I am late to the party on commenting on this podcast. The question of Clarence, Thomas versus Barack Obama: I would agree Barack Obama has been lionized, and I expect his presidency will have critiques as history reflects on many of his decisions and policies in the future. However, I would push back on the question whether perceived or not of character between these two men. The recent, revelations of Clarence, Thomas‘s wife and her support for January 6, don’t reflect well on Justice Thomas, for me, and it will always stick in my mind how Thomas came to the court amidst the dismissal of Anita Hill’s accusations the veracity of which have not diminished over time. I am persuaded that his character, despite his many accomplishments, deserves some scrutiny. Maybe I am persuaded because Barack Obama and his public persona, is just more likable. But I think it’s deeper than that. Has Thomas been an outstanding member of the Court? As an attorney, I don’t find that argument, particularly compelling. I think it was John McWhorter or maybe one of your recent guests, that follows the court, and remarked that Ketanji Brown Jackson, has impressive legal chops. I’m not sure Thomas came to the court with that reputation to begin with. I am pondering why I find him so dislikable. Certainly the recent revelations about Mrs. Thomas have not helped in my opinion, fair or not.
I've posted the following comment twice over at "The Free Press" on articles related to affirmative action, and I think it may be relevant to this discussion as well:
Looks like the author and most, if not all, posters here (including me) are "anti-DEI". But can our opinions make any impact on the minds of "pro-DEI" wokesters, who seem to be growing in number and power? Or are we mostly just "preaching to the choir", i.e. making arguments that are likely to appeal primarily to those who already agree with us. By playing "Devil's Advocate" and summoning up my inner (fake) progressive, I tried to cobble together a plausible basis for DEI ideology, in hopes of facilitating a constructive engagement with it. So, speaking in the voice of my conjured woke persona, here is the result:
The main driver of DEI is the problem of "disparate outcomes". Non-wokesters often say things like "people deserve equal opportunity, but are not guaranteed equal outcomes". But DEI thinks that equal opportunity for different demographic groups must imply roughly equal outcomes for those groups, and that any statistically significant lower socio-economic status of historically underprivileged racial, ethnic, gender, etc. groups must be due to oppression by the privileged (white and "white-adjacent") ruling class. Because if people really had equal opportunity, why wouldn't they take advantage of it? Why would they choose to remain mired in poverty, crime, poor health, crummy jobs, low educational achievement, etc.? Could it be that they are in some way culturally or genetically inferior, and that some groups are just innately on the wrong side of "The Bell Curve" (referring to the 1994 book by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray)? Speaking in religious terms, why would the Creator construct a perverse world in which that would be possible? It seems much more plausible, based on centuries of history, that external oppression is the culprit. So if the fault is external to the people suffering the oppression, so too must be the solution. And since the problems of the oppressed are acute and severe, they constitute a dire emergency that society is obligated to address immediately and vigorously.
But society seems reluctant to take on the responsibility of righting these grievous wrongs. The reason is not just that segments of society remain racist, sexist, etc. Social justice warriors also face a vast wall of ignorance and indifference among large sections of the population, for whom it is just too costly, time-consuming, and perhaps even dangerous to get involved in struggles on behalf of people they don't know or can't relate to. It's much easier to invent excuses for not acting, including blaming the victims for their own misfortune. So gaining the attention of so many indifferent people whose participation is essential to the struggle for justice requires militancy, direct action, and hyperbole. The sound of every skirmish must be amplified to maximum level. For example, any use of the "N-word" by an unauthorized person must be characterized in apocalyptic terms. The speaker must be canceled and/or fired and required to sincerely confess, repent, and atone before being allowed back into "polite society". The writer George Orwell understood these concepts. In his novel "1984", "thought criminals" were cured of their delusions in not very pleasant fashion in Room 101 of the Ministry of Love.
Applying these ideas to medical school admissions, the relatively small percentage of students from "marginalized groups" (including Blacks) is a clear indicator of unfair and irrational bias, and must be cured forthwith, even with quotas if necessary. One could try to object that even if these groups have suffered bias that has impeded their success in medical school, it would still be unfair to them, other students, and their future patients to reduce standards to accommodate them, and that remediation of their "deficiencies" must start earlier, in college. But colleges say that the problem dates back to K-12 schooling, the K-12 schools say it's too late by then and pass the buck to the parent(s), but what are the parents to do? They too have been victimized by society and deprived of the time, resources, and knowledge needed to prepare their offspring for the rigors of our system of education. So the DEI way is militant protest: "No more excuses! No more passing the buck and kicking the can down the road! Just fix it, now, and if anything goes wrong blame the white racist sexist power structure!".
Returning now to my regularly-scheduled anti-DEI self:
So, readers, how was my wokester impression? Does it contain any valid ideas, and in any case how accurately does it represent actual woke ideology so it might serve as a credible sparring partner for testing counter arguments?
Mr. McWhorter's comment about Justice Thomas's silence is about three years out-of-date. Since the Court went virtual and since it has reconvened live, there is a set speaking order based on seniority. Now Justice Thomas usually has the first opportunity and has become voicing and not just writing his opinions.
The crux of it, perhaps, comes down to pragmatism. President Obama was and is pragmatic. He has always been willing to do whatever it takes to move to the next level in his career and score points with his constituency including using racist comments to describe his own grandmother.
Justice Thomas, whether you agree or disagree with his opinions, vocal or written, is the more principled of the two. Add to this the many on the left who still believe his seat on The Court is illegitimate because of what he was accused of by Anita Hill and there you have the immense dislike for Clarence Thomas.
The great thing about Republicans is that they remain static. They stand athwart history and yell “Stop”. The late Arthur Fletcher tried to stop the rightward movement of the GOP. The late Jackie Robinson left the GOP because of racism. The late Colin Powell said he couldn’t vote for Pat Buchanan.
Today we see Republicans suppressing votes in Black neighborhoods. We saw a Republican Governor poison Flint, Michigan. We see Republicans creating a segregated police system in Jackson, Mississippi while poisoning the city. We hear recordings of Republicans in Tennessee attempting to expel Black legislators and punish the Black community.
Blacks realize that White Republicans hate them and they vote accordingly. The gift that that Democrats receive is that because Republicans hate Black people, the majority of Blacks will vote for Democrats.
Republicans talk about personal responsibility then offer up a Black man who hid personal gifts from the public and does not recuse himself when cases involving his wife appear before his court as a righteous role model. Reading the defense of Thomas is the best comedy In ages
It is unfortunate that the Negro civil rights leaders hitched their wagon to the Democrat coalition. Democrats controlled the executive, legislative, and judicial branches at the time. There were and still are civil libertarians in the Republican coalition. There seem to be fewer on the other side of the aisle these days. The Social Justice Warriors drown them out.
The discussion points again to why I can’t push the button to subscribe to the substack. Clarence Thomas is described as a principled Conservative. We know that his wife worked to overturn the election. More importantly we know that he will not recuse himself from cases involving the 2020 election
Now we have evidence of Clarence Thomas failing to fully disclose gifts he received from private citizens who are linked to cases before the court. This article defending the honor of Justice Thomas certainly has not aged well.
A footnote on Thomas and his looney wife..from Ruth Marcus in the WaPo.
Did Thomas act “knowingly and willfully” in failing to report the property sale? One relevant consideration: The Judicial Conference has seen this kind of nondisclosure from Thomas before. Like other senior officials in government, justices must disclose their spouses’ sources of income, although not the dollar amounts. On his financial disclosure forms, Thomas simply marked the box labeled “NONE” for noninvestment income earned by his wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas. In fact, she was employed by the House Republican leadership, Hillsdale College and the Heritage Foundation, earning more than $1.6 million from those sources, according to separate records compiled by Common Cause and the Alliance for Justice. Thomas’s explanation — a “misunderstanding” of the reporting rules — was unconvincing then, and relevant to the situation now. As the instructions for “filer’s spouse” state, “Report only the date(s) and source of earned income from any source that exceeds $1,000.” Second, Thomas had complied with those rules for the previous decade, reporting the source of his wife’s income during his years as chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, when he was a judge on the D.C. Circuit, and for the first five years of his tenure on the Supreme Court. The justice is a repeat offender.
First off Obama is only half black he was raised by his white grandmother who was a well off banker. Obama went to private school in Hawaii and had all the privileges' of his whiteness. Thomas had to earn everything he has achieved.
Democrats don’t support blacks. They support only those blacks they can USE to increase their power. Just ask Clarence Thomas or any other black republican. They’ll tell ya.
Sorry, pudding head, it's not a black or white analysis. There are as many paths for Black Americans as there for any United States citizen of any color. The first step in any path begins by exercising - and accepting - personal responsibility.
Democrat ideology has been overtaken by a certain kind of white educated Bolshevik. This group controls the media. So of course, Obama PR advances the image of the great Black hope, especially as he has now fully morphed into a player for the Bolshevik side…whose interests are decidedly not pro-American.
What I find especially frustrating about the hate directed at Thomas is that it overlooks his prestige and status among legal conservatives. He’s portrayed by the left as a lap dog who expresses certain views to please white people. But he’s consistently bucked the conventional wisdom even among conservatives. He’s not going along with what Roberts and the Chamber of Commerce Republicans want. He has two decades of opinions, including many lone dissents, expressing his brand of originalism.
Thomas is now the leader of the originalist wing of the Court and is moving the whole of conservative legal thought in the direction he wants. That’s power. And whether you like his jurisprudence or hate it, denying to recognize his agency is deeply racist.
It’s telling, by the way, that Thomas gets the most hate for his views that he shares with many black Democrats in Georgia (on abortion, religion, and same sex marriage)—but where he disagrees with white liberals. Liberals aren’t outraged in the same way by his views on the administrative state.
Live Good
I am late to the party on commenting on this podcast. The question of Clarence, Thomas versus Barack Obama: I would agree Barack Obama has been lionized, and I expect his presidency will have critiques as history reflects on many of his decisions and policies in the future. However, I would push back on the question whether perceived or not of character between these two men. The recent, revelations of Clarence, Thomas‘s wife and her support for January 6, don’t reflect well on Justice Thomas, for me, and it will always stick in my mind how Thomas came to the court amidst the dismissal of Anita Hill’s accusations the veracity of which have not diminished over time. I am persuaded that his character, despite his many accomplishments, deserves some scrutiny. Maybe I am persuaded because Barack Obama and his public persona, is just more likable. But I think it’s deeper than that. Has Thomas been an outstanding member of the Court? As an attorney, I don’t find that argument, particularly compelling. I think it was John McWhorter or maybe one of your recent guests, that follows the court, and remarked that Ketanji Brown Jackson, has impressive legal chops. I’m not sure Thomas came to the court with that reputation to begin with. I am pondering why I find him so dislikable. Certainly the recent revelations about Mrs. Thomas have not helped in my opinion, fair or not.
I've posted the following comment twice over at "The Free Press" on articles related to affirmative action, and I think it may be relevant to this discussion as well:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Looks like the author and most, if not all, posters here (including me) are "anti-DEI". But can our opinions make any impact on the minds of "pro-DEI" wokesters, who seem to be growing in number and power? Or are we mostly just "preaching to the choir", i.e. making arguments that are likely to appeal primarily to those who already agree with us. By playing "Devil's Advocate" and summoning up my inner (fake) progressive, I tried to cobble together a plausible basis for DEI ideology, in hopes of facilitating a constructive engagement with it. So, speaking in the voice of my conjured woke persona, here is the result:
The main driver of DEI is the problem of "disparate outcomes". Non-wokesters often say things like "people deserve equal opportunity, but are not guaranteed equal outcomes". But DEI thinks that equal opportunity for different demographic groups must imply roughly equal outcomes for those groups, and that any statistically significant lower socio-economic status of historically underprivileged racial, ethnic, gender, etc. groups must be due to oppression by the privileged (white and "white-adjacent") ruling class. Because if people really had equal opportunity, why wouldn't they take advantage of it? Why would they choose to remain mired in poverty, crime, poor health, crummy jobs, low educational achievement, etc.? Could it be that they are in some way culturally or genetically inferior, and that some groups are just innately on the wrong side of "The Bell Curve" (referring to the 1994 book by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray)? Speaking in religious terms, why would the Creator construct a perverse world in which that would be possible? It seems much more plausible, based on centuries of history, that external oppression is the culprit. So if the fault is external to the people suffering the oppression, so too must be the solution. And since the problems of the oppressed are acute and severe, they constitute a dire emergency that society is obligated to address immediately and vigorously.
But society seems reluctant to take on the responsibility of righting these grievous wrongs. The reason is not just that segments of society remain racist, sexist, etc. Social justice warriors also face a vast wall of ignorance and indifference among large sections of the population, for whom it is just too costly, time-consuming, and perhaps even dangerous to get involved in struggles on behalf of people they don't know or can't relate to. It's much easier to invent excuses for not acting, including blaming the victims for their own misfortune. So gaining the attention of so many indifferent people whose participation is essential to the struggle for justice requires militancy, direct action, and hyperbole. The sound of every skirmish must be amplified to maximum level. For example, any use of the "N-word" by an unauthorized person must be characterized in apocalyptic terms. The speaker must be canceled and/or fired and required to sincerely confess, repent, and atone before being allowed back into "polite society". The writer George Orwell understood these concepts. In his novel "1984", "thought criminals" were cured of their delusions in not very pleasant fashion in Room 101 of the Ministry of Love.
Applying these ideas to medical school admissions, the relatively small percentage of students from "marginalized groups" (including Blacks) is a clear indicator of unfair and irrational bias, and must be cured forthwith, even with quotas if necessary. One could try to object that even if these groups have suffered bias that has impeded their success in medical school, it would still be unfair to them, other students, and their future patients to reduce standards to accommodate them, and that remediation of their "deficiencies" must start earlier, in college. But colleges say that the problem dates back to K-12 schooling, the K-12 schools say it's too late by then and pass the buck to the parent(s), but what are the parents to do? They too have been victimized by society and deprived of the time, resources, and knowledge needed to prepare their offspring for the rigors of our system of education. So the DEI way is militant protest: "No more excuses! No more passing the buck and kicking the can down the road! Just fix it, now, and if anything goes wrong blame the white racist sexist power structure!".
Returning now to my regularly-scheduled anti-DEI self:
So, readers, how was my wokester impression? Does it contain any valid ideas, and in any case how accurately does it represent actual woke ideology so it might serve as a credible sparring partner for testing counter arguments?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. McWhorter's comment about Justice Thomas's silence is about three years out-of-date. Since the Court went virtual and since it has reconvened live, there is a set speaking order based on seniority. Now Justice Thomas usually has the first opportunity and has become voicing and not just writing his opinions.
The crux of it, perhaps, comes down to pragmatism. President Obama was and is pragmatic. He has always been willing to do whatever it takes to move to the next level in his career and score points with his constituency including using racist comments to describe his own grandmother.
Justice Thomas, whether you agree or disagree with his opinions, vocal or written, is the more principled of the two. Add to this the many on the left who still believe his seat on The Court is illegitimate because of what he was accused of by Anita Hill and there you have the immense dislike for Clarence Thomas.
The great thing about Republicans is that they remain static. They stand athwart history and yell “Stop”. The late Arthur Fletcher tried to stop the rightward movement of the GOP. The late Jackie Robinson left the GOP because of racism. The late Colin Powell said he couldn’t vote for Pat Buchanan.
Today we see Republicans suppressing votes in Black neighborhoods. We saw a Republican Governor poison Flint, Michigan. We see Republicans creating a segregated police system in Jackson, Mississippi while poisoning the city. We hear recordings of Republicans in Tennessee attempting to expel Black legislators and punish the Black community.
Blacks realize that White Republicans hate them and they vote accordingly. The gift that that Democrats receive is that because Republicans hate Black people, the majority of Blacks will vote for Democrats.
Republicans talk about personal responsibility then offer up a Black man who hid personal gifts from the public and does not recuse himself when cases involving his wife appear before his court as a righteous role model. Reading the defense of Thomas is the best comedy In ages
It is unfortunate that the Negro civil rights leaders hitched their wagon to the Democrat coalition. Democrats controlled the executive, legislative, and judicial branches at the time. There were and still are civil libertarians in the Republican coalition. There seem to be fewer on the other side of the aisle these days. The Social Justice Warriors drown them out.
There are 2 paths for blacks; one leads to Yale-the other leads to jail
The homicide rate per 100K is lower in SF compared to Miami.
The discussion points again to why I can’t push the button to subscribe to the substack. Clarence Thomas is described as a principled Conservative. We know that his wife worked to overturn the election. More importantly we know that he will not recuse himself from cases involving the 2020 election
Now we have evidence of Clarence Thomas failing to fully disclose gifts he received from private citizens who are linked to cases before the court. This article defending the honor of Justice Thomas certainly has not aged well.
A footnote on Thomas and his looney wife..from Ruth Marcus in the WaPo.
Did Thomas act “knowingly and willfully” in failing to report the property sale? One relevant consideration: The Judicial Conference has seen this kind of nondisclosure from Thomas before. Like other senior officials in government, justices must disclose their spouses’ sources of income, although not the dollar amounts. On his financial disclosure forms, Thomas simply marked the box labeled “NONE” for noninvestment income earned by his wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas. In fact, she was employed by the House Republican leadership, Hillsdale College and the Heritage Foundation, earning more than $1.6 million from those sources, according to separate records compiled by Common Cause and the Alliance for Justice. Thomas’s explanation — a “misunderstanding” of the reporting rules — was unconvincing then, and relevant to the situation now. As the instructions for “filer’s spouse” state, “Report only the date(s) and source of earned income from any source that exceeds $1,000.” Second, Thomas had complied with those rules for the previous decade, reporting the source of his wife’s income during his years as chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, when he was a judge on the D.C. Circuit, and for the first five years of his tenure on the Supreme Court. The justice is a repeat offender.
First off Obama is only half black he was raised by his white grandmother who was a well off banker. Obama went to private school in Hawaii and had all the privileges' of his whiteness. Thomas had to earn everything he has achieved.
Thanks for this. I called for his resignation a year ago. Time now for his impeachment: https://nickcoccoma.substack.com/p/clarence-thomas-resign
Democrats don’t support blacks. They support only those blacks they can USE to increase their power. Just ask Clarence Thomas or any other black republican. They’ll tell ya.
Sorry, pudding head, it's not a black or white analysis. There are as many paths for Black Americans as there for any United States citizen of any color. The first step in any path begins by exercising - and accepting - personal responsibility.
Democrat ideology has been overtaken by a certain kind of white educated Bolshevik. This group controls the media. So of course, Obama PR advances the image of the great Black hope, especially as he has now fully morphed into a player for the Bolshevik side…whose interests are decidedly not pro-American.
What I find especially frustrating about the hate directed at Thomas is that it overlooks his prestige and status among legal conservatives. He’s portrayed by the left as a lap dog who expresses certain views to please white people. But he’s consistently bucked the conventional wisdom even among conservatives. He’s not going along with what Roberts and the Chamber of Commerce Republicans want. He has two decades of opinions, including many lone dissents, expressing his brand of originalism.
Thomas is now the leader of the originalist wing of the Court and is moving the whole of conservative legal thought in the direction he wants. That’s power. And whether you like his jurisprudence or hate it, denying to recognize his agency is deeply racist.
It’s telling, by the way, that Thomas gets the most hate for his views that he shares with many black Democrats in Georgia (on abortion, religion, and same sex marriage)—but where he disagrees with white liberals. Liberals aren’t outraged in the same way by his views on the administrative state.