http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11514/pub_detail.asp
Recently the United States Supreme Court announced that it would reconsider the issue of ‘affirmative action’ in higher education. The matter was last decided by the court in 2003 when it decided in favor of affirmative action in a case involving the University of Michigan Law School. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor rendered the majority opinion. Before examining her views on diversity it would be worth a moment or two to hear an excerpt from the minority view.
Justice Clarence Thomas began his dissenting opinion in the 2003 Michigan Law School case by quoting what Frederick Douglas told a group of abolitionists 140 years ago:
“[I]n regard to the colored people, there is always more that is benevolent, I perceive, than just, manifested toward us. What I ask for the negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice. The American people have always been anxious to know what they shall do with us….I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! [Y]our doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are worm-eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall!…And if the negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!…Your interference is doing him positive injury.”