William Shatner injected himself into the George Takei “blackface” controversy, defending his “Star Trek” cohort’s comment about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas amid the court’s ruling last week on same-sex marriage.
Mr. Takei, a gay-rights activist, found himself in hot water after calling Justice Thomas, who is black, a “clown in blackface” for opposing the landmark court decision to prohibit bans on same-sex marriages — a comment that sparked cries of racism that spurred Mr. Shatner, with whom Mr. Takei has famously feuded, to come to his defense.
“I am positive that George is not a racist. Let’s stop the spin doctoring,” Mr. Shatner tweeted Thursday night.
Mr. Takei told a Fox affiliate in Phoenix Tuesday that Justice Thomas’s dissenting opinion left him livid, particularly the assertion that slaves and internment camp detainees couldn’t be robbed of dignity by the government, so neither could gay-marriage proponents.
Mr. Takei, a Japanese-American who said he was held in an internment camp as a child, shot back, calling Justice Thomas a “disgrace to America.”
“He is a clown in blackface, sitting on the Supreme Court,” Mr. Takei said. “For him to say slaves had dignity — doesn’t he know that slaves in chains, that they were whipped on the back? If he saw the movie ’12 Years a Slave,’ you know, they were raped. And he said they had dignity as slaves?
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“My parents lost everything that they worked for, in the middle of their lives, in their 30s,” he said. “My father’s business, our home, our freedom, and we’re supposed to call that dignified? Marching out of our homes at gunpoint? I mean, this man does not belong on the Supreme Court.”
The actor apologized Friday afternoon on his official Facebook page amid the criticism, claiming that his use of the term blackface was “not intended to be racist, but rather to evoke a history of racism in the theatrical arts.”
“While I continue to vehemently disagree with Justice Thomas, the words I chose, said in the heat of anger, were not carefully considered,” Mr. Takei wrote. “I am reminded, especially on this July 4th holiday, that though we have the freedom to speak our minds, we must use that freedom judiciously.”
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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