SCOTUS Justice Scalia Thinks Aloud

Thinking for a living is an ugly business, is it not? After all, not every brain-dropping you make is a cultured pearl of wisdom just waiting to be set in the finely-wrought platinum prose you know you are capable of. I know I post some stuff which, when reread upon the morrow, strikes me as something half-baked and yanked out of my mental oven way too soon. And yet? And yet!

Even stupid and half-baked thoughts have a kind of DNA marker that links them to their parent's overall memetic code.

So with that in mind, here is what Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said aloud where the people could hear:

Referencing an unidentified amicus brief, Scalia said that there were people who would contend that "it does not benefit African-Americans to -- 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 less -- a slower-track school where they do well."

He argued 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 -- that they're being pushed ahead in -- in classes that are too -- too fast for them," Scalia said.

The case, Fisher v. University of Texas-Austin, is being brought by a white woman who was not accepted by the university and who says its policy to use race as a factor in a pool of the students it accepts is unconstitutional.

This is so great because one of my favorite celebrity-caliber scientists is Neil degrasse Tyson, who actually is African-American and went to University of Texas at Austin and Harvard.  I don't think these schools were detrimental to his career, and since one of Scalia's own colleagues on the SCOTUS bench went to quite good enough schools, I think maybe this sort of thinking is kind of dumb-founding. Really--his attitude is so patronizing and absurd. "Maybe you should go be a big fish in a small pond." "Maybe having your own water fountain will taste better." "Maybe being separate will get you more equal." Really, no. This kind of white supremacy is genuinely last century bullshit we can just put in a time capsule marked "Stuff we are over", okay?

I'm also not sure why this white girl had to take not being at UT personally enough to go to the SCOTUS level because seriously, this is the sort of thing safety-schools are for when you are not exceptional. And she is really out there making a federal case out of her un-exceptionality. Good luck with that.