Has Justice Clarence Thomas Capitulated – Intellectually – To White Supremacy?
"Thomas says his success began when his grandfather, Myers Anderson, instilled a biblical worldview in his young mind:"
"He thought we were destined to have to work for everything because of what happened in the Garden of Eden because of our fallen nature. We would have to earn everything by the sweat of our brow. That was biblical. And we would have to work from sun to sun—biblical. The philosophy of life that he had came from biblical sources."
"The lessons came as his grandfather made Thomas and his brother, also named Myers, work on his farm in order to keep them away from the “riffraff” in Pin Point, Georgia. “The family farm and our unheated oil truck became my most important classrooms, the schools in which my grandfather passed on the wisdom he had acquired as an ill-educated, modestly successful black man in the Deep South,” Thomas says. His grandfather’s lack of formal education forced him to live in the real world, he adds—a leitmotif of Thomas’ later epiphanies. This influence was magnified by the Irish nuns at Saint Benedict the Moor Catholic School, who opposed segregation and “were on our side from day one.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/28/opinion/sunday/clarence-thomas-race.html
"Consider his strong hostility to voting rights. Here, he hopes to limit the involvement of black people in electoral politics. Any such involvement, he believes, only reinforces white power and black powerlessness."
"In his opinion in Holder v. Hall, a 1994 case concerning the interpretation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Justice Thomas offered an extended meditation on what he called the “voting strength” or “voting power” of African-Americans — conceived not as individuals or a community but as a politicized collective. Justice Thomas asked whether the goal of that collective should be “control over a lesser number” of elected offices or “influence over a greater number” of elected offices. When control is the goal, black majorities are concentrated in fewer districts but can decide the electoral outcome in those districts. When influence is the goal, black pluralities are extended across more districts; they don’t control the outcome of any one election but can affect the outcome of more elections at once."
"While most scholars and jurists have debated which model better serves black interests, Justice Thomas rejected both models as misbegotten quests to maximize “the ‘weight’ or ‘influence’ of votes.” The simple fact, he wrote, was that “in a majoritarian system, numerical minorities lose elections.” African-Americans, he suggested, must come to terms with that political weakness. Even if district lines are redrawn to overcome that weakness, it will be (often white) elites who do the drawing."
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/28/opinion/sunday/clarence-thomas-race.html
Justice Thomas’ focus (here) seems on things that are material and apparent (physical) but not on things latent and intellectual. Within our psyche, human rights begin as an intellectual concept.
It can, perhaps, be reasonable surmised that despite his admirable efforts to eke-out a living, Thomas’ grandfather was limited in his ability or opportunity to achieve certain goals or legal redress towards enfranchisement and because of this condition recognized inherent limits therein. Thomas however, now stands at a uniquely different and intellectually advantageous – history shaping – vantage point..
Sadly, it seems at this juncture, Clarence Thomas believes some goals are unattainable which may fit neatly into his world-view but betrays his desire to limit the progress of other African-Americans.
Justice Thomas needs to reflect upon the word contained in Americas' Declaration of independence
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. ......https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript
″Congressional and private studies have shown that Clarence Thomas on many occasions acted inconsistently with civil rights laws passed by Congress and interpreted by the Supreme Court,″ said Ralph Neas, head of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, a lobbying group.
Thomas also enraged some Democratic members of Congress, who held several hearings during the Reagan administration in which Thomas was compelled to admit error or promise changes. Together with his confirmation hearings for the court of appeals in 1990 and for renomination to the EEOC post in 1986, those hearings produced volumes of testimony and analysis.
Some of the strongest complaints about Thomas centered on these matters:
- Age discrimination. More than 13,000 age discrimination claims were allowed to lapse by failure of the EEOC to act within the time limits, according to congressional committees. Congress later passed a bill reinstating the rights of those workers to sue.
But even after that temporary action, age cases continued to languish, said Dan Schulder of the National Council of Senior Citizens. He said another 2,000 or so cases lapsed as Thomas’ tenure neared an end.
Congressional committees accused Thomas of consistently underestimating the number of cases affected - first estimating the number as less than 100. An unreleased report by the staff of the Senate Special Committee on Aging in 1988 charged ″a continuing pattern of mismanagement at the highest levels of the EEOC.″
Sen. David Pryor, D-Ark., who later became chairman of that panel, opposed Thomas’ nomination to the Court of Appeals in 1990. He said Thomas ″was very, very uncooperative″ with the panel, prompting it to issue subpoenas of EEOC records that revealed the number of lapsed cases.
″Had it been 10 cases or 20 cases, that might have been something different,″ Pryor said at the time. ″But there were 15,000 charges which may have lapsed. ... These 15,000 charges representing the rights of American citizens were denied and snuffed out, literally snuffed out, by a bureaucracy that was run by Clarence Thomas. That is too much for me to overlook.″
At a House hearing in 1988 Thomas acknowledged allowing 900 cases to expire and said the failure ″disgraces the agency. ... We deserve harsh criticism for this occurrence. It will not happen again.″
At his 1990 confirmation hearing, Thomas accepted responsibility for the 900 cases but denied he failed to cooperate with Congress. He said he did not know where the larger numbers came from.
- Court precedents. Critics charge Thomas failed to follow Supreme Court precedents in seeking remedies for victims of job discrimination. A House committee reported in 1986 that in an effort to settle cases, Thomas’ agency abruptly stopped seeking remedies such as goals and timetables for increased minority employment. Also, his agency directed regional attorneys not to enforce goals and timetables in existing court settlements.
In 1985, Thomas called the use of goals and timetables a ″fundamentally flawed approach.″
Critics said he had wrongly interpreted a Supreme Court case as justification, and that three subsequent court decisions made clear that goals and timetables could be used as remedies for job discrimination. In 1986, at Senate hearings on his reconfirmation in the EEOC job, Thomas acknowledged the court had reaffirmed use of goals and timetables and promised to follow that policy.
- Investigations and enforcement. The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, concluded in 1988 that regional EEOC offices were not fully looking into cases. It said 41 percent to 82 percent of the cases closed by those offices, with no evidence of discrimination found, had not been fully investigated.
Thomas charged the GAO report was politically motivated. He said it ″trivializes civil rights enforcement to a level commensurate with widget making.″
The agency’s enforcement record came under criticism from others. Women Employed Inc., a Chicago research and advocacy group that has studied the EEOC, complained that enforcement deteriorated under Thomas.
When he began with the agency, it said, the typical case took three to six months to close, nearly one-third were settled satisfactorily to both sides, and less than one-third were told they had no case. Of those litigated, two- thirds were class-wide cases with implications for a broad group of people.
But by the time he left last year, said Nancy Kreiter, the group’s research director, things had changed. The average case took 10 months to close, fewer than 14 percent had reached settlement, over half of the complainants were told they had no cause, and fewer than 20 percent of the cases litigated were class actions.
The record brought a strong condemnation from Herbert Hill, who for 27 years was labor director for the NAACP and now is professor of industrial relations at the University of Wisconsin. In a 1987 letter to Thomas, Hill said he had crippled the commission by focusing on individual random acts of bigotry while ignoring systemic patterns of discrimination.
″Because you and other commissioners reject the idea that Title VII (of the Civil Rights Act of 1964) was meant to be an instrument of social change, you have transformed the EEOC into a claims adjustment bureau,″ Hill said.
Thomas, asked about Hill’s views at his Senate hearing in 1990, dismissed him as a frequent critic. ″I would expect criticism from him,″ he said.
https://apnews.com/article/b419883e871b5117649d1f3fdacf6f95
Reagan appointed Thomas Chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
Excerpts from ‘IRONY’:
Forward
“So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance”
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Oftentimes it seems, political life is dominated by divisive rhetoric, religious posturing, avarice and - the ever present- fear.
Throughout my childhood I embraced and often, idealized the opinions and philosophies of my parents as it related to politics, religion and the laws of the country. Their teachings became the foundation that governed my behavior both morally and philosophically. As I entered adult maturity, I began to slowly discard my fanciful musings which clutter the path toward adulthood.
There are moments in life when we discover the fallacies in some prior teachings we have received. Such moments, tend to lay caution to youthful idealism and are replaced by new realities. These realities may rattle the foundations of our ideological and spiritual underpinning, but, they still enter our lives and minds without fail.
It becomes a defining moment which can leave us with a sickening feeling that descends to the pit of our stomach. It is a feeling that leaves a void of undefinable characteristics, an emptiness with which we are buffeted by – seemingly – ceaseless complexities in our analytical persuasions; then all that remains is a maddening state of utter confusion.
It is an experience that is sometimes difficult to replace with words; words that portray the consternation or anger which we may feel. Newness can sometimes be perplexing and the past events are not easily forgotten (or cannot be). Ideas that are already imbedded in us, almost from the moment since our awakening, are not easily removed, but must be accomplished. Though, it is not easy to walk away; putting distance between us and our affinity for these ideas, it must be done. We cannot keep staring into the void, thinking somehow we may find the answer. We must instead, let passion guide our footsteps and drive our search for knowledge. We must not succumb to confusion in our life but seek to recognize that learning is an ongoing process fed by experiences that on occasion, are not pleasant.
To emerge from our aimless meanderings and find the sunlit meadows of new understandings, we must be ready to take risk and step out to change perceptions that have been disproven.
Such was my dilemma in my overall pursuit of a Christian experience and my desire to embrace our laws - without equivocation.
I have learned that despite the many contradictions that I have encountered, ultimately, I must seek to reflect upon my own experiences and to make sense of the unending flow of changing perspectives. Hopefully, somehow, someday, I will emerge with a better understanding of what will be required of me, to illuminate a brighter path forward to a more unified world of Homo sapiens.
Author, Joan Chittister, hints at this condition when she penned: “contemplation is a very dangerous activity. It not only brings us face to face with God. It brings us as well, face to face with the world, face to face with the self. And then of course, something must be done; she continues, “nothing stays the same once we have found the God within”, and she believes that “we carry the world in our hearts; the oppression of all peoples, the suffering of our friends, the burdens of our enemies, the raping of the earth, the hunger of the starving, the joy of every laughing child.”[1]
For Negros brought from Africa as slaves and the indigenous New World population, the Anglo-Saxon’s presence has exacerbated this conundrum. …
https://www.amazon.com/IRONY-Theophilus-Nicholson/dp/1520964846
https://apnews.com/article/b419883e871b5117649d1f3fdacf6f95