This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1455825
Thomas Replaced Thurgood Marshall’s Vision With One More Amenable To The Powerful Than The Powerless
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1455825
Clarence Thomas can not even be looked at on the same scale with Thurgood Marshall. He wouldn’t show up.
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I wish Mr Thomas had gone into a different line of work. The idea that he is against “reproductive choice” as the article put it seems to me to be at odds with the republican ideal of individual freedom
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He was put on the Court because he’s a soulless prick and Bush wanted a soulless prick on the Court. He has always ruled in favor or the rich and powerful. And against all others. If there’s an outrageous descent on the Court…he’s the man. A man that rode affirmative action through school and to where he is that’s done everything he can to take it away for others. A man safely position on the taxpayers dime that has nothing but contempt for those people. He s fucking horrible piece of shit…and that’s why he was put on that Court.
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“Horrible piece of shit”
Like Alito, Clarabell prefers the term “fecal personhood”.
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Anyone longing for the days of Poppy Bush’s “kinder gentler” gop should remember this.
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Aye. Thomas is a midget and, along with Alito, the least intellectually gifted of all the Justices. That may be why both appear revanchist, as filled with resentment as a swollen boil, but whatever the reason it’s a disaster for the country.
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Shouldn’t even appear in the same sentence. A vile, fascist grifter let loose to destroy the judicial system from the top.
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I must say, I’ve struggled with affirmative action. When I was in Haiti, people viewed me in one of 3 ways: as a White (not quite the same as people), as a white person (a person, but since they knew a few things (stereotypes) about white people, they therefore knew everything about me, or a person who happened to have white skin.
The stereotypes I encountered about white people were generally positive, but it was still frustrating to deal with, because they were a barrier preventing people from getting to know me instead of an avatar of my race. The people who saw me as just White often didn’t bother to refer to me by name even when I was present.
So, when I came back to the states and found all these forms asking my race, it was like, oh, let’s put everyone in a box and emphasize the importance of skin color.
So, I’ll credit Clarence Thomas with valid personal reasons for disliking affirmative action. (This does not mean I agree with any other of his opinion or think he doesn’t preference the powerful over the powerless).
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I have always suspected that Aaron McGruder based his Boondocks character Uncle Ruckus on Clarence Thomas.
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The man who has done the most to damage his people. I cannot, for the life of me, understand why, given the fact that he availed himself of every gift that his people provided for him over the arc of History.
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I won’t belittle your feelings, but I’m having trouble understanding them. Being born white gives people a major step up in America and many other so-called enlightened countries. Skin color will always, unfortunately, be an issue because of people’s need to feel superior when they are not all that. What this man wrote and experienced helps those of us who can empathize understand exactly what it feels like to be black.
Fifty years after John Howard Griffin darkened his skin and travelled through the segregated US south, his record of the fear and prejudice he experienced is still resonant
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I read that when I was about 10 years old. Read it again as a late teen. It influenced so much of what believe today.
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Although we now know that affirmative action was flawed, it raised the bar to what was possible to achieve in American society.
I wonder how many doors were open for Clarence. Probably quite a few. One of them led in the SCOTUS.
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MLK said it best:
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
We’ve seen Thomas’s character, and it’s sadly lacking in ethics, morals and humanity.
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Oh, there’s nothing like being in a country as poor as Haiti to recognize that being an average white middle-class American is to be one of the world’s most privileged people, all because of an accident of birth.
What I struggle with is how we are going to reach a society where the content of your character matters, not the color of your skin, if we spend so much time focusing on skin color.
Given the racism in society and the extent to which past, explicit racism denied African-Americans the opportunity to build wealth and educational capital, I tend to support affirmative action, but I do find it problematic and have sympathy for people who object to it on the grounds that it places a stigma on its beneficiaries — probably something Thomas faced more than the average black Harvard grad does today.
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All I know is it gives more black people a chance that they probably wouldn’t have had otherwise. Life is a competition and blacks have just as much right to compete as anyone else. For a long time, women were treated in a similar way. That’s gotten better, but look at the number of women in Congress, as CEO’s, big important jobs, and we soon realize that we’re not there yet.
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He has railed against affirmative action, saying it brands Black people in prominent positions with a “stigma” about “whether their skin color played a part in their advancement.”
Even if that were true for a larger portion of society than the unapologetic racists, Thomas’s hands off attitude is worse than the professed problem. There is no virtue in sparing Black people in prominent positions from a “stigma” about “whether their skin color played a part in their advancement” by denying them the opportunity to succeed because of the color of their skin. Thurgood Marshall understood the difference. Clarence Thomas understands his role is to be seen but not heard.
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We were probably better off not hearing from him.
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LBJ said it in blue collar terms:
“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
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