George Takei Calls Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas ‘Clown in Blackface,’ ‘Disgrace to America’ (Video)
“Star Trek” actor George Takei doesn’t believe Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas deserves his seat on the bench.
“He is a clown in blackface sitting on the Supreme Court,” Takei said in an interview with a Fox Phoenix affiliate. “I mean, this man does not belong in the Supreme Court. He is an embarrassment. He is a disgrace to America.”
Takei’s comments are in response to Thomas’ dissent in Friday’s Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage.
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The actor, who is openly gay, took offense toward the justice’s reasoning.
“For him to say slaves had dignity, I mean, doesn’t he know that slaves were in chains? That they were whipped on the back?” Takei said. “If he saw the movie ’12 Years [a] Slave,’ they were raped.”
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The issue particularly hits home to the actor, because his parents endured Japanese internment camps in the United States.
“My parents lost everything that they worked for in the middle of their lives, in their 30s,” the actor and LGBT activist said. “We’re supposed to call that dignified? Marching out of our homes at gun point.”
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Read Justice Thomas’ dissent below.
Human dignity has long been understood in this country to be innate. When the Framers proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” they referred to a vision of mankind in which all humans are created in the image of God and therefore of inherent worth. That vision is the foundation upon which this Nation was built.
The corollary of that principle is that human dignity cannot be taken away by the government. Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved. Those held in internment camps did not lose their dignity because the government confined them. And those denied governmental benefits certainly do not lose their dignity because the government denies them those benefits. The government cannot bestow dignity, and it cannot take it away.
Watch the emotional video above.
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