Late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had a lot to say about people kneeling to protest America’s police brutality. It was widely-reported in 2016 that she called silent protests like those Colin Kaepernick engaged in “dumb,” “arrogant,” and “stupid.” But that’s not all.
In an upcoming memoir, Katie Couric reveals that Ginsburg made additional remarks that could be viewed as inflammatory, and the veteran journalist omitted them to “protect” Justice Ginsburg.
As the Daily Mail reported, Ginsburg’s omitted remarks were that the protests show a “contempt for a government that has made it possible for [the protestors’] parents and grandparents to live a decent life. Which they probably could not have lived in the places they came from.”
Couric claims in her book that she “lost a lot of sleep over,” intentionally omitting the additional remarks.
The comments Couric ultimately disclosed, based on her taped interview with the SCOTUS justice, were enough to take many aback in 2016, given that Ginsburg has been regarded as a liberal justice.
“If they want to be stupid, there’s no law that should be preventive,” she said at the time. “If they want to be arrogant, there’s no law that prevents them from that. What I would do is strongly take issue with the point of view that they are expressing when they do that.”
Kaepernick, in turn, responded graciously:
“It is disappointing to hear a Supreme Court justice call a protest against injustices and oppression ‘stupid, dumb’ in reference to players doing that. I was reading an article and it refers to white critique of black protests and how they try to delegitimize it by calling it ‘idiotic, dumb, stupid,’ things of that nature, so they can sidestep the real issue. As I was reading that I saw more and more truth how this has been approached by people in power and white people in power in particular.”
