That's according to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, speaking in Atlanta Thursday to promote his book, My Grandfather's Son.
According to Thomas, the justices on the Court know that they don't have the "gospel," just their opinions. "That's why it's called an opinion," he said.
"Unfortunately, particularly the case for those of us who happen to be considered minorities ... others seem to know what the gospel is for us, to know how we should come out in particular cases because of the pigment of our skin. That harkens back so often to the way things were done back in Savannah," he continued. "I think that is unfortunate, but there is no gospel. There are simply opinions."
He said that when he first joined the Court, "those who were insistent on discrediting" him suggested erroneously that he was following Justice Antonin Scalia in his decision making ("There was no one more horrified than Justice Scalia").
"Obviously what it's based on is that I'm black and that I'm supposed to think a certain way," said Thomas. "and ... there's no way, since I'm not supposed to think that way, that I could up with that myself, so I must be following somebody."
From personal observation, this is still a problem for minorities in law school. One of my best friends was the only black person in my section, and she would sit in stony silence whenever a racial discussion took place in class. At times, I was aghast at her refusal to express an opinion or give testimony to what she had seen and heard as an African-American, when some of the arguments seemed either so warped or so naive.
"I'm not going to be the voice of black America," was her answer to my inquiries.
I can understand that to a degree. We are each shaped by our individual experiences and it's silly to project them onto whole groups or classifications of people. This seems to me to be one of Justice Thomas' points: it is insulting to assume that you have to hold certain opinions simply because of your skin color.
As a white person, I'm allowed to hold a variety of opinions on certain subjects, although our liberal friends will call me "racist" if I express some of them. But as a woman, particularly when I was in college, there were certain opinions I was essentially required to hold or else be discredited. Those opinions included most of the blather you see Amanda Marcotte write at Pandagon about Teh Patriarchy, abortion, and societal oppression of women.
The problem with these opinions is that, like the humans who hold them, they are flawed and time can change them. What was gospel in one era (Plessy v. Ferguson) is vile and wrong in another (Brown v. Board of Education).
Unfortunately, liberals do not allow for minorities to hold differing opinions on legal issues or anything else, really. And so, if Justice Thomas--who was the supposed beneficiary of affirmative action--speaks out on the stigma and wrongheadedness of affirmative action, he is called a vulgar assortment of names based on the idea that he's not appreciative of what he has received. It is, perhaps, the dark underbelly of liberalism: you must want to be treated as inferior so we can feel better about lifting you up.
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