Clarence Thomas, one of the most disgraced judges in Supreme Court history, is coming under fire – for taking specific aim at his sole African American colleague Ketanji Jackson in the recent affirmative action decision.
It is extremely unusual, and in poor form, for one Supreme Court judge to openly criticize another in an opinion. But Clarence doesn’t seem to care about being curtious or kind – especially when it comes to Black people.
In his concurring opinion, Thomas called out Jackson for her focus on “the historical subjugation of black Americans, invoking statistical racial gaps to argue in favor of defining and categorizing individuals by their race.”
“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,” Thomas wrote.
“I strongly disagree,” Thomas said – but he failed to citing any other reason why Black Americans face disparities in economic outcomes today.
In her dissent, Jackson pointed to a number of statistics that show the wealth and health disparities between white and Black Americans, arguing, “Today’s gaps exist because that freedom was denied far longer than it was ever afforded.”
Jackson warned that the majority opinion “will delay the day that every American has an equal opportunity to thrive, regardless of race.”
“The point is this: Given our history, the origin of persistent race-linked gaps should be no mystery. It has never been a deficiency of Black Americans’ desire or ability to, in Frederick Douglass’s words, ‘stand on [their] own legs,'” Jackson wrote. “Rather, it was always simply what Justice [John Marshall] Harlan recognized 140 years ago—the persistent and pernicious denial of ‘what had already been done in every State of the Union for the white race.'”