painters are getting desperate to stop Roberts nomination. Their line of attack will not succeed.