Thread by @SimonesNews

Reading Thomas's opinion on affirmative action, and this quote is...whew!

"Meritocratic systems, with objective grading scales...have always been a great equalizer—offering a metric for achievement that bigotry could not alter."

This is not only ahistorical, it's delusional

As a Black woman who has navigated elite white spaces my entire life, I've seen how "merit" is just a pretty bow we've put on white privilege and cultural supremacy. I've seen it in public schools. I've seen it in Ivy League colleges. I've seen it in elite corporate offices

Many people in these spaces (white, Black and Asian) aren't the best and the brightest. Some are, but the majority are one of two things: 1) The people for whom the system was built or 2) Folks who learned to mimic these people in their speech, interests, mannerisms and opinions

As a freshman at Columbia University, one of my suitemates was part of a clique of legacy, white kids whose parents were major donors. They skipped class, stayed high and rarely studied. No idea how they graduated — except we all know exactly how they graduated

Also in my dorm were Black & brown kids from avg public schools, who studied tirelessly and juggled part-time jobs to earn and pay for that Ivy League degree. They're now lawyers, doctors and business people thanks to that Ivy League schooling and the connections they made there

Elite Black ppl like Clarence Thomas (and a lot of my relatives) have adopted and internalized the "meritocracy" narrative because it privileges them. It allows us to pretend we're in white spaces because we're more intelligent, talented and hard-working than other Black folks

But American meritocracy isn't about intelligence, talent or hard work. It's an act, a performance that we've learned for survival. Merit is speaking the right way. Merit is adopting white culture. Merit is learning their history & interests. Merit is not making yt folks uncomfy

Thomas has railed against affirmative action for decades because of how white students treated him at Yale Law School.  "You had to prove yourself every day because the presumption was that you were dumb and didn't deserve to be there on merit" he said back in the ‘80s.

Now on the high court, Thomas is wrongly attributing white folks' doubt of him to anti-racist policies, instead of the real culprit — white supremacy. And he’s wrongly identified “meritocracy” as the cure for that doubt, while in reality, it’s just another symptom of the disease