Distinguished Adjunct Professor Julian Bond will admit President Barack Obama is guilty of being president while black, but this is only important because a minority of Americans are still racist.
Bond appeared on "The Colbert Report" via satellite March 6 to discuss the importance of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Bond currently teaches "Advance Studies in Public Policy: Politics of the Civil Rights Movement" in the School of Public Affairs.
A founding member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and civil rights pioneer, Bond believes racial discrimination is still abundant.
"I don't believe that racial discrimination is over," Bond told Stephen Colbert, host of "The Colbert Report." "In fact, if anything, it has increased during the period when Barack Obama has been president."
Colbert and Bond discussed the impending Supreme Court case, Shelby County v. Holder, which is on the Voting Rights Act. Colbert claimed "voting rights of African-Americans used to be oppressed by people in white robes," but now it is by "people in black robes," a reference to remarks by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
"He is the Rush Limbaugh of the Supreme Court," Bond said.
Scalia called the Voting Rights Act a racial entitlement, according to Colbert.
"Of course, that's not true; it's not an entitlement to be able to vote without discrimination," Bond said. "It's something all Americans expect to have."
The conversation came up due to a challenge by Shelby County, Ala. to the Voting Rights Act's Section 5, which requires states with histories of discrimination to get permission from the federal government before making changes to voting procedures, according to the Supreme Court's blog.
The Supreme Court heard the oral argument on Feb. 27 for Shelby County v. Holder, the U.S. attorney general.
Colbert asked Bond why he believed Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas planned on voting Section 5 unconstitutional.
"Justice Thomas and I have lived different lives and we've drawn different lessons from the lives we lived," Bond said. "He thinks this way and I think that way, and I'm right."
Bond ended by stressing the importance of the 13th Amendment, which outlawed slavery, as he felt there are many people who would be happy to reinstate slavery.
"We're not going to enslave African-Americans, sir," Colbert said. "We have Mexicans now!"
acohen@theeagleonline.com
