Waffler has it right again (almost)! "Uncle Clarence Thomas'" assertion that "there is a moral and constitutional EQUIVALENCE between laws designed to subjugate a race and those that distribute benefits on the basis of race in order to foster some current notion of equality is questionable because Civil Rights laws and other remedies were NOT based on any effort to "distribute benefits on the basis of race in order to foster some current notion of equality." And I did not know that the constitutional definition of equality had changed to include a "current notion". Here, the problem appears to be one of semantics -- BUT it all comes down to the question Waffler raised: "How would Clarence correct the past malicious prejudice, huh?" First, to get rid of some semantic chaff; first, there is no equivalence between constitutionality and morality, else slavery could never have existed. There is certainly no moral justification for slavery, although it was constitutionally acceptable to the U.S. government. And somehow, I don't really believe that the attempt to enslave a race is morally equivalent to distributing benefits to members of a race. I do not believe that stealing a loaf of bread is morally the equivalent of stealing billions of dollars from retirees, leaving them destitute. They are both thefts, but the equivalence ends there. What Uncle Tom is really saying, in effect, is that a wrong committed by the state may go unpunished and uncompensated so long as the state stops committing the irreparable harm that it had perpetuated for hundreds of years. Thomas is calling remedies to make the victims whole RACE-BASED, but they are race-based only in the sense that the ATROCITIES committed were RACE-BASED. The laws in question are NOT "based on laws designed [to] that distribute benefits on the basis of race in order to foster some current notion of equality;" the laws were designed to MAKE WHOLE those who have been injured by OTHER LAWS promulgated over centuries by the STATE. Of course, the argument becomes 'but whom shall we make whole'? After all, there are no more slaves, although we still see the effects of slavery -- and the lingering effects of Jim Crow, segregation, "separate but [un]equal, red-lining, disproportionate public funding (based on race) and a vast array of other effects and conditions which emanated from slavery and remain as ongoing RACIAL injustices -- from Supreme Court Justice Roger Taney's 1857 exhortation from the bench that "no black man has any rights that a white man is bound to respect," to the present-day efforts to suppress black and other minority voters by power-lusting republiCONS. Is Thomas' idea that if you wait long enough, you don't have to do anything about centuries of ongoing injustice? Is the idea that as long as an offensive act is racial in nature that can be no racial remedy to it? Essentially, slavery has served to cripple blacks economically, socially, physically and psychologically, ad nauseam, and the Tom's response is to say 'OK, let bygones be bygones: you are now EQUAL'! If someone hits your car once, on one occasion, they have to pay compensation, they may be fined and/or jailed. If a banker (hypothetically) embezzles money on just one occasion, they may have to pay restitution and may also be jailed. But if a government subjects a people to slavery for centuries and then puts illegal roadblocks in their paths for another century, limiting their opportunities and denying them due process of las, the proper response is: "OK, we've stopped the most overtly blatant racism and discrimination, so you're now EQUAL, end of story -- is that MORAL or CONSTITUTIONAL or EQUIVALENT to the way OTHER wrongs are dealt with? Or maybe you don't find anything wrong with what was done, in which case I can only say, God help us all!