Princeton University professor Cornel West ripped into President Barack Obama, saying that African Americans are "being pushed to the back of the bus" in favor of gays and lesbians.
"Again this has something to do, of course, with what history books will say: the irony of the age of Obama, in which black folks found themselves pushed to the back and our gay brothers and lesbian sisters more and more pushed to the center," West told television talk-show host Tavis Smiley on Sunday, the
National Review reports.
The comments from West, a longtime critic of the president, came the same week as the U.S. Supreme Court expanded gay marriage by striking down the Defense of Marriage Act, which denied benefits to same-sex married couples.
"We're living in an age where we black folk are just being pushed to the back of the bus in terms of our visibility, in terms of our suffering, in terms of the intensity of our exclusion — especially our poor black youth," West said.
The justices also ruled that the supporters of Proposition 8, the 2008 California law which banned gay marriage, had no standing to defend the statute in federal court when state officials had refused to appeal it,
reports The Washington Times.
"We have never before upheld the standing of a private party to defend the constitutionality of a state statute when state officials have chosen not to," Chief Justice John Roberts said in the majority opinion. "We decline to do so for the first time here."
Both decisions came in 5-to-4 rulings by the nation's highest court.
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