Every conservative’s favorite and most reliable Supreme Court Justice, Justice Clarence Thomas, just unloaded on fellow SCOTUS Justice Katanji Jackson, saying that her “racist” worldview is “cancerous,” particularly when internalized by young Americans.
That came as part of Justice Thomas’ concurrence with the court’s 6-3 opinion on affirmative action. As background, Justice Jackson had attacked the idea of colorblindness, which is to say merit in admissions rather than racial preferences, and argued that race should still be included as a factor in the admissions process.
“With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces ‘colorblindness for all’ by legal fiat. But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life. And having so detached itself from this country’s actual past and present experiences, the Court has now been lured into interfering with the crucial work that UNC and other institutions of higher learning are doing to solve America’s real-world problems. No one benefits from ignorance,” she said.
“Although formal race-linked legal barriers are gone, race still matters to the lived experiences of all Americans in innumerable ways, and today’s ruling makes things worse, not better. The best that can be said of the majority’s perspective is that it proceeds (ostrich-like) from the hope that preventing consideration of race will end racism,” she continued.
Well, Justice Thomas utterly obliterated that in his concurring opinion, in which he argued that racist admissions now cannot correct racism in the past, as it’s just racism in a different direction. Eloquently stating that point, he said, “Racialism simply cannot be undone by different or more racialism.”
Continuing, he then noted what the Constitution says: “Instead, the solution announced in the second founding is incorporated in our Constitution: that we are all equal, and should be treated equally before the law without regard to our race. Only that promise can allow us to look past our differing skin colors and identities and see each other for what we truly are: individuals with unique thoughts, perspectives, and goals, but with equal dignity and equal rights under the law.”
Justice Thomas then described Justice Jackson’s race-based worldview and how it colored her decision, saying, “Rather than focusing on individuals as individuals, her dissent focuses on the historical subjugation of black Americans, invoking statistical racial gaps to argue in favor of defining and categorizing individuals by their race,” he wrote. “As she sees things, we are all inexorably trapped in a fundamentally racist society, with the original sin of slavery and the historical subjugation of black Americans still determining our lives today. The panacea, she counsels, is to unquestioningly accede to the view of elite experts and reallocate society’s riches by racial means as necessary to ‘level the playing field,’ all as judged by racial metrics. I strongly disagree.”
Further shredding that worldview by describing how it ruins the minds of the young, he said, “So Justice Jackson supplies the link herself: the legacy of slavery and the nature of inherited wealth. This, she claims, locks blacks into a seemingly perpetual inferior caste. Such a view is irrational; it is an insult to individual achievement and cancerous to young minds seeking to push through barriers, rather than consign themselves to permanent victimhood.”
Justice Thomas image credit: By Earl McDonald – National Archives and Records Administration – https://catalog.archives.gov/id/210386901, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=134801669; Justice Jackson image credit: By Wikicago – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=91982907
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