If it Walks Like a Duck
It pains me to say this because people throw around this term too loosely and often incorrectly.
But I believe United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is a racist.
I say this because of his recent comments about African-Americans and top tier universities.
Also, because of his comments two years ago about the Voting Rights Act being “a racial entitlement” that needs to be eliminated.
Unfortunately, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, by-golly it is a darn duck.
And like Rep. G.K. Butterfield, D-N.C. stated, Antonin Scalia needs to recuse himself from the Abigail Fisher/University of Texas affirmative action case.
According to an article by David G. Savage, “The Congressional Black Caucus, civil rights lawyers and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., denounced Justice Antonin Scalia on Thursday for what they said were racist and insulting comments in which he suggested some Black students might be better off in a ‘slower-track school’ rather than at a more competitive university.”
With all due respect to his beliefs, Antonin Scalia of all people should not hold such racist views.
He is surrounded by Black Ivy League school graduates in the nation’s capital on a regular basis from President Barack Obama (Columbia University and Harvard University Law School) to First Lady Michelle Obama (Princeton University and Harvard University Law School) and his partner-in-crime Justice Clarence Thomas (Yale University Law School), a benefactor of affirmative action policies himself.
Nevertheless, Scalia contended that Black students might do better at slower schools where they are not pushed as much to keep up with the curriculum.
“There are those who contend that it does not benefit African-Americans to get into the University of Texas where they do not do as well, as opposed to having them go to a less-advanced school, a slower-track school, where they do well,” Scalia said.
However, Savage reported that most Black students that enter UT-Austin earned top grades in their high schools and very few actually were admitted because of affirmative action.
Supporters of Scalia believe that he may have gotten his opinion from the controversial mismatch theory.
The theory contends that minorities suffer when they are admitted into top universities and law schools when their test scores are significantly lower than the rest of their classmates.
However, few supporters of the mismatch theory believe that this study means that Black students as a whole do not compete well at top tier universities.
Many people know that many poor students from subpar high schools lag behind some of their more affluent counterparts when they enter college.
But this is not because of race.
It is because of socioeconomic status and the fact that many inner-city schools do not get the funding needed to keep their students on par with others.
As a former student and professor at some of the “slower-track” schools (Southern University and Texas Southern University) that Antonin Scalia is fond of talking about, some students from subpar high schools even struggle when they enter those aforementioned universities.
However, with talented professors, many of those students are able to catch up with their peers and sometimes even surpass them in scholastic achievement.
Scalia mentions that many African-American scientists do not come from schools like UT-Austin, which is probably true.
Studies show that Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) produce the most Black scientists, lawyers and judges, etc.
However, this does not mean that they could not compete at UT.
It might just mean that they didn’t want to go to a school like UT, and they preferred a HBCU.
Because of his controversial comments about affirmative action, many in the Black community would prefer that he recuse himself from this important case, because bigotry has no place on the bench.
