In light of recent debates about whether opponents of President Obama’s health care proposals are playing the race card, BlackAmericaWeb.com takes it a step further, arguing that the entire ‘States’ Rights’ argument, which Conservatives are presently using as a weapon against the Obama Administration, is a blatant attempt to play one of the oldest race cards in the deck of American history.
“Wade Henderson, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, accuses some health care reform foes of reaching way down to the bottom of the deck to play an old, but tested hand favored by Southern civil rights era segregationists: State’s rights,” reports BlackAmericaWeb.com. “Henderson said the state’s rights stance conjures up images of then-Gov. George Wallace defiantly claiming state sovereignty as he stood in the doorway of the University of Alabama in a vain attempt to block integration of the school in 1963.”
“We do recall that state’s rights jargon and secessionist jargon was often used in the 1940s and 1950s to justify opposition to civil rights laws that helped to make a more equal society,” Henderson said. “We are fearful that this use of coded language is intended to reintroduce elements in this (health care) debate that ultimately will distract the American people from the substance of health care reform.” More