Exactly ten years ago, the Supreme Court was presented with a case involving affirmative action. The majority rejected a policy employed by the University of Texas which allowed it to consider race as one factor in its admissions decisions. A majority of the court rejected the university’s arguments that this was a good way to achieve “diversity,” and sent the case back to the lower courts to determine if “strict scrutiny” justified the use of the policy.
Justice Clarence Thomas, an avowed foe of affirmative action, filed a separate opinion. He concurred in the result, which was decided largely on procedural grounds. But he wrote separately to express his opposition to any sort of race-based policy.
Thomas has always taken the position that giving someone an advantage because of their race ends up causing what he called “insidious consequences” of “racial engineering.” That’s made him a reviled figure among the sort of folks who think that race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnic origin and a host of other immutable characteristics should be the basis for assigning honors, providing opportunities and assessing achievement.
Well, Thomas is about to get a companion on the high, and according to President Biden, it’s going to be a woman of color. In other words, Biden is going to use the litmus test of race to determine who ascends to the highest court in the land, the one that has consistently told us that discrimination is illegal.
Biden hasn’t said that race and gender will be “one of the ways” in which he chooses Justice Stephen Breyer’s replacement. He’s pretty much made it clear that this will the threshold decision, and that only after he narrows the selection pool to women of color, he can then look at other qualifications like, uh, merit.
And that’s a huge disservice to women of color, white women, men of color, and pretty much every other human being out there who wants a fair shot at showing their value. What Biden is doing is engaging in just the sort of racism that professor John McWhorter describes in his book “Woke Racism,” and that Justice Thomas described in his memoir. In a passage that breaks your heart, because you know that he is speaking from a heart that was likely broken many times over because of bigotry, Thomas writes about what he calls the “paternalistic” form of racism that buttresses affirmative action:
“At least southerners were up front about their bigotry; you knew exactly where they were coming from. Not so the paternalistic big-city whites who offered you a helping hand so long as you were careful to agree with them, but slapped you down if you started acting as if you didn’t know your place.”
Biden isn’t new to this rodeo. About 15 or so years ago, before he was tapped to be Barack Obama’s running mate, he described the future president as “the first mainstream African American who is articulate, bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.” He later apologized, insisting that he was taken out of context.
Biden has been backed into a corner by the radical left wing of his party, for whom identity politics is mother’s milk. He is forced to mouth all of the appropriate platitudes about it being time to have a woman of color on the court, which he likely means “Black” woman since I’m sure the wise Latina considers herself to be a woman of color, among other things. But we all understand the game, and how it must be played these days.
To be fair, Joe isn’t the first president to play it. Presidents from the left and the right have made a big deal about appointing women, including Reagan, Clinton, Obama and Trump. It’s always been troublesome, because ovaries are not the organs that should matter when choosing a justice. Biden is just upping the ante, now, with race.
Given that Breyer is a liberal, the balance of power won’t be impacted by the new nominee. It’s going to remain a 6-3 court.
The real problem is the idea that a president can get up and actually say that he will limit his choice of nominees for one of the most crucial and important positions on the court to a specific race and gender. He may change his position in the coming weeks, although with AOC types breathing down his neck, he wouldn’t dare unless Jill provides a better defense for him than the Bucs did for Tom Brady.
So get ready for that “articulate, bright and clean nice-looking woman,” coming to a court near you.
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Copyright 2022 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.
Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].
“Biden has been backed into a corner by the radical left wing of his party, for whom identity politics is mother’s milk. He is forced to mouth all of the appropriate platitudes about it being time to have a woman of color on the court”. Biden has been backed into a corner????? Biden “is forced to mouth all of the appropriate platitudes”????? In other words, Biden cannot think for himself and Biden is one of the sheep or “useful idiots”. When one is not man enough to think for himself, when one is a sheep among the many sheep, then as far as I am concerned that person is not a “man”, as he is too weak of a person to think for himself. This is what we have in the White House, a weakling that is not a man, a weakling that is a traitor to our Country, a pathetic weakling that is a “sheep” among the many “sheep”.
HE IS willingly going int o that corner.. HE is not being “Forced into it”..
Elevating ANYONE to positions of high office based strictly on race, makes about as much sense as promoting the oldest age depleted guy in your party to President, just because he is next in line and has paid his party dues. Just how many times must the Democrats inflict us with their insidious droning muffled drums that like fading human hearts just lead us on a death march to the American gravesite of our freedoms and abilities to Self-govern as individuals, and collectively as a nation? The failures that follow them and their insidiously inept leadership are becoming painfully aware to even the most uneducated lowly American they have miseducated for future control. Enough is enough. Time to separate the sheep from the rams and assign each to the purposes for which they were created. Sheep make poor military leaders, Rams make poor Speakers of the House, leaders of the Senate and even Supreme Court Justices, where ramming insane unworkable bankrupting bills down the throats and finances of THE PEOPLE approaches political criminality bordering even now upon national suicide, where clods and Clyburn’s instead of Thomas’s and Jeffersons of WE THE PEOPLE get to pick who runs our nation and adjudicates the validity of our laws.
When you look at the Biden administration as a whole and the results that have been achieved with superficiality as opposed to genuine qualifications, this Supreme Court pick should come as no surprise. Biden isn’t qualified himself for the position he holds—he is in way over his head—why would he impose rigid qualification on his appointees to various offices?
Nicely said. JUST look at the laundry list of failures in his admin. ALL BECAUSE Of identity politics!
Justice Thomas is the most constitutional justice on the court and has been since Justice Scalise is gone. Those who believe in God should pray for his safety.
Sadly, even though he’s black, he will have that target on his back because he believes in our constitution. The radical left wing progressive will want him gone next, so they can get another flaming liberal on the court. Anyone that doesn’t believe our Republic is under fire from all the left wing groups really have their head in the sand. That’s a sad state of affairs because we could very well lose our constitutional rights. All democrats need purged from our governments, at all levels, if we want the United States of America to continue to exist
IN some ways, some of those rights are already IN the toilet… Free-speech, gone with all the damn hate crime/speech laws, and censorship of conservatives.
Gun ownership, in a # of libtard states, they are neutered like crazy..
Again joe is using the black race to fool the black race and it may not be working. We can only hope!
Unfortunately to MANY blacks, it WILL work.. BECAUSE color is all so many of them, see…