Clarence Thomas has no shame. Not only does he attack the kind of affirmative action programs that got him admitted into Yale Law School, he even distorts a speech by Frederick Douglass in a feeble attempt to justify his unjustifiable behavior.

In the U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling upholding the University of Michigan Law School admissions program, Thomas launched his attack on affirmative action by quoting a Douglass speech, titled “What the Black Man Wants,” delivered on Jan. 26, 1865, to the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in Boston.

Thomas’s 31-page dissent, which is about as long as the majority opinion in the case, begins with a quote from that speech. Lambasting White paternalism, Douglass said, in part, “…The American people have always been anxious to know what they shall do with us… I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are worm-eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! …And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him lone!...”

More interesting is what Thomas did not quote.

In that same speech Douglass said, “I am for the ‘immediate, unconditional, and universal’ enfranchisement of the black man, in every State in the Union [Loud Applause]. Without this, his liberty is a mockery; without this, you might as well almost retain the old name of slavery for his condition; for in fact, if he is not the slave of the individual master, he is the slave of society, and holds his liberty as a privilege, not as a right. He is at the mercy of the mob, and has no means of protecting himself.”

Later in the speech, Douglass said, “It may be asked, ‘Why do you want it? Some men have got along very well without it. Women have not this right.’ Shall we justify one wrong by another? This is the sufficient answer. Shall we at this moment justify the deprivation of the Negro of the right to vote, because some one else is deprived of that privilege? I hold that women, as well as men, have the right to vote [applause], and my heart and voice go with the movement to extend suffrage to woman; but the question rests upon another basis than which our right rests.

“We may be asked, I say, why we want it. I will tell you why we want it. We want it because it is our right, first of all. No class of men can, without insulting their own nature, be content with any deprivation of their rights. We want it again, as a means for educating our race.”

Douglass said, “If nothing is expected of a people, that people will find it difficult to contradict that expectation. By depriving us of suffrage, you affirm our incapacity to form an intelligent judgment respecting public men and public measures; you declare before the world that we are unfit to exercise the elective franchise, and by this means lead us to undervalue ourselves, to put a low estimate upon ourselves, and to feel that we have no possibilities like other men.”

The abolitionist said, “I know that we are inferior to you in some things – virtually inferior… But while I make this admission, I utterly deny, that we are originally, or naturally, or practically, or in any way, or in any important sense, inferior to anybody on this globe [loud applause]. This charge of inferiority is an old dodge. It has been made available for oppression on many occasions…”

And here’s my favorite part:

“…If we know enough to be hung, we know enough to vote. If the Negro knows enough to pay taxes to support the government, he knows enough to vote; taxation and representation should go together. If he knows enough to shoulder a musket and fight for the flag, fight for government, he knows enough to vote. If he knows as much when he is sober as an Irishman knows when drunk, he knows enough to vote, on good American principles.” [Laughter and applause.]

Of all of the salient things Frederick Douglass had to say in that speech, Clarence Thomas lifted one passage and tried to use that section of the speech to depict Douglass as less than the freedom fighter that he was. Of course, Clarence Thomas wouldn’t know anything about being a freedom fighter. He’s too busy fighting to suppress African-Americans.