Justice Antonin Scalia was a Racist Bigot
By Chuck Hobbs, Esq.
February 14, 2016
Yesterday, United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) Justice Antonin Scalia died at the age of 79. While the encomiums heralding his life have flowed from political friends and foes alike over the past 24 hours---including President Barack Obama---I would be remiss if I did not strongly state what the President and presidential contenders cannot; Scalia was a racist and sexist bigot of the worst sort---period!
As a writer and a lawyer, I concede that Scalia’s pen was potent and often added an element of grandiloquence to lower life form thinking that promotes racial, sexual and religious bigotry. As the following excerpts will show, the only difference between Scalia and other white bigoted curmudgeons, the ones who are flocking to Donald Trump’s campaign in droves, is that Scalia had an above-average vocabulary.
Now, Scalia’s voice is forever silenced and his pen is forever sheathed; as he belongs to the ages, the parsing of his legacy belongs to those among the living. As such, to make my case against Scalia’s rank bigotry, let us consider the following:
“Justice” Scalia on “Slow Track” Blacks
Affirmative Action has vexed the SCOTUS since the Bakke vs California decision thrust the practice into the public square in 1978; in the time since, two cases, Grutter vs Bollinger and Fisher vs Texas, have all but sent the signal that Affirmative Action will not last another generation. That is due in large part because of the conservative tilt of the Court and yes, Scalia, who drew the ire of Blacks this past December during oral arguments in the Fisher case where he suggested that Black students may be better off going to “a slower-track school where they do well” than to go to a highly selective college, like the University of Texas, through some form of racial preference.” Scalia added “I’m just not impressed by the fact that the University of Texas may have fewer (Blacks). Maybe it ought to…”
Through his rhetorical questions, Scalia besmirched the legacies of the nation’s HBCUs that have provided many of the most famous Black scientists of the past 100 years who have changed the way the world worked, like Fisk University and Howard University Professor Percy Julian, PhD, a famous chemist whose patents revolutionized cortisone treatments; Tuskegee University Professor George Washington Carver, a famous botanist and inventor who helped revolutionize agriculture; renowned Morehouse College alums Dr. Sam Nabrit, the first Black to be appointed the Atomic Energy Commission; Dr. Louis Sullivan, Secretary of Health and Human Services under President George H.W. Bush and Drs. David Satcher and Henry Foster, former surgeons general and with respect to Satcher, former Director of the Centers for Disease Control.
To let Scalia tell it, these men and hundreds of thousands of Black men and women like them who matriculated at or taught and researched the sciences at HBCUs were “slow-track.” Scalia, like many men his age, simply had no need to educate himself first about Black achievements because his skin privilege prevented him from seeing the world as anything but one where Black equals “less”
“Justice” Scalia on “Justice for Troy Davis”
Remember Troy Davis? Davis was a Black man from Savannah, Georgia who was sentenced to death for allegedly killing a White police officer in 1989 despite still lingering concerns that his conviction was rigged by prosecutors.
Lest we forget that Scalia was opposed to Davis having further opportunities to prove his innocence, writing in dissent of a rare Supreme Court Order for a lower court judge to consider the facts that “This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is 'actually' innocent…quite to the contrary, we have repeatedly left that question unresolved, while expressing considerable doubt that any claim based on alleged 'actual innocence' is constitutionally cognizable."
Davis later exhausted all avenues for further appeals and was executed in 2011.
“Justice” Scalia on women and the fight for gender equality
In his dissenting opinion in U.S. vs. Virginia, Scalia indicated that he did not believe that the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment provided specific protection for women, averring “The only issue is whether it (14th Amendment) prohibits it. It doesn't. Nobody ever thought that that's what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that. If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, hey we have things called legislatures, and they enact things called laws.”
“Justice” Scalia on Gay and Lesbian rights
In his dissenting opinion in Lawrence vs. Texas, Scalia fired off that: “It is clear from this that the court has taken sides in the culture war, and in particular in that battle of the culture war that concerns whether there should be any moral opprobrium attached to homosexual conduct."
Not done, Scalia added “Of course, it is our moral heritage that one should not hate any human being or class of human beings. But I had thought that one could consider certain conduct reprehensible — murder, for example, or polygamy, or cruelty to animals — and could exhibit even 'animus' toward such conduct…If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against other things?"
Yes, you read correctly---Scalia compared moral feelings about homosexuality to moral feelings about murder.
“Justice” Scalia on Immigration
During the politically caustic 2012 election year battle between President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, the SCOTUS invalidated sections of the controversial Arizona S.B. 1070, one that would have given law enforcement in that state wide latitude to profile potential illegal immigrants and to charge those without proper legal papers with misdemeanor offenses.
Scalia’s disturbing dissent included the following: "In the first 100 years of the Republic, the States enacted numerous laws restricting the immigration of certain classes of aliens, including convicted criminals, indigents, persons with contagious diseases, and (in Southern States) freed blacks…state laws not only provided for the removal of unwanted immigrants but also imposed penalties on unlawfully present aliens and those who aided their immigration," Scalia argued.
“Justice” Scalia on Black voter suppression
I was a very young lawyer when the 2000 election controversy between George W. Bush and Al Gore erupted. With my practice based in Tallahassee, I spent many of my free hours watching the legal proceedings on the trial court level where Gore’s lawyers sought an accurate recount, proceedings that would be decided first in the Florida Supreme Court and ultimately, in the SCOTUS.
Nota Bene---from 1999 to 2000, approximately 54,000 Florida residents were purged from voter rolls as convicted felons---54 percent of this number were Black voters. The NAACP and many progressive organizations argued that many of those who were purged were done so in error. Second, it is critical to remind that the South Florida counties most impacted by voting shenanigans and irregularities were heavily Democratic---and heavily populated by racial minority voters.
Nonetheless, when considering Bush vs Gore in retrospect during a 2008 interview on the CBS news show 60 Minutes, Scalia dismissively replied “Get over it…”
But it is difficult to get over Scalia’s words at the time; in his concurring opinion to halt the Florida recount, Scalia averred “It suffices to say that the issuance of the stay suggests that a majority of the Court, while not deciding the issues presented, believe that the petitioner has a substantial probability of success. The issue is not, as the dissent puts it, whether ‘counting every legally cast vote can constitute irreparable harm.’ One of the principal issues in the appeal we have accepted is precisely whether the votes that have been ordered to be counted are, under a reasonable interpretation of Florida law, ‘legally cast vote(s).’ The counting of votes that are of questionable legality does in my view threaten irreparable harm to petitioner Bush, and to the country, by casting a cloud upon what he claims to be the legitimacy of his election.”
16 years later, folks, there remains a strong likelihood that Al Gore won the 2000 election. But thanks to voter suppression efforts that have become even more pronounced in the time since---and the decision by Scalia et al to halt the recount, we now must live with the disaster that was Bush 43’s presidency.
As one who spares no quarter for powerful racists whose decisions impact people who look, pray or think as I do, I refuse to mourn Scalia’s death. I did not break out with “Ding-Dong the wicked With (or Warlock) is Dead” like the Emerald City Munchkins in the Wizard of Oz. But when I heard the news, my mind-set was actually more akin to one of my favorite quips from the 90s hit cartoon Beavis and Butthead, where Butthead, believing his pal Beavis to be dead, eulogizes him by simply saying “we have not come here to bury Beavis, but, uh, later dude…”
Levity aside, I shan’t shed a tear for Scalia because I have this habit of not crying for bigots who are unabashed in their bigotry. History will ultimately judge his legacy, and I believe that his will be relegated to the Racist/Bigot Hall of Fame like so many who codified intolerance from the bench like Justice Roger Taney in the Dred Scott decision that held that “the Black man had no rights that whites were bound to respect.” Or the majority in the Plessy vs. Ferguson decision that upheld Jim Crow laws that usurped Black Constitutional rights. The Dred Scott and Plessy decisions were not the only ones in which America’s penchant for potent legal racism was upheld by men who often are lauded as a pantheon of the enlightened; the truth is that when the light is often dim among many powerful justices of the SCOTUS because many men and of late, women, who take the Black robes to consider cases and controversies before it, are wholly incapable of checking their own life’s experiences, biases, and whims at the door. Scalia was no different and the determination of whether he was a legal revolutionary or rapscallion rests in the subjective eyes of the beholder.
By Chuck Hobbs, Esq.
February 14, 2016
Yesterday, United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) Justice Antonin Scalia died at the age of 79. While the encomiums heralding his life have flowed from political friends and foes alike over the past 24 hours---including President Barack Obama---I would be remiss if I did not strongly state what the President and presidential contenders cannot; Scalia was a racist and sexist bigot of the worst sort---period!
As a writer and a lawyer, I concede that Scalia’s pen was potent and often added an element of grandiloquence to lower life form thinking that promotes racial, sexual and religious bigotry. As the following excerpts will show, the only difference between Scalia and other white bigoted curmudgeons, the ones who are flocking to Donald Trump’s campaign in droves, is that Scalia had an above-average vocabulary.
Now, Scalia’s voice is forever silenced and his pen is forever sheathed; as he belongs to the ages, the parsing of his legacy belongs to those among the living. As such, to make my case against Scalia’s rank bigotry, let us consider the following:
“Justice” Scalia on “Slow Track” Blacks
Affirmative Action has vexed the SCOTUS since the Bakke vs California decision thrust the practice into the public square in 1978; in the time since, two cases, Grutter vs Bollinger and Fisher vs Texas, have all but sent the signal that Affirmative Action will not last another generation. That is due in large part because of the conservative tilt of the Court and yes, Scalia, who drew the ire of Blacks this past December during oral arguments in the Fisher case where he suggested that Black students may be better off going to “a slower-track school where they do well” than to go to a highly selective college, like the University of Texas, through some form of racial preference.” Scalia added “I’m just not impressed by the fact that the University of Texas may have fewer (Blacks). Maybe it ought to…”
Through his rhetorical questions, Scalia besmirched the legacies of the nation’s HBCUs that have provided many of the most famous Black scientists of the past 100 years who have changed the way the world worked, like Fisk University and Howard University Professor Percy Julian, PhD, a famous chemist whose patents revolutionized cortisone treatments; Tuskegee University Professor George Washington Carver, a famous botanist and inventor who helped revolutionize agriculture; renowned Morehouse College alums Dr. Sam Nabrit, the first Black to be appointed the Atomic Energy Commission; Dr. Louis Sullivan, Secretary of Health and Human Services under President George H.W. Bush and Drs. David Satcher and Henry Foster, former surgeons general and with respect to Satcher, former Director of the Centers for Disease Control.
To let Scalia tell it, these men and hundreds of thousands of Black men and women like them who matriculated at or taught and researched the sciences at HBCUs were “slow-track.” Scalia, like many men his age, simply had no need to educate himself first about Black achievements because his skin privilege prevented him from seeing the world as anything but one where Black equals “less”
“Justice” Scalia on “Justice for Troy Davis”
Remember Troy Davis? Davis was a Black man from Savannah, Georgia who was sentenced to death for allegedly killing a White police officer in 1989 despite still lingering concerns that his conviction was rigged by prosecutors.
Lest we forget that Scalia was opposed to Davis having further opportunities to prove his innocence, writing in dissent of a rare Supreme Court Order for a lower court judge to consider the facts that “This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is 'actually' innocent…quite to the contrary, we have repeatedly left that question unresolved, while expressing considerable doubt that any claim based on alleged 'actual innocence' is constitutionally cognizable."
Davis later exhausted all avenues for further appeals and was executed in 2011.
“Justice” Scalia on women and the fight for gender equality
In his dissenting opinion in U.S. vs. Virginia, Scalia indicated that he did not believe that the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment provided specific protection for women, averring “The only issue is whether it (14th Amendment) prohibits it. It doesn't. Nobody ever thought that that's what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that. If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, hey we have things called legislatures, and they enact things called laws.”
“Justice” Scalia on Gay and Lesbian rights
In his dissenting opinion in Lawrence vs. Texas, Scalia fired off that: “It is clear from this that the court has taken sides in the culture war, and in particular in that battle of the culture war that concerns whether there should be any moral opprobrium attached to homosexual conduct."
Not done, Scalia added “Of course, it is our moral heritage that one should not hate any human being or class of human beings. But I had thought that one could consider certain conduct reprehensible — murder, for example, or polygamy, or cruelty to animals — and could exhibit even 'animus' toward such conduct…If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against other things?"
Yes, you read correctly---Scalia compared moral feelings about homosexuality to moral feelings about murder.
“Justice” Scalia on Immigration
During the politically caustic 2012 election year battle between President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, the SCOTUS invalidated sections of the controversial Arizona S.B. 1070, one that would have given law enforcement in that state wide latitude to profile potential illegal immigrants and to charge those without proper legal papers with misdemeanor offenses.
Scalia’s disturbing dissent included the following: "In the first 100 years of the Republic, the States enacted numerous laws restricting the immigration of certain classes of aliens, including convicted criminals, indigents, persons with contagious diseases, and (in Southern States) freed blacks…state laws not only provided for the removal of unwanted immigrants but also imposed penalties on unlawfully present aliens and those who aided their immigration," Scalia argued.
“Justice” Scalia on Black voter suppression
I was a very young lawyer when the 2000 election controversy between George W. Bush and Al Gore erupted. With my practice based in Tallahassee, I spent many of my free hours watching the legal proceedings on the trial court level where Gore’s lawyers sought an accurate recount, proceedings that would be decided first in the Florida Supreme Court and ultimately, in the SCOTUS.
Nota Bene---from 1999 to 2000, approximately 54,000 Florida residents were purged from voter rolls as convicted felons---54 percent of this number were Black voters. The NAACP and many progressive organizations argued that many of those who were purged were done so in error. Second, it is critical to remind that the South Florida counties most impacted by voting shenanigans and irregularities were heavily Democratic---and heavily populated by racial minority voters.
Nonetheless, when considering Bush vs Gore in retrospect during a 2008 interview on the CBS news show 60 Minutes, Scalia dismissively replied “Get over it…”
But it is difficult to get over Scalia’s words at the time; in his concurring opinion to halt the Florida recount, Scalia averred “It suffices to say that the issuance of the stay suggests that a majority of the Court, while not deciding the issues presented, believe that the petitioner has a substantial probability of success. The issue is not, as the dissent puts it, whether ‘counting every legally cast vote can constitute irreparable harm.’ One of the principal issues in the appeal we have accepted is precisely whether the votes that have been ordered to be counted are, under a reasonable interpretation of Florida law, ‘legally cast vote(s).’ The counting of votes that are of questionable legality does in my view threaten irreparable harm to petitioner Bush, and to the country, by casting a cloud upon what he claims to be the legitimacy of his election.”
16 years later, folks, there remains a strong likelihood that Al Gore won the 2000 election. But thanks to voter suppression efforts that have become even more pronounced in the time since---and the decision by Scalia et al to halt the recount, we now must live with the disaster that was Bush 43’s presidency.
As one who spares no quarter for powerful racists whose decisions impact people who look, pray or think as I do, I refuse to mourn Scalia’s death. I did not break out with “Ding-Dong the wicked With (or Warlock) is Dead” like the Emerald City Munchkins in the Wizard of Oz. But when I heard the news, my mind-set was actually more akin to one of my favorite quips from the 90s hit cartoon Beavis and Butthead, where Butthead, believing his pal Beavis to be dead, eulogizes him by simply saying “we have not come here to bury Beavis, but, uh, later dude…”
Levity aside, I shan’t shed a tear for Scalia because I have this habit of not crying for bigots who are unabashed in their bigotry. History will ultimately judge his legacy, and I believe that his will be relegated to the Racist/Bigot Hall of Fame like so many who codified intolerance from the bench like Justice Roger Taney in the Dred Scott decision that held that “the Black man had no rights that whites were bound to respect.” Or the majority in the Plessy vs. Ferguson decision that upheld Jim Crow laws that usurped Black Constitutional rights. The Dred Scott and Plessy decisions were not the only ones in which America’s penchant for potent legal racism was upheld by men who often are lauded as a pantheon of the enlightened; the truth is that when the light is often dim among many powerful justices of the SCOTUS because many men and of late, women, who take the Black robes to consider cases and controversies before it, are wholly incapable of checking their own life’s experiences, biases, and whims at the door. Scalia was no different and the determination of whether he was a legal revolutionary or rapscallion rests in the subjective eyes of the beholder.
