Clarence Thomas Cites "Negro Removal" In Eminent Domain Case

"I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American."
Clarence Thomas
July 29, 1998

I have vivid memories of the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings and thinking Thomas was tricking the nation to get on the United States Supreme Court, and once there, with his lifetime appointment, would turn out to be a stand-up kinda guy and protect the rights of all Americans, but especially African Americans. I was soooooo wrong.

Every now and then, though, Justice Thomas comes out on the right side of an issue like he did yesterday in his dissent to the big eminent domain case Kelo et al. v. City of New London et al. in which he steps up in defense of home owners who are being attacked by local governments being pimped by greedy developers and large corporations. (In 2003, Thomas spoke out against cross burning and in 1999 he sort of came out in favor of hiring more female and minority law clerks to work at the Supreme Court.)

Before I quote from Thomas's dissent, let me point out that the Supreme Court's white liberal members (Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer) all came out in favor of the government's right to use eminent domain to take a person's home and use it for a private development. And Hamilton County Democratic Party Chairman Tim Burke (who we all know is very white) is leading the fight to take homes in Norwood. (source) Makes me wonder why white liberals are for intrusive government and big business?

Anyway, I'm sure there will be detailed discussions about the issue of eminent domain, this particular case and all of it's issues, and what this means for home owners in general and Norwood specifically. Everyone is free to use the comment section to discuss those issues. I just want to highlight a few of Thomas' comments which I'm sure will be lost on most white folks, including my fellow bloggers. (Please pay particular attention to the 3rd paragraph.)

Long ago, William Blackstone wrote that "the law of the land ... postpone[s] even public necessity to the sacred and inviolable rights of private property." The Framers embodied that principle in the Constitution, allowing the government to take property not for "public necessity," but instead for "public use." Defying this understanding, the Court replaces the Public Use Clause with a " '[P]ublic [P]urpose' " Clause, (or perhaps the "Diverse and Always Evolving Needs of Society" Clause), a restriction that is satisfied, the Court instructs, so long as the purpose is "legitimate" and the means "not irrational". This deferential shift in phraseology enables the Court to hold, against all common sense, that a costly urban-renewal project whose stated purpose is a vague promise of new jobs and increased tax revenue, but which is also suspiciously agreeable to the Pfizer Corporation, is for a "public use."

I cannot agree. If such "economic development" takings are for a "public use," any taking is, and the Court has erased the Public Use Clause from our Constitution, as Justice O'Connor powerfully argues in dissent. I do not believe that this Court can eliminate liberties expressly enumerated in the Constitution and therefore join her dissenting opinion. Regrettably, however, the Court's error runs deeper than this. Today's decision is simply the latest in a string of our cases construing the Public Use Clause to be a virtual nullity, without the slightest nod to its original meaning. In my view, the Public Use Clause, originally understood, is a meaningful limit on the government's eminent domain power. Our cases have strayed from the Clause's original meaning, and I would reconsider them.

....

...In the 1950's, no doubt emboldened in part by the expansive understanding of "public use" this Court adopted in Berman v. Parker, cities "rushed to draw plans" for downtown development. "Of all the families displaced by urban renewal from 1949 through 1963, 63 percent of those whose race was known were nonwhite, and of these families, 56 percent of nonwhites and 38 percent of whites had incomes low enough to qualify for public housing, which, however, was seldom available to them." Public works projects in the 1950's and 1960's destroyed predominantly minority communities in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Baltimore, Maryland. In 1981, urban planners in Detroit, Michigan, uprooted the largely "lower-income and elderly" Poletown neighborhood for the benefit of the General Motors Corporation. Urban renewal projects have long been associated with the displacement of blacks; "[i]n cities across the country, urban renewal came to be known as 'Negro removal.' " Over 97 percent of the individuals forcibly removed from their homes by the "slum-clearance" project upheld by this Court in Berman were black. Regrettably, the predictable consequence of the Court's decision will be to exacerbate these effects.

If the City of New London can take private property and give it to Pfizer, and Norwood can take private property and give it the greedy developers of Rookwood Commons, what's to stop the government from taking your home and giving it to a developer or big company? While Congress is talking about protecting the Flag, it seems like they should also be working to protect property rights.