Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) on Thursday morning called Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia a peddler of racist ideas.
Reid said Scalia’s comments on Wednesday, during oral arguments on an affirmative action case, were “racist in application, if not intent.”
“It is deeply disturbing to hear a Supreme Court Justice endorse racist ideas from the bench of the nation’s highest court,” Reid said.
The conservative justice had questioned the merits of University of Texas admissions policies designed to give historically-marginalized African-Americans a minimum of places in each graduating class. The policies are being challenged by Abigal Fisher, a white Louisiana State University graduate who claims that, as a high school student, she was denied admittance to UT-Austin because of her race.
While Scalia’s views on the matter weren’t surprising, his comments on affirmative action actually harming Black Americans, who he also described as generally inferior, generated widespread media coverage.
“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,” Scalia said, claiming black students “feel that they’re being pushed ahead in classes that are too fast for them.”
Reid described Scalia’s comments as generally in-step with Republican policy, which has been under heavy fire this week–after the party’s leading presidential candidate, Donald Trump, on Monday called for American officials to deny entry to Muslims, including US citizens.
“The only difference between the ideas endorsed by Trump and Scalia is that Scalia has a robe and a lifetime appointment,” Reid said. “Ideas like this don’t belong on the internet, let alone the mouths of national figures.”
“The idea that African American students are somehow inherently intellectual inferior to other students is despicable,” he added.
High profile Republicans in Congress and some of Trump’s presidential rivals, including Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, heavily criticized the heir-businessman politicians. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Ohio) said Trump’s call to ban Muslim immigration “is not what this party stands for, and more importantly, it’s not what this country stands for.”
