[Mb-civic] A court seat for privilege... - Derrick Z. Jackson - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

  A court seat for privilege...

By Derrick Z. Jackson  |  January 14, 2006  |  The Boston Globe

AMAZING AMNESIA. How sweet the white privilege. Martin Luther King Jr. 
once said, ''Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere 
ignorance and conscientious stupidity." Right on time for the King 
holiday, America is elevating yet another man to lifetime power on the 
claim of sincere ignorance of his association with racism and sexism.

Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito was repeatedly asked in this week's 
hearings about his membership in the Concerned Alumni of Princeton. The 
group lasted from 1972, the year Alito graduated from Princeton, to the 
mid-1980s. The group whined in its writings that increased numbers of 
''women and minorities will largely vitiate the alumni body of the future."

In the dictionary, ''vitiate" means, ''1. To reduce the value or impair 
the quality; 2. To corrupt morally; 3. To make ineffective."

Alito claimed membership in the Concerned Alumni of Princeton when he 
applied for a promotion in the Reagan administration in 1985. Alito 
said, ''I am particularly proud of my contributions in recent cases in 
which the government has argued in the Supreme Court that racial and 
ethnic quotas should not be allowed and that the Constitution does not 
protect a right to an abortion."

There is no evidence Alito was active with the group. But his exploitive 
tie is a critical window into his mind that shatters all these claims of 
his intellectual honesty. In 1985, he used his membership in the group 
to boost his career with the right wing. This week, to assure his seat 
on the high court, he claimed he knew nothing about the group's bigotry.

During the hearings, Alito said of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton:

''I don't remember this organization."

''I have wracked my memory about this issue, and I really have no 
specific recollection of that organization." None of this is of 
consequence in a nation where President Bush won reelection on the 
strength of his white vote. It was a vote that thrived on ignorant 
fears, fears that allowed Bush to get away with an agenda that resulted 
in such things as going to war over nonexistent weapons of mass 
destruction, the attack on affirmative action, even though white women 
have always been its chief beneficiaries, and the assault on gay 
marriage despite absolutely no proof that it damages the values of our 
society.

The agenda is now almost complete. On a Capitol Hill with Bush's 
Republican Party in charge, Alito will get his seat and the right wing 
will have its chance to reverse the gains of the King era, gains which 
were extended from black people to Latinos, to white women to gay and 
lesbian people, to the physically challenged. Alito will join the 
pantheon of modern white power brokers who continue to determine the 
laws of this country despite their flirtations with bigotry and 
romancing the segregated past.

In his convenient amnesia and his vigorous support of Ronald Reagan's 
attempt to roll back rights, Alito mimics the late Chief Justice William 
H. Rehnquist. Rehnquist wrote in 1952 that the 1896 Supreme Court Plessy 
v. Ferguson decision upholding segregation was ''right and should be 
reaffirmed." He owned not one but two homes with restrictive covenants 
against selling them to black people or Jews. Yet he said in his 1986 
confirmation hearings to be chief justice, ''I simply can't answer 
whether I read through the deed."

Alito's memory loss mirrors that of Trent Lott, who is still a powerful 
Mississippi senator despite three speeches to the post-Klan Council of 
Concerned Citizens and despite claiming ''no firsthand knowledge" of the 
group's racism. It echoes John Ashcroft, Bush's first attorney general, 
who praised Confederate leaders in the racist publication ''Southern 
Partisan" and then claimed in his confirmation hearings, ''I can't say 
that I knew very much about the magazine."

Memory is irrelevant in a nation that accepts a president who spoke 
during the 2000 presidential campaign at Bob Jones University despite 
its nationally known racial and anti-Catholic bigotry. Bush defended his 
appearance until pressure from Catholics forced him to apologize to the 
late Cardinal John O'Connor. ''On reflection I should have been more 
clear in disassociating myself from anti-Catholic sentiments and racial 
prejudice," Bush wrote.

Bush made it very clear what forces he wanted to associate with in 2003. 
The week before that King holiday, Bush threw the weight of the White 
House behind the white students who wanted to destroy affirmative action 
at the University of Michigan. Bush will soon have a Supreme Court that 
can kill it in all programs, along with a woman's right to choose. No 
one can claim sincere ignorance about the vitiation of rights and the 
national division to follow.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/01/14/a_court_seat_for_privilege/
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