The legendary Clarence Thomas dropped a monumental concurring opinion this week, once again proving that he is, well… legendary.On Thursday, the nation’s highest court shot down affirmative action in a major blow to some of America’s most prestigious universities, including Harvard and the University of North Carolina. In Students for Fair Admissions Inc. vs. Harvard College, the Court ruled 6-3 that race-based admissions violate the 14th Amendment, which ensures equal protection. In his opinion, Thomas acknowledged that the “great failure of this country was slavery and its progeny” but refuted modern claims about race in America. He even took shots at Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, one of the three dissenting judges, alleging that her “race-infused world view falls flat at each step.” SEE ALSO: Why Does Clarence Thomas Receive Brunt of Hate for Overturning Roe? Read an extended excerpt from Justice Thomas’s concurring opinion below: “In the wake of the Civil War,” he wrote, “the country focused its attention on restoring the Union and establishing the legal status of newly freed slaves. The Constitution was amended to abolish slavery and proclaim that all persons born in the United States are citizens, entitled to the privileges or immunities of citizenship and the equal protection of the laws…. Because of that second founding, “[o]ur Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.” Plessy v. Ferguson 163 U.S. 537, 559 (1896) (Harlan, J., dissenting).This Court’s commitment to that equality principle has ebbed and flowed over time. After forsaking the principle for decades, offering a judicial imprimatur to segregation and ushering in the Jim Crow era, the Court finally corrected course in Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), announcing that primary schools must either desegregate with all deliberate speed or else closer their doors…. It then pulled back… permitting universities to discriminate based on race in their admissions process (though only temporarily) in order to achieve alleged ‘educational benefits of diversity….’ Yet, the Constitution continues to embody a simple truth: Two discriminatory wrongs cannot make a right,” he noted before walking through the long history of slavery and civil rights in America, highlighting the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, in particular.“Despite the extensive evidence favoring the colorblind view,” he continued, “it appears increasingly in vogue to embrace an ‘antisubordination’ view of the Fourteenth Amendment: that the Amendment forbids only laws that hurt, but not help, blacks. Such a theory lacks any basis in the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.” SEE ALSO: Apparently, the Left is OK with racism now Eventually, after debunking the argument that the Fourteenth Amendment can be used to support affirmative action in university entrance, he continued with an extended discourse on America’s Founding. “The Constitution’s colorblind rule reflects one of the core principles upon which our Nation was founded: that ‘all men are created equal.’ Those words featured prominently in our Declaration and were inspired by a rich tradition of political thinkers, from Locke to Montesquieu, who considered equality to be the foundation of a just government…. Several Constitutions enacted by the newly independent States at the founding reflected this principle. For example, the Virginia Bill of Rights of 1776 explicitly affirmed ‘[t]hat all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights….’ The State Constitutions of Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire adopted similar language…. And prominent Founders publicly mused about the need for equality as the foundation for government…. As Jefferson declared in his first inaugural address, ‘the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect.”“Our Nation did not initially live up to the equality principle. The institution of slavery persisted for nearly a century, and the United States Constitution itself included several provisions acknowledging the practice. The period leading up to our second founding brought these flaws into bold relief and encouraged the Nation to finally make good on the equality promise. As Lincoln recognized, the promise of equality extended to all people—including immigrants and blacks whose ancestors had taken no part in the original founding…. Thus, in Lincoln’s view, ‘the natural enumerated in the Declaration of Independence’ extended to blacks as his ‘equal,’ and the ‘equal of every living man.’ SEE ALSO: Definitionally wrong: Why words matter “As discussed above, the Fourteenth Amendment reflected that vision, affirming that equality and racial discrimination cannot coexist. Under that Amendment, the color of a person’s skin is irrelevant to that individual’s equal status as a citizen of this Nation. To treat him differently on the basis of such a legally irrelevant trait is therefore a deviation from the equality principle and a constitutional injury.” Not surprisingly, the intolerant left savaged Thomas mercilessly for his take on the case. “[Expletive] you,” tweeted one journalist with a picture of Thomas, adding that anyone who ruled against affirmative action is “literally” a Nazi.The same journalist went on to confirm the racist suppositions behind affirmative action when she said: “No Black person will be able to succeed in a merit-based system which is exactly why affirmative-action based programs were needed.” Of course, anyone who took the time to read Thomas’s opinion would quickly see that not only is it far from racist—as many on the left have absurdly argued—it is actually anti-racist, not to mention perfectly reasonable. The left would much rather scream into the void that “Thomas is a Nazi” than face the facts of this case. Unequivocally, in America’s long and complicated race history, this is a step in the right direction. And once again, we have Justice Clarence Thomas to thank.Jakob Fay is a staff writer for the Convention of States Project, a project of Citizens for Self-Governance.
