castigate - verb
To criticize harshly; to punish for the purpose of correcting; to reprimand severely.
How can you support a policy of racial preferences and then attack one of its supposed beneficiaries as undeserving? This, ultimately, is the intrinsic hypocrisy of the [Justice Clarence] Thomas bashers. They allege that he's not competent and that the only reason he became a Supreme Court justice was because he's black. And in so doing, they level the exact same arguments against Thomas that they castigate conservatives for making about affirmative action itself. But let's face facts: A program that gives people with a certain skin color an advantage will invariably reward some who would otherwise not qualify.
—James Kirchick “Clarence Thomas Is Not the Hypocrite” Los Angeles Times, October 15, 2007
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