A court seat for privilege...By Derrick Z. Jackson

[Algorem]

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/01/14/a_court_seat_for_privilege/

January 14, 2006

AMAZING AMNESIA. How sweet the white privilege. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, ''Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." Right on time for the King holiday, America is elevating yet another man to lifetime power on the claim of sincere ignorance of his association with racism and sexism.

Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito was repeatedly asked in this week's hearings about his membership in the Concerned Alumni of Princeton. The group lasted from 1972, the year Alito graduated from Princeton, to the mid-1980s. The group whined in its writings that increased numbers of ''women and minorities will largely vitiate the alumni body of the future."

In the dictionary, ''vitiate" means, ''1. To reduce the value or impair the quality; 2. To corrupt morally; 3. To make ineffective."

Alito claimed membership in the Concerned Alumni of Princeton when he applied for a promotion in the Reagan administration in 1985. Alito said, ''I am particularly proud of my contributions in recent cases in which the government has argued in the Supreme Court that racial and ethnic quotas should not be allowed and that the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion."...

[Missy M]

1. The groups some of the top universities spawn are...

downright scary. Do these universities give the students a feeling of superiority over the rest of society?

[Viva_La_Revolution]

2. They do, and when they gather together in little packs

they feel important and strong, even through they are in a minority. Unfortunately, they manage to screw regular people anyway.

[Missy M]

3. They are in a minority yet their network allows them to gain...

powerful positions whether they are capable or not. Our so called president is proof of that.

[madaboutharry]

4. They most certainly did.

Until very recently, the majority of students at IVY league universities were the product of wealthy families and private school educations. I know people like this. They are not all spoiled brats, but many are. Alito, who came from a working class background, quickly forget where he came from. These people in particular, in my opinion, are the worst. They always seem to move to the extreme edge in order to never be questioned and fit in. This guy is really dangerous, he has something to prove and has turned his back on his own personal history in order to do it. He seems to have a neediness to be accepted into "The Club." His own record is so extreme that even the republican judges he worked along side of could not go along with his views. He always wrote for the minority in appellate decisions. He was always writing the dissent. An example was the case in which he thought it was proper to deny a mentally challenged man who had been sexually abused by his co-workers a day in court. And that was on a republican controlled appellate court.

[Missy M]

5. The question is, why would anyone in this country want a man...

like Alito on the Supreme Court, no less any court. What is wrong with everyone. They listen to his story about his beginnings and automatically think he must be a good person. Most people in this country came from the same beginnings, so what's the big deal. He is not a good man.