viz.

Sandy Szwarc over at Junkfood Science reports on the controversial bill on the floor of the Mississippi House of Representatives. If it had been passed into law, HB 282 would have prohibited restaurants from serving obese customers. According to Szwarc, customers suspected of obesity would be required to weigh in at the door of their local dining establishment; those with a BMI over 30 will be turned away.

Szwarc, a RN with a staggering "introduction" page, doesn't really distinguish herself in her analysis of the bill; others have discussed it elsewhere. What is truly disturbing about this blog author's particular breakdown is her choice of images. Commenters on other blogs have likened this potential law as a 21st century reiteration of Jim Crow laws, but I'm not sure this is apt, nor am I convinced that this is responsible use of imagery to make a point.

Is it ethical or even good argumentation to invoke imagery from the era of segregation in this case, thereby forcing an equivalence between fat-hatred (via the rhetoric of an "obesity epidemic") and our nation's complicated and troubled history of slavery, segregation, and institutionalized racism that still lurks in our most hallowed halls?

Yes, it is wrong to discriminate against fat people, and it is wrong to automatically make the leap that fat people are fat because of gluttony and legislate against them as a result. But are fat people really in the same category as a race of people forcibly removed from their countries of origin, forced to work as slaves for generations, victims of rape and murder, and so on? I think not.