Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison compared Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to a house slave in the movie “Django Unchained” and called for his impeachment.
In an interview with the Michigan Chronicle in Detroit last week, Ellison discussed his new book “Break the Wheel: Ending the Cycle of Police Violence,” written about the investigation and events following George Floyd’s death. During the interview, the conversation turned to other racially-oriented topics including the recent Supreme Court ruling concerning affirmative action programs. Ellison openly shared his thoughts on Thomas’s influence on the decision and the Supreme Court, comparing him to a house slave in the 2012 Quentin Tarantino film “Django Unchained.”
“Anybody who’s watched the movie ‘Django,’ just watch Stephen and you see Clarence Thomas,” Ellison said. “Clarence Thomas has decided that his best personal interest is siding with the powerful and the special interests regardless as to who they’re going to hurt. He's like, ‘I'm looking out for me, and I don't care nothing about you, but I'm on the Supreme Court so it's my job to look out for you.’ So he's abdicating his responsibility. He has abdicated it a long time ago.”
Minnesota Democrat AG Keith Ellison: "Anybody who's watched the movie Django, just watch Stephen and you see Clarence Thomas" pic.twitter.com/IRmc0nmpyZ
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Ellison continued to call Thomas’s position on the court “illegitimate” and said that African-Americans needed to learn a lesson from his appointment to the Supreme Court.
Related: Mystal Smears Thomas As 'A Mutilated Version Of A Black Justice'
“Clarence Thomas needs to be impeached,” Ellison said. “Clarence Thomas is illegitimate and has no basis in the job that he's in.”
“And it's a lesson to us as African Americans,” Ellison continued. “What is the lesson? We all thought, well, he's a Black man raised in the Deep South. He knows what racism and segregation is, he knows what affirmative action is. He's going to come around one day. Understand that it's not a matter of pigment. It's not what's on your skin, it’s what's in your mind.”
Thomas sided with the majority in a 6-3 decision for the recent Supreme Court ruling on Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which effectively struck down affirmative action programs for colleges as a violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In his opinion, Thomas argued that individuals are the “sum of their unique experiences, challenges, and accomplishments” and cannot be simplified to race.
Ellison received widespread backlash on social media for comparing Thomas to Stephen, played by Samuel L. Jackson. In the movie, Stephen is a house slave who stays loyal to the film’s main protagonist, slave master Calvin Candie played by Leonardo DiCaprio.
“Keith Ellison. Always a beacon of thoughtful reasonableness. NOT,” one Twitter user said.
“Wasn’t Ellison accused of sexual battery by 2 women?” another questioned, referencing 2018 allegations against him.