Rewriting history

It starts small.

But changing the facts to rewrite history is an insidious problem, one that has long-plagued this nation and detrimentally impacted the African-American community.

Rewriting history can steal credit from those to whom credit is due. It can allow perpetrators to shirk responsibility and criminal or civil penalty for misdeeds. It can turn villains in life into heroes at death, all of which lead to the mis-education of the public.

Take for example the death last weekend of Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court. In the days since his demise, he has been lauded as the greatest intellect on the nation’s highest court and a true believer/defender of the Constitution.

The truth is this: He was a bully in a black robe who used his position of power to force his conservative values on a changing nation. And when he found himself in the losing minority on a case, he resorted to using sarcasm and insults in the dissenting opinions he wrote.

When the court ruled in June 2015 that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, paving the way for gay weddings nationwide (Obergefell v. Hodges), Justice Scalia wrote that he’d “rather hide my head in a bag” than agree with the majority opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy. He called the ruling “a threat to American democracy,” and said his colleagues on the court had “descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie.”

When he was unsuccessful in shooting down Obamacare (King v. Burwell, June 2015), Justice Scalia called the majority opinion “interpretive jiggery-pokery.”

Less than three years after being nominated to the court by President Ronald Reagan and being confirmed in 1986, Justice Scalia rudely called fellow Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s opinion (Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, July 1989) “irrational.”

During a hearing in December on an affirmative action case (Fisher v. University of Texas) in which the University of Texas was defending its use of race in admissions, he questioned whether African-American students were better suited at “slower-track schools” — lesser schools, he called them — because he said they don’t do well at big, white institutions like the University of Texas.

He has pressed for the approval of prayer in schools, legislatures and courtrooms. He made no secret that he felt Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion in the United States in 1973, was wrong, and he consistently voted to push control of abortion back to the states, as a state’s right.

He voted with the court’s majority to let Exxon off the hook for $5 billion in punitive damages in one of the greatest environmental disasters of all time in Alaska (Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker, 2008). Because of the decision, Exxon’s damages were dropped to $500 million.

He voted with the majority in the infamous Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 2010, that opened the floodgates to unlimited personal and corporate donations to super PACs by ruling that political donations are speech protected by the First Amendment.

And don’t forget that Justice Scalia voted with the Supreme Court’s majority to hand the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush (Bush v. Gore, 2000).

It is not our desire or goal to speak ill of the dead. But the truth about Justice Scalia should not be buried with him. He was neither a saint, nor a friend of justice or progress. Now we await President Obama’s announcement of a more suitable jurist to replace him.