Protestations not withstanding, Clarence Thomas favors discrimination. While he routinely rules to gut meaningful programs that would help eradicate racial discrimination, he supports long-standing programs that award extra points to college applicants whose parents attended the same university.

He made that abundantly clear in his dissent in the recent University of Michigan Law School affirmative action decision.

After dismissing diversity as “more a fashionable catchphrase than it is a useful term” and claiming the majority justices in upholding affirmative action were planting the seed of “racial segregation,” Thomas went on record defending his brand of acceptable discrimination.

“The Equal Protection Clause does not, however, prohibit the use of the unseemly legacy preferences or many other kinds of arbitrary admissions procedures,” Thomas writes. “What the Equal Protection Clause does prohibit are classifications made on the basis of race. So while legacy preferences can stand under the Constitution, racial discrimination cannot.”

He adds, “I will not twist the Constitution to invalidate legacy preferences or otherwise impose my vision of higher education admissions on the Nation. The majority should similarly stay its impulse to validate faddish racial discrimination the Constitution clearly forbids.”

Not only has Thomas tried to twist the U.S. Constitution to comport with his misguided “vision of higher education”— unsuccessfully in this instance — he distorts the discriminatory nature of alumni legacy programs that helped George Bush gain admission to Yale University, the same school attended by his father and his grandfather.

Alumni legacy programs award extra points to university applicants who had a parent or stepparent attend the school. Of course, the idea behind the concept is to persuade more alumni to contribute money to their alma mater. No one blames colleges for seeking to strengthen their base of donors. But at what cost?

The “Yale Herald” reported two years ago that over the previous decade, Yale had admitted the sons and daughters of alumni applicants at a rate of 30 percent. It reports, “In contrast, Yale’s combined acceptance rate for all students last year was a mere 16.2 percent – and this was unusually high. Are students with family connections really twice as qualified to attend Yale?”

Evidently, Clarence Thomas, who entered Yale through an affirmative action, thinks so. Beyond the innate unfairness of alumni preference programs — which affect far more people than affirmative action — why should students from wealthy families receive more favorable treatment than students from working-class families who had to earn their way rather than inherit the wealth and special privileges of their parents and grandparents?

How does that advance a meritocracy?

Not only is Clarence Thomas’ position wrong on alumni preference programs, he also launches a rear-guard attack on historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Thomas, who refers to historically Black colleges as HBCs, notes that Whites represent 0.1 percent of the enrollment at Morehouse College and 1.1 percent of the students at Mississippi Valley State University.

“The majority grants deference to the Law School’s ‘assessment that diversity will, in fact, yield educational benefits,’” Thomas writes. “It follows, therefore, that an HBC’s assessment that racial homogeneity will yield educational benefits would similarly be given deference.”

Thomas overlooks one critical difference – Black colleges have never rejected students because of their race. In fact, had Thomas checked with the U.S. Department of Education, where he once worked, he would have found out that about 11 percent of the students enrolled at HBCUs are White. That’s more diverse than the University of Michigan, which has a Black undergraduate enrollment of 8.1 percent. And Michigan has a better record than most predominantly White universities.

When you think Clarence Thomas can’t sink any lower, he gets lower than a snake’s belly.

“An HBC’s rejection of white applicants in order to maintain racial homogeneity seems permissible, therefore, under the majority’s view of the Equal Protection Clause.”

That’s ludicrous. Even this conservative Supreme Court does not accept Clarence Thomas’ warped reasoning and misstatement of facts. And this is a court on which seven of the nine justices were appointed by conservative Republican presidents.

As Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, writing for the majority, noted in referring to the “Bakke” case upholding affirmative action 25 years ago, “…We endorse Justice Powell’s view that student body diversity is a compelling state interest that can justify the use of race in university admissions.”

It’s too bad that Clarence Thomas can’t agree with that simple declaration. Rather than fight for the inclusion of groups that have been historically excluded solely because of their race, gender, ethnicity, national origin or physical disability, he would rather defend special programs that bestow preferences on the privileged people who need them the least. After all, that’s why he was appointed to the court in the first place.