Another excellent post. I’ve become a regular reader here.
I think that Clarence Thomas’ presence on the Supreme Court is an excellent argument in favor of appointment-for-life for Supreme Court Justices. In 2022, while we are freaking out about race and so caught up on the current thing, the most important race-related legal decisions are being presided over by a man who lived through the Civil Rights era, went to a segregated school, and faced discrimination firsthand. To me, it lends the Supreme Court a sense of gravity to have so much history and lived experience on its bench
Great piece. One quibble. You say: "Maybe the black rights movement in its current form is a perfectly managed opposition — demanding no land, no responsibility, nothing more than can be granted symbolically."
I don't think this is true. Diversity jobs provide black people employment as do well paying DEI bureaucrat jobs. So these benefits are not just symbolic. Also, there is still a call for reparations.
I read Thomas's autobiography while in my mid-20s while I was a card carrying liberal Democrat. It really opened my eyes to another viewpoint and I found him fascinating and very sympathetic. Here's a dark skinned black man who grew up poor, rural and black in the deep South and he is vilified as a racist by his own community and whites. Imagine the toll that takes on your psyche? The kindness and empathy crowd have none for him. It's really astonishing how a strong-willed, outspoken black man has become so vilified by the white liberal class.
I view the civil rights movement and seminal cases as creating terrible downstream effects. I don't long for segregation or Jim Crow laws, but I have come to believe Brown's "separate but unequal", while arguably necessary at that time, has undermined black sovereignty, the black community, black excellence and unfairly tarnished voluntary segregation. The reality is that people want to live among their own (however they define their own kind). Blacks are not different - the want to live among other blacks. They want to live in communities where there are salons that cater to their hair, supermarkets that sell the foods they eat and churches that reflect their beliefs and practices. Post-Brown, majority black communities became viewed with suspicion and stigmatized. All black meant inferior and they needed proximity to whites to achieve. What Thomas believes is the opposite - that blacks don't need whites to achieve and they can do it on their own. Blacks just need whites and other to get out of their way and leave them alone. It's amazing to me that so many on the left rightly decry the institutionalized racism and anti-blackness in American history and then turn around and demand more government intervention in the forms of welfare, affirmative action and DIE (refuse to call it DEI). Thomas would say white involvement IS the problem.
I don’t see how Thomas can avoid winding up in the same place as Obama or Bill Clinton w regard to the consistency of lower average achievement by US blacks vs US whites. This was how George W Bush came to sign No Child Left Behind. No conservatives are comfortable with 1% of law students at top US law schools being black even if that what strict scoring would do.
We do not have a moral system which allows for equality in the eyes of God and inequality of income.
I think more people will be uncomfortable with the discrimination against east and south East Asians necessary to achieve adequate black and Hispanic representation. We’ve seen the grass roots Asian activism in response to equity in California and Virginia. The interesting thing to me is this discrimination against whites is fine but as soon as it started affecting Asians in larger numbers it is becoming unpalatable to many.
>discrimination against east and south East Asians
North-East and South (Indian subcontinentals). South East Asians do not perform well enough to warrant discrimination
And I think you're overstimating the extent to which it is unacceptable. The ruling elites absolutely will accept asian discrimination to increase black and hispanic representation and asians don't matter as a voting bloc.
It seems that Asians (as a voting bloc) can look at free competition and expect to succeed, while blacks (as a voting bloc) fear that they will fail. I think Thomas like most conservatives expects black equality and so traps himself, whenever there are disparate impacts it must be due to black laziness. It’s not that different from systemic racism as an explanation. I am not sure under which regime blacks would do better but as a voting bloc they sure like racism a lot better.
Based on the quotes in the post, I don't think Thomas sees " black laziness" as a genetic inevitability, but the result of liberal policies that robbed blacks of the motivation to become independent and self-sufficient. The performance of black communities, after slavery but before the civil rights movement, suggest that's true.
Clarence is a real conservative, the kind that knows the difference between licence and freedom, and that between a right given and a right taken. No wonder he’s so angry at what's been done to his people.
The American State saw free men, let globalization take their jobs away, let the subsequent rise in drugs and crime ravage their community, and then made them dependent on handout money, ensuring their compliance with the system. This is how you neutralize a minority.
"The blessings of diversity fall mostly to whites; the burdens, as he sees them, are borne by blacks..." I'm trying to get my head around Robin's logic. So it's a blessing to be passed over for a desirable job if you're white and a burden to get that desirable job because you're in the diverse black demographic. This sounds like a past friend complaining what a curse it was to be good-looking: women just wouldn't leave him alone.
I grew up in NYC and encountered a lot of black nationalists who take hyper masculine, self determinative positions.
Like the Black Muslims of the 80s, Thomas’s parents converted to Catholicism for a stricter religious experience.
Catholicism became very popular among black families during the migration to the north as parishes lost their European immigrant base to suburbanization.
It’s similar to the anti-colonization and secular nationalist movements of the 50s in Asia. I mean Gandhi said lots of racist things.
Another excellent post. I’ve become a regular reader here.
I think that Clarence Thomas’ presence on the Supreme Court is an excellent argument in favor of appointment-for-life for Supreme Court Justices. In 2022, while we are freaking out about race and so caught up on the current thing, the most important race-related legal decisions are being presided over by a man who lived through the Civil Rights era, went to a segregated school, and faced discrimination firsthand. To me, it lends the Supreme Court a sense of gravity to have so much history and lived experience on its bench
Thanks man!
Great piece. One quibble. You say: "Maybe the black rights movement in its current form is a perfectly managed opposition — demanding no land, no responsibility, nothing more than can be granted symbolically."
I don't think this is true. Diversity jobs provide black people employment as do well paying DEI bureaucrat jobs. So these benefits are not just symbolic. Also, there is still a call for reparations.
Yes it's a good point. Agree it's a weaker part - I was reaching a bit. But still.... where is black nationalism today in America?
Yeah, nowhere. Have you read this? The subtitle is IMO on point:
https://niccolo.substack.com/p/the-slow-political-surrender-of-black
Thanks! Had not seen, very on point
I read Thomas's autobiography while in my mid-20s while I was a card carrying liberal Democrat. It really opened my eyes to another viewpoint and I found him fascinating and very sympathetic. Here's a dark skinned black man who grew up poor, rural and black in the deep South and he is vilified as a racist by his own community and whites. Imagine the toll that takes on your psyche? The kindness and empathy crowd have none for him. It's really astonishing how a strong-willed, outspoken black man has become so vilified by the white liberal class.
I view the civil rights movement and seminal cases as creating terrible downstream effects. I don't long for segregation or Jim Crow laws, but I have come to believe Brown's "separate but unequal", while arguably necessary at that time, has undermined black sovereignty, the black community, black excellence and unfairly tarnished voluntary segregation. The reality is that people want to live among their own (however they define their own kind). Blacks are not different - the want to live among other blacks. They want to live in communities where there are salons that cater to their hair, supermarkets that sell the foods they eat and churches that reflect their beliefs and practices. Post-Brown, majority black communities became viewed with suspicion and stigmatized. All black meant inferior and they needed proximity to whites to achieve. What Thomas believes is the opposite - that blacks don't need whites to achieve and they can do it on their own. Blacks just need whites and other to get out of their way and leave them alone. It's amazing to me that so many on the left rightly decry the institutionalized racism and anti-blackness in American history and then turn around and demand more government intervention in the forms of welfare, affirmative action and DIE (refuse to call it DEI). Thomas would say white involvement IS the problem.
I don’t see how Thomas can avoid winding up in the same place as Obama or Bill Clinton w regard to the consistency of lower average achievement by US blacks vs US whites. This was how George W Bush came to sign No Child Left Behind. No conservatives are comfortable with 1% of law students at top US law schools being black even if that what strict scoring would do.
We do not have a moral system which allows for equality in the eyes of God and inequality of income.
I think more people will be uncomfortable with the discrimination against east and south East Asians necessary to achieve adequate black and Hispanic representation. We’ve seen the grass roots Asian activism in response to equity in California and Virginia. The interesting thing to me is this discrimination against whites is fine but as soon as it started affecting Asians in larger numbers it is becoming unpalatable to many.
>discrimination against east and south East Asians
North-East and South (Indian subcontinentals). South East Asians do not perform well enough to warrant discrimination
And I think you're overstimating the extent to which it is unacceptable. The ruling elites absolutely will accept asian discrimination to increase black and hispanic representation and asians don't matter as a voting bloc.
It seems that Asians (as a voting bloc) can look at free competition and expect to succeed, while blacks (as a voting bloc) fear that they will fail. I think Thomas like most conservatives expects black equality and so traps himself, whenever there are disparate impacts it must be due to black laziness. It’s not that different from systemic racism as an explanation. I am not sure under which regime blacks would do better but as a voting bloc they sure like racism a lot better.
Based on the quotes in the post, I don't think Thomas sees " black laziness" as a genetic inevitability, but the result of liberal policies that robbed blacks of the motivation to become independent and self-sufficient. The performance of black communities, after slavery but before the civil rights movement, suggest that's true.
Clarence is a real conservative, the kind that knows the difference between licence and freedom, and that between a right given and a right taken. No wonder he’s so angry at what's been done to his people.
The American State saw free men, let globalization take their jobs away, let the subsequent rise in drugs and crime ravage their community, and then made them dependent on handout money, ensuring their compliance with the system. This is how you neutralize a minority.
"The blessings of diversity fall mostly to whites; the burdens, as he sees them, are borne by blacks..." I'm trying to get my head around Robin's logic. So it's a blessing to be passed over for a desirable job if you're white and a burden to get that desirable job because you're in the diverse black demographic. This sounds like a past friend complaining what a curse it was to be good-looking: women just wouldn't leave him alone.
I grew up in NYC and encountered a lot of black nationalists who take hyper masculine, self determinative positions.
Like the Black Muslims of the 80s, Thomas’s parents converted to Catholicism for a stricter religious experience.
Catholicism became very popular among black families during the migration to the north as parishes lost their European immigrant base to suburbanization.
It’s similar to the anti-colonization and secular nationalist movements of the 50s in Asia. I mean Gandhi said lots of racist things.