"Wonderful attitude. This needs to be circulated. Great find. "
I'm pretty sure this is the Frederick Douglas quote that Clarence Thomas cited in dissent from Gutter v. Bollinger which ruled that affirmative action could be used to get a "critical mass" of blacks in a college.
Unfortunately the best source I could find is a personal web page so it's not confirmed.
http://members.aol.com/dignews/fdonct.htm
Absolutely correct, my friend.
p.
Grutter v. Bollinger
http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/23jun20030800/www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/02pdf/02-241.pdf
Cite as: 539 U. S. ____ (2003) 1
Opinion of THOMAS, J.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________
No. 02–241
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BARBARA GRUTTER, PETITIONER v. LEE BOLLINGER ET AL.
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT
[June 23, 2003]
JUSTICE THOMAS, with whom JUSTICE SCALIA joins as to Parts I–VII, concurring in part and dissenting in part.
Frederick Douglass, speaking to a group of abolitionists almost 140 years ago, delivered a message lost on today’s majority:
“[I]n regard to the colored people, there is always more that is benevolent, I perceive, than just, mani-fested towards us. What I ask for the negro is not be-nevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice. The American people have always been anxious to know what they shall do with us. . . . I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are worm-eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and dis-posed to fall, let them fall! . . . And if the negro can-not stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone! . . . [Y]our interference is doing him posi-tive injury.” What the Black Man Wants: An Address Delivered in Boston, Massachusetts, on 26 January 1865, reprinted in 4 The Frederick Douglass Papers 59, 68 (J. Blassingame & J. McKivigan eds. 1991) (emphasis in original).