Sen. Harry Reid on Thursday accused Justice Antonin Scalia of embracing “racist” ideas, joining in criticism from the Rev. Al Sharpton and other affirmative action supporters who said the Supreme Court jurist went too far when he questioned the push to recruit black students to prestigious universities.
The White House also weighed in, saying President Obama has “quite a different view” than Justice Scalia about the value of racial preferences — though spokesman Josh Earnest wouldn’t go as far as Mr. Reid, who kicked off the Senate session Thursday by saying Justice Scalia is an even bigger threat to public discourse than Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump.
“Scalia’s endorsement of racist theories has frightening ramifications,” Mr. Reid said. “The only difference between the ideas endorsed by Trump and Scalia is that Scalia has a robe and a lifetime appointment. Ideas like this don’t belong on the Internet, let alone the mouths of national figures.”
Justice Scalia stunned the courtroom during oral arguments in an affirmative action case Wednesday when he cited research suggesting that most black scientists did not go to prestigious research universities such as the University of Texas at Austin, whose racial preferences policy was the subject of the hearing.
“I don’t think it stands to reason that it’s a good thing for the University of Texas to admit as many blacks as possible,” Justice Scalia said.
Affirmative action supporters quickly flagged his remarks, which sparked a massive online debate over the tone and substance of his claims.
“The questioning was disturbing,” Mr. Sharpton said in a Twitter post immediately after leaving the oral argument. He later expanded in a statement: “Occasionally the arguments didn’t feel like they were happening at the Supreme Court but rather at a Donald Trump rally, that’s how vitriolic the atmosphere was at certain points.”
Mr. Sharpton warned that if the court ruled against the university’s racial preferences, it would be the equivalent of educational genocide for black students at a time when they are already protesting what they see as pervasive racial injustices.
“With demonstrations all over the country protesting how blacks are treated on campus, this case has the potential to eliminate blacks in significant numbers from ever getting on to campus in the first place,” he said. “We’re at risk of going from how black students are treated in the classrooms and dorms of American institutions of higher education to not even making it into these hallways at all.”
The crux of Justice Scalia’s argument was that black students pushed to top-tier schools by affirmative action policies may not be ready for them and may do better at “lesser” schools that do not take race into account.
He pointed to a filing in the case that said black scientists generally didn’t attend top-flight public research universities.
“I’m just not impressed by the fact that the University of Texas may have fewer,” he said. “Maybe it ought to have fewer. You know, when you take more, the number of blacks, really competent blacks admitted to lesser schools, turns out to be less.”
Most students at the University of Texas are admitted because they are in the top 10 percent of their class. That race-blind approach means the school ends up with a certain level of geographic, economic and racial diversity.
But school officials decided they weren’t getting enough of what Justice Sonia Sotomayor termed “leaders in diversity,” so they added race as a “plus” factor when deciding whom to admit for the other 25 percent of each incoming class.
The debate over Justice Scalia’s remarks exploded into the 140-character Twitterverse.
“Study: Scalia better off in ’less advanced’ court,” blared The New Yorker, which ran a coarse spoof article under the title in an attempt to turn the justice’s comments back toward himself.
Fox News commentator Brit Hume defended Justice Scalia in a tweet saying his comment “wasn’t racist,” linking to a Los Angeles Times opinion piece that delved into the “mismatch” theory that minority students admitted to top-flight schools perform worse than if go to less-selective colleges and universities. The columnist said Justice Scalia advanced the theory “clumsily,” but that it wasn’t racist.
Mr. Reid wasn’t buying that.
“The idea that we should be pushing well-qualified African-American students out of our top universities and into lesser schools is unacceptable. That Justice Scalia could raise such an uninformed idea shows just how out of touch he is with the values of this nation,” the Nevada Democrat said.
The justices are expected to rule by the end of June on the University of Texas case.
An adverse ruling would likely make racial preferences much tougher as a practical matter for schools trying to boost minority enrollment.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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