giving the federal government this vastly expanded authority prior to having before the war, they also fundamentally changed the relationship of the federal government to states and the citizens to the federal government. they really created a kind of national citizenship. so, what i also found about justice jackson is taking that moment as the fundamental reconstruction of the constitution that it was, and taking it seriously for what it says about federal power, and what it says about what the government can do to deal with racism. michele, one of the strange aspects of the majority s decision today and indeed of
interesting. first of all, what s your reaction to the court s decision today? devastation, frustration, another gut punch to progress. it just seems throughout my life, throughout history, being a black in america, you are under attack for being black in america. and the decision today we can be a capacity to use the 14th amendment, in a decision, is insane! like the 14th amendment is designed to protect and enfranchise african americans who now use it to reverse our enfranchisement to how education. it is just preposterous and disgusting, obviously. let me ask you this there s different critiques and people have all sorts of views on affirmative action, and i think there s interesting complicated nuances to some discussions. for instance, one thing say, people on the left, all those fancy college stuff is kind of a little bit of a right hearing. it s a small group of people. there s only 70 colleges in all of america that admit less than
when the court says that it is looking at texts from the 13th, 14th amendment, it is looking at it with a very narrow view. and she s called them out, including by exposing, which we all know, that the reconstruction amendments were a direct response to american slavery and dismantling that system, which was a race based system in the united states that discriminated against enslaved black people. this is the thing that i found so thrilling, honestly, about ketanji brown jackson s time in the court so far, which is the project of a kind of reconstruction era, originalism, around those foundational amendments, 13th, 14th, 15th amendments, where she says, hey, you want to talk about the founders? you want to talk about the amendments? let s talk about the reconstruction amendments, who wrote them, and why, and what they were trying to do. and the notion that those amendments were colour-blind, it is farcical on its face. jamal, you wrote this today, and i thought it was really insightf
brilliant human beings i ever met. i had a chance to know. in her dissent, i thought it was scathing and perfect. you know, i was not surprised because clarence thomas has been on a mission to dismantle every institutional attempt to help an aide, not just black people, but any people who have been disadvantaged in this society since he s gotten on the court. he, like samuel alito, appears to operate from a kind of rage, a cold rage, against the entire 20th century, the second half of the 20th century, which they found find to be an affront to their own self image, and to their image of america, as this country that is snowball, and has always been nobel, and whose slave holding founders were noble, and really hated slavery, and we re just so in pain from the fact that they had to own all these people,
kind of affirmative action. just think about that moment for a second, now having seen some of this man s trajectory to power. they think he hates more than anything, that wounds his pride, is to be viewed as being less than or not qualified, as being in affirmative action case. and yet, at every key juncture in his life, he s asked about it over and over again. and for thomas and the conservative majority in the court, it all boils down to this nebulous concept of merit, of qualified, who is deserving of opportunities and who is not. but i think that misses a point. it is really a question about what kinds of institutions, and what kind of society we want to have. do we want a society where people like clarence thomas, from the small town in georgia, just several generations removed from slavery and jim crow, selected, nurtured, and encouraged, or once in which they don t go to holy cross,