By Vincent L. Hall
As we celebrate the 70th anniversary of Brown V Board of Education and 60 years since Lyndon Baines Johnson’s Civil Rights Bill, sudden bursts of laughter and liberty still elude us.
While pondering how woefully inept our Supreme Court has become, I revisited the 2014 prevailing opinion in Schuette v. BAMN. Chief Justice John Roberts left us nothing to laugh about and signaled that Affirmative Action, aka DEI, was headed for destruction.
Do you remember Richard Pryor’s famous joke about courts: “We go down there looking for justice, and that’s what we find, Just Us.” A few years before Pryor, Redd Foxx made another disheartening observation about the courts.
As Fred, Lamont, Aunt Esther, Grady, Skillet, and Leroy sat in a Los Angeles traffic court, Fred quickly summed up the court’s demographics. As Fred peppered the officer who gave him the ticket, he shouted out, “Look around this room, man, there’s enough niggers in here to make a Tarzan movie.”
Both performances will make you laugh uncontrollably. But this case wouldn’t invoke any chuckles.
The case was officially styled:
“SCHUETTE, ATTORNEY GENERAL OF MICHIGAN v. COALITION TO DEFEND AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, INTEGRATION AND IMMIGRATION RIGHTS AND FIGHT FOR EQUALITY BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY (BAMN) ET AL.”
The finding was that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is not violated by an amendment to a state’s Constitution that prohibits sex- and race-based preferential treatment in university admissions.
This decision suggests that Conservatives on the court, including Injustice Clarence Thom-Ass (a proud and “Thank ya lawdy” graduate of Affirmative Action), were determined to turn back the hands of progress by any means necessary.
Thankfully, Justice Sonia Sotomayor was among the two dissenting votes and was eloquent in her opinion about the issues of law.
“Race matters for reasons that really are only skin deep, that cannot be discussed any other way, and that cannot be wished away. Race matters to a young man’s view of society when he spends his teenage years watching others tense up as he passes, no matter the neighborhood where he grew up. Race matters to a young woman’s sense of self when she states her hometown and then is pressed, “No, where are you really from?” regardless of how many generations her family has been in the country. Race matters to a young person addressed by a stranger in a foreign language, which he does not understand because only English was spoken at home. Race matters because of the slights, the snickers, the silent judgments that reinforce that most crippling of thoughts: “I do not belong here.”
In my colleagues’ view, examining the racial impact of legislation only perpetuates racial discrimination. This refusal to accept the stark reality that race matters is regrettable. The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to speak openly and candidly on the subject of race, and to apply the Constitution with eyes open to the unfortunate effects of centuries of racial discrimination. As members of the judiciary tasked with intervening to carry out the guarantee of equal protection, we ought not sit back and wish away, rather than confront, the racial inequality that exists in our society.”
Sotomayor sounded like President Johnson’s 1967 appointee to the Supreme Court and the prevailing attorney in Brown V. Board of Education, Justice Thurgood Marshall. A recent article in U.S. News highlighted a famous quip by Marshall.
“Justice Thurgood Marshall saw a similar sidestep for what it was. In his solo dissent detailing the various and sundry injustices heaped upon African Americans for three centuries, he was brutal. “It is because of a legacy of unequal treatment that we now must permit the institutions of this society to give consideration to race in making decisions about who will hold the positions of influence, affluence, and prestige in America.”
Ten years later, this court, now staffed with a fresh trio of Donald Trump’s hand-picked race and justice handicappers, is no better. I would venture to say that Brown V. Board would have gone the opposite way by a vote of 6-3. And to add injury, that negroid nincompoop, whose saving grace could only be found in Affirmative Action, would have written the majority opinion.
We loved Richard, and we loved Redd, but aint a damn thing loveable or funny about this Supreme Court. And in TEX-ASS where the governor is rapidly dismantling civil rights protections, the only affirmative action is injustice.
