please hug mr. thomas

clarence thomas. no disrespect, but i can't take it. can you all tell me something positive about him? i really want to learn so that i can get this jaded perception out of my mind. i had to sit through constitutional law class and listen to his terrible one sided opinions which actually embarrassed me. maybe it was because i was one of only 5 blacks in my class? maybe because i am super liberal? maybe because since we are both the product of the deep south i wanted to hear something demonstrating that he really did care about the well being of his people, black people? i don't know what i wanted to hear from the one and only black justice. i really don't know.

well now - i'm more pissed. i read an article about his autobiography, supreme discomfort: the divided soul of clarance thomas. this book chronicles his life from savannah, georgia to yale to his appointment by george h. bush to the supreme court. [sigh]

being referred to as "abc," an acronym for "america's blackest child," he never fully recovered. according to the article, so much of this book is divided over light skinned african americans and dark-skinned african americans and how they shunned him from society. i guess he's saying "payback time now."

he expresses his disgust over affirmative action in the most distorted way i can think of:

As much as Thomas disliked having his credentials questioned, he also hated the idea that affirmative action at Yale seemed to help black people who least needed it -- the mostly light-skinned children of the black professional class,” Merida and Fletcher wrote

light skin. dark skin.

again when he speaks of his childhood in segregated, ga:

You had the black elite, the schoolteachers, the
light-skinned people, the dentists, the doctors,” Thomas has said, according to
the book. “My grandfather was down at the bottom, an uneducated man who had
money in the bank and took care of himself. And … they would look down on him.
Everyone tries to gloss over that now, but it was the reality. It was the
reality.

light skin. dark skin again.

i am so sad to read this. my parents grew up in segregated, ms; it hurts to see a man who i know struggled through jim crow to make it where he is have such an intense opinion regarding african americans. this really is sad. i didn't expect much from this article, but the more i read - once again the more disappointed i became. thanks for stopping by, check out the article below.

GET THE ARTICLE HERE