Thomas Sowell has weighed in once again on the implicataions of the odd race theories of SCOTUS nominee Sontaymayor. I am resigned to the fact that Sotomayor will be the next Justice on the SCOTUS bench, but being a white man, thus belonging to a demographic group Sotomayor doesn't fance, makes me interested in what others are saying. Sowell, like Camille Paglia, is one of the few public intellectuals whose thoughts should be heeded. They are opposite in both politics and style, but they are always honest. From Sowell:

Back when I was on the receiving end of racial discrimination, it was to me not simply a personal misfortune, or even the misfortune of a race, it was a moral outrage. But not everyone who went through such an experience sees it that way.

When it comes to subjecting other people to the same treatment in a later era, some have no real problem with that. They see it as payback.

One of the many problems of the payback approach is that many of the people who most deserve retribution are no longer alive. You can take symbolic revenge on people who look like them, but this removes the whole moral element. If it is all right to discriminate today against individuals who have done you no harm, then why was it wrong to discriminate against you in the past?