The Tokenization Of Minorities: Why Justices Clarence Thomas And Amy Coney Barrett Were Unfairly Targeted After The Roe v Wade Decision

With many on the left and libertarian-leaning sides of the political spectrum feeling aggrieved by a perceived loss of bodily autonomy and many who believe in the sanctity of life seeing this as a victory for the rights of the unborn, we’ve never been more divided. 

Countless celebrities, social media users, and political figures have taken to social media or the public stage to denounce the Supreme Court’s decision and to call out the individual justices who voted in favor of the ruling. However, you can’t help but notice that out of the five justices who ruled in favor of overturning Roe v Wade, there are only two justices who check the minority boxes and are being singled out for national criticism. 

The Turmoil behind the Scenes of Overturning Roe v Wade

In a 6-3 decision, the court ruled in favor of upholding the constitutionality of a 15-week abortion ban in Mississippi, with Chief Justice Roberts concurring with the decision but drafting a dissenting opinion on the decision to overturn Roe v Wade. Roberts, in his dissenting opinion, said that he believed 15 weeks was ample time for a woman to make her own decision about whether or not to terminate a pregnancy because most women are aware they are pregnant by the 6-week mark. Roberts said, “The Court’s decision to overrule Roe and Casey is a serious jolt to the legal system – regardless of how you view those cases. A narrower decision rejecting the misguided viability line would be markedly less unsettling, and nothing more is needed to decide this case.” 

Roe v Wade was overturned in a 5-4 decision, with Roberts casting a vote against overturning and attempting to persuade other conservatives to come to a compromise. It’s unknown if the leaked draft decision on the Supreme Court decision ahead of the official ruling discouraged the other conservative Supreme Court Justices from compromising, as the other justices have expressed more hard-line pro-life stances compared to Chief Justice Roberts, who is more of a moderate. 

Roe v Wade was a principal issue for Donald Trump when it came to electing a Supreme Court Justice. He vowed to only nominate a justice who would vote in favor of overturning Roe v Wade. Justice Amy Coney Barrett kept this promise in her decision to side with the majority. Roberts, in his dissenting opinion, stated, “Both the Court’s opinion and the dissent display a relentless freedom from doubt on the legal issue that I cannot share. I am not sure, for example, that a ban on terminating a pregnancy from the moment of conception must be treated the same under the Constitution as a ban after fifteen weeks.” This position troubled fellow Justice Clarence Thomas, who issued this uncharacteristic swipe at his colleague, saying the following of the Court’s atmosphere before Roberts joined, “We actually trusted each other. We may have been a dysfunctional family, but we were a family, and we loved it."

While Roberts stopped short of overturning Roe v Wade, five other justices cast their vote in favor of overturning the 1973 Supreme Court case, which Democrats failed to codify into law after five decades. The conservative justices argued that the Supreme Court case lacked constitutional backing, with Justice Thomas stating in his Court opinion, “I join the opinion of the Court because it correctly holds that there is no constitutional right to abortion. Respondents invoke one source for that right: the 14th Amendment’s guarantee that no State shall ‘deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.’ The Court well explains why, under our substantive due process precedents, the purported right to abortion is not a form of ‘liberty’ protected by the Due Process Clause.” 

The Democrats had 50 years to codify Roe v Wade into law, as they promised, yet never did.

The decision to overturn Roe v Wade has repealed the federal legalization of abortion, but it does not implicitly outlaw abortion. Rather, it leaves the particular laws regarding abortion up to the states, where state legislatures and municipalities will decide on what bans or lack thereof will be imposed regarding a woman’s ability to obtain an abortion.

Why Justices Thomas and Barrett Were Singled Out in National Criticism

As I’ve stated repeatedly throughout this article, a total of five justices voted in favor of overturning Roe v Wade, yet only two justices, in particular, faced the wrath of the nation on social media and even from public figures and the media. These just so happen to be the Court’s only African American justice (and the second African American to ever serve on the court in history), as well as the only woman who voted in favor of overturning Roe v Wade (or, put another way, the only conservative woman on the court). The impassioned criticism of the only justices that were members of minority groups wasn’t lost on them. Justice Thomas is no stranger to political witch hunts against him based on his race. Thomas has faced lifelong attacks from the left calling him a race traitor, Uncle Tom, and other unsavory words based on the color of his skin. 

When Thomas was sitting for his Senate Judicial Committee to be confirmed as a justice on the Supreme Court in 1991, he was accused by former aide Anita Hill of sexual harassment. No evidence was presented against him, and though three other women were willing to testify to similar experiences, the Senate never heard their testimony. The FBI launched an investigation into the allegations, and Thomas had to defend himself in front of his colleagues. The Senate hearings were led by none other than Joe Biden. Many criticized Hill for having holes in her story and for following Justice Thomas to a second job after the timeline she claims the harassment happened. Justice Thomas, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, described the hearings as a circus and a national disgrace. Thomas described the character assassination campaign against him, saying, “From my standpoint as a black American, as far as I'm concerned, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate rather than hung from a tree." 

This longstanding socially sanctioned racism against Justice Thomas has continued for decades. Following the news of the Supreme Court decision in June, racial slurs began to fill up social media posts on Twitter and TikTok, with self-identifying social justice warriors ironically hurling the n-word and other racial epithets at the justice. Despite the justice’s race having no impact on his belief that there is no constitutional protection for abortion or justification provided by the 14th Amendment, you would think that it was inscribed in the laws of the universe that people of color must adhere to all liberal talking points. So long as you’re a liberal promoting liberal politics, this apparently gives you a free badge that exculpates you from racism charges.

The implication is Amy Coney Barrett is a gender traitor for having certain beliefs about the ethics of abortion.

Actor Samuel L Jackson tweeted, “How’s Uncle Clarence feeling about Overturning Loving v Virginia??!!” which is a play on the nickname Uncle Tom, an insult that implies that a black person has betrayed their culture or social allegiance to win the approval of whites. Jackson is referring to the Supreme Court case Loving v Virginia which ruled that laws banning interracial marriage were unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment. Thomas, who is married to a white woman, had invoked the need to revisit Supreme Court cases other than Roe v Wade which rest on substantive due process as legal justifications. Thomas brought up Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell which are Supreme Court cases that protect the legal right to contraception, same-sex marriage, and sodomy. While it’s legitimate to disagree with Thomas’ originalist interpretations of the Constitution, which no doubt his own conservative colleagues on the Court would take issue with, there’s no need to call him racist names under the guise of liberalism. 

Even worse than simple name-calling, Justice Thomas faced death threats and was harassed at his own home by pro-choice protestors. Perhaps you think this is a legitimate form of protest. After all, protests are supposed to be disruptive. However, this endorsement of radical activism and the ends justify the means has led to some seriously concerning public safety issues. One man was arrested for the attempted assassination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. 

On an episode of The View, the panel of women discussed the current justices serving on the Supreme Court and insisted that Justice Thomas “doesn’t really represent the black community” because he is a conservative and that it’s a disgrace that he replaced the seat of Thurgood Marshall, a civil rights leader, because he’s a black man who would go against voting rights. They went on to say that Amy Coney Barrett was intentionally nominated because she’s a white woman who would go against abortion while putting the word “woman” in air quotes. The implication is that Amy Coney Barrett is a gender traitor for having certain beliefs about the ethics of abortion and that Justice Thomas isn’t a “real” black man because he is concerned about government oversteps in the Voting Rights Act that interferes with our ability to operate as a colorblind society. 

Amy Coney Barrett has been attacked by the left since she was nominated by Donald Trump to become a justice in 2017. Articles such as this one in The Daily Beast titled "Amy Coney Barrett Will Be the Most Anti-Woman Woman Ever on the Court” is highly representative of public sentiment surrounding the conservative justice. It can never be an argument against her ideas alone, it always has to be grounded in her possession of a uterus. A woman who can reproduce who doesn’t believe in the ethics of ending a human life? How could this possibly happen? As someone who is pro-choice, I just think it’s so exhausting and dishonest to insist that a conservative’s opposition to abortion is solely about denying a woman her bodily autonomy. Chalking abortion up to “doing what you want with your body” is dishonest because it’s not only your body in question. If you’re ending a human life, we need to first determine if that’s ethically justifiable. 

While Justice Thomas has no doubt felt the most wrath in the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision, Barrett faces a lot of heat from fellow women who are unhappy with her rejection of modern feminism and the fact that she is a traditional, religious woman. This, of course, is an inherently anti-feminist notion. Women come in all creeds and likewise with a diverse range of viewpoints. Asserting that because Barrett is a woman she must support a woman’s right to get an abortion is just as ludicrous as insisting that Justice Thomas needs to vote Democrat because he’s a black man. This is a type of soft bigotry that is becoming more popular with liberals and social justice warriors. Minorities are treated as tokens of representation for their cause which denies people their individuality. When certain members of minority groups reject commonly touted liberal ideas, the left’s true feelings about them come to fruition.

Identities Are Not Political Positions

When people who fit into a minority group, whether it be women, people of color, or people who are bi-sexual or gay, they're expected to "fall in line" by towing a specific set of principles and adhering to liberal ideologies. When they don't fit this mold, they face the harshest criticism, specifically based on immutable characteristics like skin color or gender. When people who fit into a minority status self-identify as conservatives and don't promote victim ideology, their success is minimized as them benefitting from white supremacy or the patriarchy or some other boogeyman that needs to exist to justify these sorts of radical policies and beliefs. 

When someone leads an argument by listing their identity as a credential, their argument isn’t good enough to stand alone.

This is the bigotry of low expectations. A conservative woman or a conservative black man is not allowed to have built themselves up and earned their own success and think for themselves. This is a problem, and as long as we keep having conversations that start with "As a woman" or "As a black man," then we are just running in circles. When someone leads an argument by listing their identity as a credential, that means their argument was not good enough to stand alone. A person’s identity is not a political position, and it never was.

If you actually read the Court’s opinion on this Supreme Court case, it will become abundantly clear that the conservative justices’ decision to overturn Roe v Wade had everything to do with the preservation of the sanctity of life. Yet, much of the conversation surrounding the ethics of abortion remains intellectually dishonest. 

The central ethical conundrum in the abortion debate centers around the rights of the unborn – should the unborn have rights, and why or why not? If the unborn cannot speak for themselves, then should we fight to protect their potential life? Is it sentience that matters most in determining the ethics of terminating a life, or is the permissibility of treating an unborn fetus like a clump of cells damaging to human psychology and the wellbeing of society? The conclusions we make about these questions will radically differ depending on if we’re materialists or come from a religious upbringing and whether we believe we must protect the potential for life or if freedom of choice should prevail over all else.

Closing Thoughts

While many on the left are upset about the reversal of Roe v Wade, it’s worth noting that the Democrats had 50 years to codify it into law and have made campaign promises to do so, yet never fulfilled this promise. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a champion of pro-choice rights and a feminist icon on the Supreme Court, could have chosen to retire during the Obama Administration, which many believed she should have done. 

However, she believed being a woman on the Supreme Court was more critical, so when her death occurred under the Trump Administration, this enabled him to appoint pro-life conservative Amy Coney Barrett. Considering the vote to reverse Roe v Wade was 5-4, it’s not hard to see why many think this was the wrong decision. Democrats are now using this as an opportunity to get higher turnout and support in the midterm elections and to raise more campaign funds, which begs the question: Is this something Democrats are secretly relieved about? After all, you can’t get votes and campaign donations if there’s nothing to fight against.

Help make Evie even better! Take the official Evie reader survey.