Clarence Thomas blasts KBJ’s ‘racist worldview’ as ‘cancerous’ to young Americans

Justice Clarence Thomas has voiced some criticism of his colleague, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was nominated by President Joe Biden, citing his “racist worldview” as the basis of his concerns.

In a long line with the Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling in June striking down college admissions standards based on race, which was authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, Thomas agree that Harvard University’s admissions programs violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and the University. of North Carolina violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

“To eliminate racial discrimination means to eliminate everything,” Roberts wrote in the ruling.

But in a dissent, Jackson wrote that the ruling would actually make things worse for minorities because “race still matters to the lived experiences of all Americans in countless ways.”

“Forgetting let-them-eat-cakes, today, the majority pulls the trigger and announces ‘colorblindness for all’ by statutory law,” he continued. “But to regard race as irrelevant in law does not make it so in life. And having become so detached from the actual experiences of this country’s past and present, the Court has been induced to interfere with the crucial work that UNC and other institutions of higher learning are doing to solve real-world problems in the U.S. No one benefits from ignorance.

“While formal legal barriers tied to race have disappeared, race still matters to the lived experiences of all Americans in countless ways, and today’s decision makes things worse, not better,” Jackson said. , whose husband is white. “The best that can be said of the majority’s view is that it proceeds (like the ostrich) from the hope that preventing consideration of race will end racism.”

In his concurrence, however, Thomas noted, “Racism simply cannot be undone by different or more racism.”

“On the other hand, the solution announced in the second foundation is incorporated in our Constitution: that we are all equal, and we must be treated equally before the law regardless of our race,” he continued. “Only this promise can allow us to look beyond our different skin colors and identities and see ourselves as who we really are: individuals with unique thoughts, perspectives and goals, but with equal dignity and equal rights under the law.” .

The senior judge then focused on his junior colleague’s baseless claim that the United States is a “fundamentally racist society.”

“Instead of focusing on individuals as individuals, his dissent focuses on the historical subjugation of black Americans, invoking statistical racial gaps to argue for defining and categorizing individuals by their race,” he wrote. “As she sees it, we are all inexorably trapped in a fundamentally racist society, with the original sin of slavery and the historical subjugation of black Americans still shaping our lives today.

“The panacea, he advises, is to unquestioningly accede to the vision of elite experts and redistribute society’s wealth through racial means as necessary to ‘level the playing field,’ all as judged by racial metrics . I strongly disagree,” Thomas wrote.

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Added:

First, as stated above, any statistical gap between the average wealth of black and white Americans is constitutionally irrelevant. Of course, I agree that our society is not and has never been colorblind. Post, at 2 (JACKSON, J., dissenting); see also Plessy, 163 US, at 559 (Harlan, J., dissenting). People discriminate against each other for a number of reasons. But under the Fourteenth Amendment, the law must disregard all racial distinctions…

“[I]In view of the constitution, in the eyes of the law, in this country there is no superior, dominant and ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our constitution is colorblind, and does not recognize or tolerate classes among citizens. In terms of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law considers man as man, and takes no account of his background or color when his civil rights guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved.” Ibid.

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Thomas noted at the time that Jackson “starts from his flawed premise to call for action, arguing that courts should defer to ‘experts’ and allow institutions to discriminate on the basis of race.”

“Make no mistake: His dissent is not a vanguard of the innocent and helpless. Instead, it is a call to empower the privileged elites, who will ‘tell us.’ [what] it is required to level the playing field between castes and classifications that only they can guess,” he added.