On Tuesday's Hardball, fill-in host Joy Reid compared the Supreme Court upholding Michigan's ban on affirmative action to upholding white supremacy.
"If this court has a central narrative, it could be that those who have held the advantage for most of this country's history deserve to have it back if they can find the legislative or political means to take it back. If they do, the Court won't stand in the way," Reid ranted at the end of the show. [Audio here.]
Reid ended by saying the Court only recognized discrimination when it's "violent and obvious and in-your-face," but that was "something only the privileged could believe."
Below is a transcript of the segment at the end of the April 22 Hardball:
JOY REID: Let me finish tonight with the Supreme Court and affirmative action. The Roberts court decided today that states have the right to end affirmative action if the voters wish to do so. If this court has a central narrative, it could be that those who have held the advantage for most of this country's history deserve to have it back if they can find the legislative or political means to take it back. If they do, the Court won't stand in the way.
Whether it's states that were once blocked from passing restrictive voting rules from the Voting Rights Act but are now free to do so. Or the rich, who from the robber baron era through Watergate were free to spend unlimited sums of money to buy a candidate or two. Or 20. Or states whose voting majorities have had enough of affirmative action, but don't mind a few legacies getting a leg up at their family alma mater.
The Roberts Court has had moments of siding with the victims of discrimination. They struck down the Defense of Marriage Act and left the Affordable Care Act in place. But even those decisions left some people behind. And the ObamaCare decision left millions of Americans vulnerable to a refusal by their state's leadership to expand coverage to the poor. And the courts with conservative majority have a novel means of explaining why they feel duty-bound to side with the haves and the have mores. Time has passed, they say. And unless discrimination is violent and obvious and in-your-face, it's gone. Past and over. That's something only the privileged could believe.
