Antonin Scalia wasn’t just talking about blacks with “inferior academic credentials.” (cc photo: Steven Masker/Wikimedia)
New York Times Supreme Court correspondent Adam Liptak (12/9/15) recounted a startling moment in the Court’s oral arguments over the University of Texas’ affirmative action plan:
In a remark that drew muted gasps in the courtroom, Justice Antonin Scalia said that minority students with inferior academic credentials may be better off at “a less advanced school, a slower-track school where they do well.”
“I don’t think it stands to reason that it’s a good thing for the University of Texas to admit as many blacks as possible,” he added.
But part of the reason that the remark drew “muted gasps,” surely, is that that’s not what Scalia said–he didn’t say minority students “with inferior academic credentials” would be better off at worse schools, he said African-Americans in general would. Here’s the whole passage:
There are those who contend that it does not benefit African-Americans to get them into the University of Texas, where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less-advanced school–a slower-track school where they do well. One of the briefs pointed out that most of the black scientists in this country don’t come from schools like the University of Texas…. They come from lesser schools where they do not feel that they’re being pushed ahead in classes that are too fast for them.
He goes on to suggest that “really competent blacks” would be better off if they were “admitted to lesser schools”:
I’m just not impressed by the fact that that the University of Texas may have fewer [black students]. Maybe it ought to have fewer. And maybe some, you know, when you take more, the number of blacks, really competent blacks, admitted to lesser schools turns out to be less. And I don’t think it stands to reason that it’s a good thing for the University of Texas to admit as many blacks as possible.
This is not a person talking about a subset of blacks with a particular kind of educational background; taking his words at face value, this is a person asserting that African-Americans as a whole belong in “lesser schools” that are not “too fast for them.” (Or that “there are those who contend” that that is the case, if you want to give Scalia credit for that circumlocution.)
The fact that a Supreme Court justice justifies eliminating affirmative action on the basis of openly racist views ought to be big news. By sugarcoating what Scalia actually said, the New York Times disguises that news–making the ethnic cleansing of America’s top schools a more palatable possibility. Perhaps that shouldn’t make me gasp.
Jim Naureckas is the editor of FAIR.org. Follow him on Twitter: @JNaureckas.
You can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com, or write to public editor Margaret Sullivan: public@nytimes.com (Twitter: @NYTimes or @Sulliview). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.
As the goal of society is to give everyone equal power and control over society, as this can be achieved only by everyone having equal wealth, what is the root cause of wealth disparity? In short, do the laboring-class lack ambition, or are they inherently lazy?
In any church or social group, if you were to say that virtually all of the permanent lifetime homeless lack the intelligence to earn a living wage, most everyone present would say how disgraceful of you to so shame the poor. Which would establish two things: That such a fact is well known to most everyone and they are all most bigoted against those slow of thought, thinking that how shameful it is to be slow of thought.
“And, you know, there are only a few really competent blacks, and if they go to UT … goodness …
All you’ll have at the lesser schools are a bunch of dumb bunnies.”
Scalia is used to turning the words used by the other justices to attack their opinions. He did this several times in his minority opinions opposing expanded rights for gays and lesbians, accurately predicting that the Court would use these opinions to eventually approve same sex marriages. It is only appropriate now that Scalia’s own words be subjected to the same critique. Taken on its face value, which it should be since he said what he said in open court in the middle of deliberating a significant civil rights case, Scalia’s statement would, if it makes its way into a majority court opinion in this case, could be used to justify openly racist admission policies in universities across the country. He states, and must believe, that African Americans, as a “race” cannot academically compete on the same level at as other racially identifiable groups. Therefore it must be permissible for more challenging universities to deny them admission for their own good. That is where his logic takes us.
Race is not a biological condition, it is a social construct.
We are homo sapiens; some of us are dark skinned, some approach albino. A scheme to rank people by their hair color and ear size would be no less valid…and no less ignorant.
Instead of approaching this and similar cases with an effort to ensure the equal rights of all citizens from the legacy of hundreds of years of slavery and the institutionalized ignorance of Jim Crow segregation, Scalia approaches the issues as if race were an established scientific fact and argues points using the language and attitudes of the most pathetic racist.
In the not too distant past, there were those who classified Italians as non-white. Is Scalia ready to rank those potential students by color code? Or would he only consider those from Sicily as truly black? (Scalia’s father came from Sicily. He’d be so proud of his boy.)
Only people of who are not “competent” judge people by their color. They are the only ones who are able to rationalize it.
I’m no fan of Scalia (in fact, the furthest thing from it), and I’m the first to support the rights of ALL minorities, but this article is reaching.
To me, Scalia’s argument about admitting students based solely on their merits pertains to all students in general, not just blacks or other minorities. So, I don’t see his remarks as racist and needing to be sugarcoated. And perhaps neither did Mr. Liptak.
That said, Scalia’s “lesser schools” refrain was rather irksome.
In Empire USA, Republicans own 80% of the wealth, so, they own 80% of the guns. Surely, and as the laboring-class lower half of society has not the $35 needed to get a sick kid into the doctor’s office, you had better believe that if the legalized killer cops were not so brutal, imperial and violent, there would be open season on gunning down republicans. A pacifist that I be, 76 years of remembering history that is me.
Scalia is insufferable and his judicial philosophy has done a lot of harm. But this article’s mischaracterization of what he said in this case borders on defamation. See: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-scalia-affirmativeaction-supremecourt-20151209-story.html. It is embarrassing that someone from fair.org could have such contempt for the principle of charitable interpretation. It is disgraceful but unsurprising that he found a willing publisher in salon.com.
I have made many comments to FAIR articles. This is the first critical. I think the elided verbatim text in the second paragraph of the full cite of Scalia’s comments, “[black students],” could sway the meaning 180 degrees and their absence cheapens this reporting.
I question whether Naureckas has ever taken a class on reporting and if he is, clearly is just fabricating stories.
To me, this is a non-story and this comes from someone on the far left. But I also was majoring in Journalism for a bit before I realized the internet was making the traditional style irrelevant, and I guess now traditional journalism is deceitful and evil.
You know what a Lede is, right? Well, after your Lede is where you put your important facts. You suggest that the reporter does not find this newsworthy, when in fact the writer emphasized its newsworthiness.
You just are upset that this wasn’t a race-oriented political piece written by someone who is paid to do none of that, but instead work the SCOTUS beat.
The simple fact of working the SCOTUS beat means that quoting a long quote by Scalia, like Naureckas seems to want Liptak to do, just isn’t feasible with the story but somehow, that misrepresents what happened. Despite them quoting a more innocuous but still incendiary quote by Scalia talking about “blacks”, this is somehow criminal “sugarcoating”.
Blogposts like this may not have word counts that you have to strictly adhere to, but the Times does. Because they still do print journalism, y’know.
As much as I’d like everyone to read about how racist Scalia is, quotes like this: “There are those who contend that it does not benefit African-Americans to get them into the University of Texas, where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less–a slower-track school where they do well”.
This story had a longer word count than others might, but a quote like that is still 5-10% of your total content allowed in a long story. That, and it doesn’t actually contribute much to information on the case.
Pete Williams on msnbc did the same thing and then indicated he didn’t mean what he really said. This guy is a bigot and the press keeps covering for him.
Hey, let’s be FAIR. Scalia said “There are those who contend. . . .” Of course that’s a common way to hide behind a screen and yet present scuzzy remarks and views. We can point that out, and we can challenge him by asking him what HE contends. But let’s not act like he has directly owned up to the remarks.
Of course we ought to challenge the views, and use them as an opportunity to expose the underfunded, neglected, and scapegoated public education system, the publicly subsidized private economy’s production of poverty and overburdened two- and three- job parents who cannot provide the parenting and encouragement and modeling youths need to help them stick with it in their educations, the racial and other discrimination, the citizens united politics and laws and court decisions — well, I’m sure readers can enumerate the true sources of the problem and turn Scalia’s screened scapgoating comment into an opportunity to educate consciousness and promote action.
NPR did something similar today. Some woman danced around the quote for what seemed like 2 minutes, trying to come up with excuses or less racist interpretations of what he might have meant to say. Another NPR moment. Disheartening.
What a great legal mind.
I’m surprised at some of the comments above… didn’t Scalia literally say there is no need for affirmative action because Blacks don’t belong at ‘better’ schools? (‘mismatch theory’) or did Scalia argue in favor of affirmative action because ‘mismatch theory’ is so full of crap? did I miss something?
it sure looks like Scalia sees colleges as ‘lesser’ by being less ‘competitive’ – compared to Yale and Harvard where you can’t not get in if you have the right parents and you can’t flunk if you are a Bush (even if you get several drunken arrests). I know lots of people who go to not-so-‘lesser’ schools and do just fine without straight A’s, and in fact, manage to learn something. if Bush could do it, I think any ‘slower’ mind can. if not, then we should just keep ’em segregated from birth… why bother?
I agree with Fair on this article, but I’m more shocked that people actually feel these racist assumptions are valid. what is a ‘lesser’ school, anyway? a better-funded place that offers a richer environment for actual learning to compensate for poorly-funded primary education and that produces well-educated people of all races, not just the frat-society that sits on the robes (and sees the devil walking among us)… that’s not a ‘lesser’ school, and even if there is something ‘slower’ about some people’s learning, they don’t talk that fast in Texas… oh, and some of the community colleges even use the same textbooks as Stanford, and have good teachers, but don’t tell the Yalies that. Bush probably would have failed if he went to a ‘lesser’ school in TX… the whole Scalia statement is so full of attitude.
I’m really interested to see if and how the NYT responds to this.