Bearing the Pain of Affirmative Action: The Shame of Clarence Thomas

By John Grant

 
    Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
    Everybody knows that the captain lied ...
    Everybody knows the deal is rotten
    Old Black Joe's still pickin' cotton
    For your ribbons and bows

                                       - Leonard Cohen
 

In honor of our Supreme Court I’ve decided to start this piece with a prayer.

Great Spirit of our imagination, have mercy on us stupid, hypocritical bipeds, especially those exceptional examples in black robes who decide whether an armed police officer can strip-search us in public or whether a one-hundred dollar bill has a conscience. Do all you can, Mighty Great One, to allow at least a little light and compassion into the hidden, dark recesses of their august institution.

Amen.

Now we can get on with this humble, scribbled note from underground.

Considering his appointment history in conjunction with his opinions and voting record concerning affirmative action, if Clarence Thomas had any sense of human decency ... No wait a minute! ... Given the facts of his life, if Clarence Thomas had any honor, a backbone or a pair of independent-minded balls, he would resign.

It's true: I’m angry. The Supreme Court’s recent banning of affirmative action in a case from Michigan recalled for me how really offensive the Thomas case is and how it smells worse as time goes by. Thomas notoriously sits among his eight colleagues and does not ask questions, which suggests he lacks the intellectual confidence to swim with the big fish on the court. On top of that, he’s a virtual intellectual drone of Antonin Scalia. According to a recent study, he’s the most conservative judge on the bench -- even more so than his master Scalia. I would not have thought that possible. (I realize the use of the word “master” for Justice Scalia may bother some. For example, I can hear Sean Hannity fulminating how I’m a “racist” for using plantation terminology. The fact is I can't speak in dog whistle language and prefer a French horn.)

The reason Thomas should resign is simple: He consistently argues and votes against affirmative action while he is arguably the most controversial case of affirmative action in American history. It’s like Macbeth campaigning against murder.

Along with Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Thomas graduated from Yale Law School. Both benefited from affirmative action. While Sotomayor, who wrote a 58-page dissent in the Michigan case, is a ferocious defender of affirmative action due to past injustices, Thomas consistently damns it and votes against it...

For the rest of this article by JOHN GRANT in ThisCantBeHappening!, the new, uncompromising four-time Project Censored Award-winning online alternative newspaper, please go towww.thiscantbehappening.net/node/2307