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Elena Kagan and the Black Men in Her Life

By Boyce Watkins, PhD on Jul 2nd 2010 10:23AM
Filed under: News, Politics, President Obama

Comments (27)


I've made it clear that I don't like Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court, but beyond my dislike for Kagan is my love for the late Thurgood Marshall. Kagan's association with Marshall has been used by the left to support her nomination. Personally, I think that a woman who served as dean of Harvard Law School without hiring a single black person skipped Marshall's lessons on the importance of racial equality.

But even though Kagan appears to have learned nothing from her affiliation with Marshall, she has been getting punished for it. Republicans, who clearly don't like the dead black man who tapped into our nation's racial conscience, have pushed Kagan on the fact that Marshall was (in their words), a "judicial activist" and "outside the mainstream."

Marshall was outside the mainstream for one reason: He was a black man who supported equal rights. In my opinion, and based on the presumption that all men are created equal, Marshall's commitment to fairness puts him firmly in the mainstream of American value systems. Most interesting is that most progressive African Americans seeking equality are consistently marginalized by those who long for an America, where women and minorities are kept in the socioeconomic basement of our society. Fortunately, those who fight to retain racism of the past are typically in a losing battle.

Another black male putting Kagan in the hot seat is Luke Campbell of the raunchy rap group 2 Live Crew. In 1989, Luke came out with the album 'As Nasty as They Wanna Be,' which included the famous single, 'Me So Horny.' That's when the you know what hit the fan, since apparently, at that time, most Americans had never heard of sex.

U.S. District Judge Jose Gonzalez ruled that the song was obscene, and 2 Live Crew appealed the verdict. The group's Florida attorney, Bruce Rogow, encouraged the Recording Industry Association of America to file a friend-of-the-court brief in support of their case. The association then hired Kagan, along with the law firm Williams & Connolly, to draft the brief.

In the brief, Kagan "stressed the difficulty of finding music obscene under prevailing constitutional law.''

In 1992, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the trial judge's decision.

"It was nicely done and it was certainly helpful,'' said Rogow, now a professor at Nova Southeastern University's law school, "but I think the outcome would have been the same regardless."

So, while I am not sure if we should care or be impressed that Kagan has associated with famous black men in her life, these are interesting facts nonetheless. I still hold to the reality that this Ivy Leaguer, who hasn't hired a single black or brown person in her two most important jobs, doesn't represent any of the change that President Barack Obama claims to promote. Another rich person from Harvard in our nation's government is really nothing new.


Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition and a Scholarship in Action resident of the Institute for Black Public Policy. To have Dr. Boyce's commentary delivered to your e-mail, please click here.

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