SACRAMENTO – The California Legislative Black Caucus (CLBC) in a statement today condemned the comments made by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in the Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin (Fisher II) U.S. Supreme Court case and has called for his recusal:
“It is disturbing to us as a Caucus that Justice Scalia, who sits on the bench of the highest court in this land, would pronounce and endorse racist ideas from the bench that disturbingly resemble too closely rhetoric that was used to justify segregated schools that led to separate and unequal school systems, which the US Supreme Court ruled in 1954 was unconstitutional,” stated Assemblymember Reginald Jones-Sawyer, Sr., Chair of the California Legislative Black Caucus.
“The track record of the outstanding accomplishments of African Americans in top tiered schools not only as students but professors is too numerous to list, but does make us wonder as a Caucus if Justice Scalia realizes that not only is his inflammatory statement inaccurate but cannot have the support of the top tiered schools he seems to be defending, who are proud to list the accomplishments of their African Americans alumni. For example, we wonder if Justice Scalia’s Alma Mater, Harvard Law School, thinks that their other alumnus Barack Obama, would have been better off going to a slower track school, instead of graduating and becoming President of the United States?”
Justice Scalia, you need to recuse yourself from the case and issue an apology to every African American, who has graduated from a top tiered school, from as far back as to the 1840s, when the first African American graduated from Yale University.