Posted by
The Dutchmeister on Thursday, July 12, 2007 10:54:33 AM
Although people are entitled to their opinion, I have to say that I am getting sick and tired of all of the personal attacks against Justice Clarence Thomas. The following is my response to a writer's recent letter to Justice Thomas.
Dear Mr. Love,
I recently read your letter to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. First off, let me make it clear that you are perfectly entitled to your opinion. Secondly, I must say at the outset that I am not a lawyer, like you. However, as a conservative black man, I am an admirer of Justice Thomas, and, having studied his writings on the U.S. Constitution and how he strictly interprets our country’s founding document in adjudicating High Court cases, I have profound respect for his intellect and legal reasoning.
With that said, allow me to respond to your letter to Justice Thomas.
Although you say in the opening paragraph that Justice Thomas should not interpret your words as “antagonistic or of ill will,” that is exactly (at least in my reading thereof) how you come across. Your letter is one part “I don’t agree with your rulings” and two parts “You’re an Uncle Tom/Sellout/House n*gger/blah, blah, blah…” This is the common theme that underlies the broadsides, smears and bombs that thrown by self-righteous “blacker-than-thou” blacks at Justice Thomas throughout his entire 17-year tenure on the U.S. Supreme Court.
People like the late Judge Higginbotham, the NAACP, the co-presidents of Chocolate City and co-Grand Poobahs of All Things Blacks, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, and, based on your letter, yourself, base have attacked, slandered and judged Justice Thomas based on two very faulty premises:
- That Justice Thomas and other black conservatives are nothing more than self-loathing sellouts and race traitors in cahoots with “Whitey”; and
- Black Americans, despite the gargantuan political, economic and social gains we have made over the last 40 years, have barely advanced one iota since the civil rights movement, and remain eternal helpless “victims” of white oppression, completely incapable of helping ourselves.
This latter point represents a line of thinking advanced by the modern-day civil rights establishment that is more hurtful to blacks in 21st century America than institutionalized racism and Jim Crow segregation were just a few generations ago. Why? Because it basically teaches – no, brainwashes! – blacks into believing that their fate is not in their hands, but in the hands of others who only wish to do them harm. Furthermore, it flies in the face of reality.
But, I digress.
I have written reviews on two excellent books that have analyzed all of Justice Thomas’s High Court opinions (majority, concurring, and dissenting). Click here and scroll to the bottom to read both of them.
Allow me to touch on Justice Thomas’s concurring opinion in the recent ruling of Parents vs. Seattle School District No. 1. Thomas is absolutely right in saying (emphasis added):
"But without a history of state-enforced racial separation, a school district has no affirmative legal obligation to take race-based remedial measures to eliminate segregation and its vestiges…. As these programs demonstrate, every time the government uses racial criteria to 'bring the races together,'… someone gets excluded, and the person excluded suffers an injury solely because of his or her race…. Simply putting students together under the same roof does not necessarily mean that the students will learn together or even interact. Furthermore, it is unclear whether increased interracial contact improves racial attitudes and relations…. Some studies have even found that a deterioration in racial attitudes seems to result from racial mixing in schools."
He goes on to say that “[R]acial imbalance is not segregation, and the mere incantation of terms like resegregation and remediation cannot make up the difference.”
Justice Thomas is challenging the long-held yet racially condescending view by black and white liberals that, basically, black schoolchildren cannot learn without white schoolchildren learning alongside them. That is complete bunk! He knows, and studies have shown, that black students can excel in predominantly black high schools and don’t necessarily need to mix with white students (not that there’s anything wrong with that) in order to learn. He points out that Seattle, WA operates a K-8 school called the African American Academy, which is 99 percent non-white. “This racially imbalanced environment,” Justice Thomas says, “has reportedly produced test scores ‘higher across all grade levels in reading, writing and math.’ … Contrary to what the dissent would have predicted…the children in Seattle’s African American Academy have shown gains when placed in a ‘highly segregated’ environment.”
In the early part of the 20th century, as Thomas Sowell has written, Dunbar High School in Washington, DC produced black graduates that went on to Ivy League Schools.
Conservative black female (oh, what irony!) blogger La Shawn Barber puts it beautifully:
“His concurring opinion contains some of the most empowering sentiments I’ve ever read, yet black liberals have and will continue to label him an ‘Uncle Tom.’ … Irrational hatred notwithstanding, black liberals are off the mark. In a country where citizens are supposed to be equal before the law, regardless of color, it’s disingenuous to argue in favor of race preferences of any kind.”
Basically, “racial diversity” for its own sake is not going to close the huge academic achievement gap that separates black students from their white and Asian counterparts, where in many inner-city neighborhoods, a black high school graduate has in essence the reading, writing and mathematical skills of a white eight-grader. “Racial diversity” for its own sake will never address the self-defeating anti-intellectual sub-culture in many black inner-city and suburban communities that equates a love of learning and academic conscientiousness with “acting white.” (This is a sub-culture that I experienced with great pain throughout my school years – and even in college and graduate school!) “Racial diversity” for its own sake will never deal with the breakdown of the two-parent black family unit, punctuated by a horrendously out-of-control black out-of-wedlock birthrate and the concomitant epidemic of fatherlessness. “Racial diversity” does nothing to reverse the 50% black high school dropout rate, or the myriad other social pathologies that have afflicted black American culture since the end of the civil rights movement. Nor will constantly calling Justice Thomas an “Uncle Tom,” though it may feel good to some people.
But, I digress.
Here’s what it all boils down to, Mr. Love: Black liberals hate Justice Clarence Thomas because he doesn’t (to paraphrase his own words) allow his ideas, opinions and worldview to be assigned to him like an “intellectual slave,” just because he is black. He is a man who sticks to his guns and walks the walk. Yes, he grew up in the segregated American South. And yes, he may have “benefited” from affirmative action (which, kept in the proper context, was right on the heels of the civil rights movement and MLK’s assassination). However, keep in mind that affirmative action in the late-1960s was totally different than the system of racial preferences that it ultimately morphed into. Also, Justice Thomas wasn’t accepted to Yale Law School merely because he was black; he was accepted because he graduated from the College of the Holy Cross with honors!
Enough about Justice Thomas (I feel I have defended him successfully). I want to briefly address the second paragraph of your letter, where you describe your accomplishments and how proud you are of them (as you should be). You mention how the sacrifices of our forbears made it possible for you to enroll in and ultimately graduate from Harvard. I couldn’t agree with you more, and you are to be commended for your accomplishments.
Let me tell you a little about myself. I’m the youngest of six children, the product of a poverty-stricken, welfare-dependent, fatherless home. However, the greatest gift that my dearly departed mother ever gave me was to instill in me the value of an education. As a result, I graduated at the top of my high school class (the first black male in the history of my high school to do so), became the first – and, thus far, only – college graduate in my family (I hold a BA from Boston University), went on to earn a Master’s degree in public policy and management from Carnegie Mellon University, and am now a successful professional working in our nation’s capitol. (I also have a wonderful and drop-dead gorgeous wife; I just thought I’d throw that in for good measure.)
I am eternally grateful to the sacrifices of our forbears in making every opportunity that I have enjoyed possible. At the same time, though, I thank my mother, as well as well-meaning and supportive teachers (black and white, male and female) who encouraged me to stay focused on my studies and to stop bowing to negative peer pressure to be “cool” (read: authentically “black”) instead of “smart.” Furthermore, at the risk of tooting my own horn, I owe myself an occasional pat on the back for learning early on to push myself, to take advantage of every opportunity I had to better myself, and, most importantly, not living my life as a “victim.” I didn’t get to where I am by blaming the white man for all of my problems; neither, I suspect, did you, Mr. Love.
Does racism still exist in America? Of course. Does discrimination still exist? Of course. However, what used to be an institutionalized means of holding our people back has now been rendered to little more than a minor and easily surmountable inconvenience, a mere stepping stone, in the lives of most black folks today. Our country will never be “perfect”. What nation is? Yet, our country is indeed the Land of Opportunity, where anyone, regardless of race, gender, class or disadvantage, who wants to succeed, and is willing to just work hard, stay focused and be the best that he/she can be, well, guess what: Success is all but guaranteed!
Justice Thomas, no matter what his critics think of him, is a living, breathing example of the American dream. So am I. So are you.
Instead of harping of Justice Clarence Thomas, the brilliant jurist and great American that he is, black people need to take Bill Cosby’s words to heart and “turn the mirror around” onto themselves. Instead of trying to show how “BLACK” they are, blacks – especially lower-class blacks – need to start being better and more responsible role models, model citizens and parents to their children.
But, I digress.
Respecfully,
Dutch Martin