I am unsure if anyone with an ounce of common sense is surprised that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the use of Race in student admissions. In a 6-3 majority ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the use of Race in school admissions “violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.” Most progressives understood long ago that this ruling was inevitable.
It was a foregone conclusion that Clarence Thomas would vote against using Race in school admissions. There is no need to rehash that Affirmative Action was a prerequisite to Thomas’ access to higher education that positioned him for an opportunistic climb to the Supreme Court. Once he arrived on the Court, Thomas displayed an insatiable desire to block the path he traveled for fellow Blacks in a legendary manner. Simply put, Thomas has repeatedly proven to be no friend of Black America.
The most troubling aspect of Clarence Thomas’ position as a Supreme Court Justice flows from his uncanny yet reliable penchant to operate without considering historical context. On the surface, Thomas’s place in the recent decisions that “the color of a person’s skin is irrelevant to that individual’s equal status as a citizen of this nation” is a reasonable interpretation of the 14th Amendment. Unfortunately, his position flounders when placed within a larger context of racial conflict that began in 1619 when the first “half-free” persons of African descent arrived in the Jamestown Colony.
The level of historical illiteracy one must be constrained by to ignore Race as the most influential determining factor in a citizen’s fortunes in this land is astonishing. While it is theoretically correct that “the color of a person’s skin is irrelevant to that individual’s equal status as a citizen…” everything, and I do mean everything, about this discussion changes when the descendants of enslaved Africans enter the conversation. I fear that the present emotional furor regarding the Affirmative Action decision will cause my people to unwisely place total responsibility for the ruling on Clarence Thomas’ puny shoulders because he is not solely to blame for the ending of Affirmative Action.
In many ways, this regretful moment began when Civil Rights Leaders allowed the narrative surrounding Affirmative Action, a non-monetary reparations program intended to repair Black injury caused by institutionalized state-sponsored racial discrimination (Jim Crow, Black Codes, Racial Discrimination, Prejudice, etc.), to expand inexplicably and needlessly cover non-Black “minority groups.” One can attribute this unwise decision to political naivete or an astounding inability to advance Black rights with the necessary seriousness.
During the identity-politic-driven 1960s, multiple groups, from the LGBTQ+ to Feminist groups trained within the Civil Rights Movement, branched off and advanced their political agendas. The historical record shows that they successfully applied lessons learned during the Civil Rights Movement. Regardless of non-Black groups’ propagation of suffering and marginalization, their suffering pales compared to Blacks, the foremost victims of state-sanctioned discrimination from America’s founding.
Black political leaders have often refused to emphasize that Blacks were the only intended beneficiaries of the government initiative during Affirmative Action’s creation. Instead of demanding that the programs remain focused on Blacks and explaining why this must occur, they inexplicably worked to include other groups with no claim to the program. Maybe Black political leaders thought they were being politically savvy by forming alliances with other “minority” groups and collecting political currency to use later. I am bewildered that the above political leaders would vacate one of the few advantageous political positions Blacks have ever possessed. In hindsight, it is evident that this move to include others was a miscalculation as it is a “minority” group that led the charge to dismantle Affirmative Action when it served their interests.
In the end, the narrative that the blame for the decline of Affirmative Action must be solely laid at the feet of Clarence Thomas is a false one that allows a host of other culprits to be acknowledged for their role in dismantling Affirmative Action. This was not a good day for Black America as it once again displayed Black political leaders’ comprehensive ineptitude. Yet, Blacks will again fail to hold their political leaders accountable for their failings due to a stupefying political illiteracy that guarantees their marginalized status for yet another generation.
James Thomas Jones III, Ph.D.
©Manhood, Race, and Culture, 2023
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