It was inevitable. George W. Bush was eventually going to nominate a Supreme Court justice. The resignation of Sandra Day O’Connor is the moment the right wing have been waiting for. Actually they didn’t sit around waiting. They made it all happen when they stole the 2000 presidential election.

Bush may be inarticulate and suffering from some sort of learning disability but he is a very shrewd politician. Just as Thomas was a replacement for a black justice, O’Connor’s replacement will probably be female and to add icing to the cake may also be black.

As I write we don’t know who Bush, Rove and the Federalist Society will choose. Yet one thing is already a certainty. The nominee will have a philosophy that is anathema to anyone dedicated to justice in our society. That will be true even if the nominee is black.

Think back, if you can bear it, to Clarence Thomas’ nomination hearings. The drama of that moment revolved around charges of sexual harassment. Despite the sensational testimony and lurid headlines it was all for entertainment purposes only. Clarence Thomas was and is a dedicated right wing ideologue who is also utterly incompetent. After years on the Supreme Court Thomas sits silently like a bump on a log while his colleagues probe the most important questions of the day with the best attorneys in the country.

At the time of his nomination it was said that we shouldn’t worry about Thomas being a conservative. He was a black man after all. He knew the troubles we had seen and was therefore safer than a white person with the same political views.

It turned out that only Antonin Scalia was as conservative as Thomas. Republican appointees David Souter , Anthony Kennedy and Sandra Day O’Connor sometimes acted as the swing votes on the court. Not so for brother Clarence. The joke was on his defenders. Thomas was exactly as advertised. He never claimed to be more enlightened than his right wing brethren and he didn’t disappoint anyone who was really paying attention to his record.

Many years have passed but our memories should not be swept under the rug. If Janice Rogers Brown is the Bush league choice the black community should be unanimous in opposing her nomination. Stories about share cropping families should not be allowed to sway us from speaking out against this truly horrific woman, who said:

That statement is so bizarre that it can only be called insane. If Brown thinks that freedom is slavery she should have added that war is peace. As BC pointed out, Bush-approved blacks are always crazier than their white counterparts.

A black nominee would be a test of political maturity. Black America can’t succumb to appeals from so-called leaders and dubious pundits who exhort us to give the sister or brother a chance. Such a concession would be a sign of abject failure.

We are already overly susceptible to the lure of the black and famous. It is harmless to think about Oprah’s shopping traumas in Paris, but it is dangerous to be swayed by people who look like us but use powerful positions to stab us in the back.

If there is a black nominee there will doubtlessly be testimonials on that person’s behalf from the prominent and allegedly respectable. Andrew Young has the dubious distinction of vouching for the incompetent Condi Rice and opining that she would make a fabulous Secretary of State. This is the same Andrew Young who gave the seal of approval to Nike’s sweatshops in Vietnam.

Young or someone like him will tell us that nominee X is a fine jurist, a good person, and will make the race proud. So what if he or she is a Republican nominee? Most of us would rather sell our first born than support a Republican and election results prove it. But if O’Connor’s replacement is black too many of us may be willing to forget that fact.

The same no nonsense treatment must apply to other groups as well. The Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, got the same treatment from the right wing and the corporate media. He is the son of Mexican immigrants, and his father couldn’t read, and ten children slept in the same bed, and he walked to school uphill in his bare feet over broken glass. The only thing to remember about Gonzales is that he gave a legal blessing to torture. The outcry must be loud and clear if he is the choice to put the Supreme Court firmly under right wing control.

The new Supreme Court nominee may be Brown, Gonzales, or someone whose name few of us know. The response must be the same. The clock cannot be turned back at the behest of Mad Janice and her friends. Anyone who believes that big government is the opiate of the people” is going to bring about an awful era in American history.

Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BC. Ms. Kimberley is a freelance writer living in New York City.  She can be reached via e-Mail at [email protected]. You can read more of Ms. Kimberley's writings at freedomrider.blogspot.com.