Follow the Money

After my first comment on Justice Thomas, I promised myself I wouldn’t say anything more about it. Kinda felt like I needed a shower, that last time. But, well, the WAPO article yesterday explicitly referred to LL using an exempt organization to pay Ginni Thomas so that got my attention.  I detect the pungent aroma of private inurement and private benefit in the whole mess.  But I’m gonna read the article leisurely this weekend.  Instead of grading papers.  I don’t hate all of Justice Thomas’s jurisprudential thought by the way.  Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in awhile and he articulated a very persuasive defense of HBCUs years ago in United States v. Fordice.: 

“In particular, we do not foreclose the possibility that there exists “sound educational justification” for maintaining historically black colleges as such. Despite the shameful history of state-enforced segregation, these institutions have survived and flourished. Indeed, they have expanded as opportunities for blacks to enter historically white institutions have expanded. Between 1954 and 1980, for example, enrollment at historically black colleges increased from 70,000 to 200,000 students, while degrees awarded increased from 13,000 to 32,000. See S. Hill, National Center for Education Statistics, The Traditionally Black Institutions of Higher Education 1860 to 1982, pp. xiv-xv (1985). These accomplishments have not gone unnoticed:

“The colleges founded for Negroes are both a source of pride to blacks who have attended them and a source of hope to black families who want the benefits of higher learning for their children. They have exercised leadership in developing educational opportunities for young blacks at all levels of instruction, and, especially in the South, they are still regarded as key institutions for enhancing the general quality of the lives of black Americans.” Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, From Isolation to Mainstream: Problems of the Colleges Founded for Negroes 11 (1971).

I think it undisputable that these institutions have succeeded in part because of their distinctive histories and traditions; for many, historically black colleges have become “a symbol of the highest attainments of black culture.” J. Preer, Lawyers v. Educators: Black Colleges and Desegregation in Public Higher Education 2 (1982). Obviously, a State cannot maintain such traditions by closing particular institutions, historically white or historically black, to particular racial groups. Nonetheless, it hardly follows that a State cannot operate a diverse assortment of institutions including historically black institutions-open to all on a race-neutral basis, but with established traditions and programs that might disproportionately appeal to one race or another.” 

Still, I think I need another shower.

darryll jones