Clarence Thomas was among the majority of Supreme Court justices who voted to effectively strike down affirmative action on Thursday morning and, when “The View” came on just a few hours later, moderator Whoopi Goldberg called him out directly for it.
Despite having benefitted from affirmative action in the past, Thomas not only voted in the majority to overturn the nearly-50-year precedent, but wrote a concurring opinion on the vote. It may not exactly be surprising though, considering how, when deliberations on affirmative action first started taking off in November, Thomas said that he doesn’t “have a clue” what diversity means.
Whoopi recalled that comment on Thursday, and promptly laid into Thomas for his both words and his vote.
“Well, let me pose this question to you Justice Thomas: could your mother and father vote in this country?” she said. “Because, had the 14th Amendment actually had us on equal footing, they would have been able to vote. And you know why that changed? Because people got out and made a change. If we didn’t have to, no one would do it.”
She continued, “Who wants to get hit by water from a water hose? Nobody. But that’s what people did in order to get the vote. So when you say you don’t know what diversity is, I say you’re full of it.”
As the conversation came to a close a few minutes later, Whoopi once again circled back to Thomas’ opinion, and worried what might come next after this decision.
“When you have a justice who says something as ridiculous as ‘I don’t get it,’ it just makes a kid — an Asian kid, a Native American kid, a Black kid — feel like ‘You don’t matter,’” she said. “Like, you don’t understand why my struggle is hard. Or your struggle, or your struggle. Is this leading to no women in colleges soon?”
You can watch the full discussion from “The View” in the video above.