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.
"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."
Obama didn't say anything that was any more racially insensitive than practically any White president in living memory but as our first African American president, he was given zero grace or room for error in matters of race, particularly by Republicans.
As far as the question at hand goes, in his speeches, Obama has been quite consistent in voicing what he sees as a path forward for Black Americans. With Thomas, we're pretty much left to speculate or cobble together excerpts from his judicial opinions to try and get a comprehensive sense of his perspective on the matter at hand; I can't even think of an occasion where he's directly addressed Black Americans on a major platform.
How do you square Justice Thomas being the more principled with his refusal to document financial gifts that he received along with his failure to recuse himself when cases supported by his wife appeared before the court?
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.
Barry Goldwater gave support to white supremacists and did not agree the Civil Rights legislation. He essentially said Blacks would have to wait for the hearts of whites to change before they could expect things to change. He received 6% of the Black vote. Ronald Reagan began his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi where three civil rights workers were slain. Reagan also spoke of welfare queens. The fact that white Republicans are unaware of this history speaks volumes about party interest iin attracting Black voters.
Black voters remember the racists history of the Democratic Party. They know of Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. After the passage of Civil Rights laws, Dixiecrats became Republicans. Today Blacks see Republicans as hostile to their interests. It is hilarious to watch Republicans deny history.
Rand Paul went to Howard University years ago to “educate” the students. The students were fully aware that Lincoln was a Republican. They also knew about the Dixiecrats and Gold water. Rand Paul could not remember the name of the black Republican Senator Edward Brooke. The Howard students reminded him.
The Democrats are guaranteed 80% of more of the Black vote simply because of the willful ignorance of the GOP.
BTW, the current Black unemployment rate is about 5% under a Democratic President. The Democrats thank Republicans for ignoring history.
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.
If you have evidence about Democrats, please present it.
Thomas is a lawyer, he should have known better. Justice Abe Fortas had to resign because of a similar breech of ethics.
As it stands, I would want youth to avoid following the path of Clarence Thomas.Thomas attended an elite law school and still had trouble finding employment. All of his Black law school peers found gainful employment. Thomas was the runt of his law school class.
Typical Conservative response………Whaddabout the other guy?
Fortas was a personal advisor to LBJ and that was a clear conflict of interest. Justice Douglas accepted money from environmental interests; Bragg, Gardner and Foxx accepted money from Soros and a Democratic state judge in New York just resigned for taking money from a lawyer to remove a case to another venue, As far as Thomas having trouble finding a job that has no reflection on his character. Liberal do not like Thomas because he's a conservative.
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.
Caught on tape, Fox News was so afraid of losing its low information audience so it fed them lies about the election. The fact that Loury and McWhorter don’t address this head on is telling.
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.
I'm still a novice at commenting in arenas such as this. With apologies, here goes again.
It was your comment, thoughtfully put, which reminded me yet again of Jonathan Haidt's book, The Righteous Mind. Haidt is a social scientist who studies thought, attitudes and actions the way a proper social scientist would, via an empirical process welcoming comment and, ultimately, peer review.
In The Righteous Mind, he examines (in part with tools such as brain imaging with functional MRIs) whether we humans use logic to "decide" and act or whether we act impulsively and what might drive that. He illustrates with the metaphor of an elephant and rider, with the rider doing his best to guide the elephant but having to accept what the elephant "decides" to do and then serving as sort of an advocate, explaining and rationalizing the decisions to the noticing world afterwards.
It turns out we humans aren't great at making logical decisions ourselves but are damned good at noticing the flaws in the thinking of others. That isn't such a bad thing, considering the benefits of having the group keep us in line and influencing us against our more hare-brained ideas. One might call it an oft overlooked benefit of being pack animals. The trouble is, of course, if there's something which immunizes a person from the benefits of critique, such as things which prevent a person from ever hearing (or needing to hear) the word "no". But enough about celebrities, some public figures and rich people. I'm suddenly thinking of Mr. Crow.
Another feature of our thought and decision making processes is what Haidt calls "Can I?" and "Must I?" thinking. Butchering it with brevity, I'll paraphrase it this way: If there are 20 factors bearing on a decision to do something I really want to do ("Can I? mode) and 19 say no but one says yes, I tend to hang my hat on the one and take that decision. If I really don't want to do something and 19 factors say to do it while one cuts against ("Must I?" mode) then I ignore the 19 and decide based on the one.
To me, it seems that what influences us to be in either "Can I?" or "Must I?" mode will describe our priorities. And yes, good people, even great people, have competing priorities and aren't precisely conscious of them. Which is a very long way of getting at where we are in our social and political discourse today. While considering these, it's a good idea to remember we are all human and are all governed by our human nature. At least if we want to be accurate. Obviously, accuracy can take a back seat to other priorities. Such as survival, even social survival and the peer pressure of social environments.
Skin color isn't human nature. Reactions to it can be. That's another topic in the world of evolutionary psychology.
With apologies again for the long intro, I'd like to pull it back to Justice Thomas again. Justice Thomas is a multidimensional human being, forged of his experiences over his lifetime. These have constructed his identity and have included triumph and public scrutiny the likes of which are unique to him. He has his own priorities, the things he favors, the things which rankle, the things he will and won't stand for if it's up to him. He has a concept of who he stands for and wants to stand with. He's a man, not a cartoon character.
I especially identified with your paragraph beginning with, "Thomas is now the leader of the originalist wing..." and including, "whether you like his jurisprudence or hate it...". It strikes me as measured and dispassionate. In our present world of habitually prioritizing who we identify as friend and enemy, so often fueled with passion and other emotions, I'm drawn to your thinking and how you frame it. So thank you. (another widely under appreciated aspect of human biology is that our heavy calorie demanding cortex shuts down when our amygdala is activated; the amygdala is where emotion and impulsivity live, as well as "fight or flight".)
I happen to disagree with a good deal of the originalist approach and so have most often disagreed with Justice Thomas. At least to the extent his opinions are based solely on that approach. It's a bit like, "the Constitution said it, I believe it, that settles it." The ever important context goes neglected. There are very, very good reasons why some concepts, brilliantly sensible at the framing, stand up today and can withstand debate. There are others which spoke to conditions in the run up to 1789 which make perfect sense to have been included but don't make sense today. That is, if debate on their rationale is permitted.
I disagree that denying his agency is deeply racist. Such denial can indeed be motivated in some by racism. There are other explanations for a person denying his agency on the court. Such denial can simply be wrong. It doesn't have to be deeply racist. I'll bet we agree on that. I agree with much of what you wrote.
In reading a lot of the comments here (quite a task) I'm struck by how Haidt might read them and shake his head at how the debate can so often fall into "Can I?" and "Must I?" thinking, of how the things expressed advance one priority (for example, friend or enemy identification, a form of virtue signaling) while unwittingly couched in something else. I just thought your comment wasn't like that.
Thanks, Richard. I think we would all do well to read The Righteous Mind. It was published in 2012 but there's a TED Talk touching on some of the subjects from 2008. I think people who are actually psychologically conservative (as distinguished from just the politically, culture warring type) come out pretty well and demonstrate many reasons to be listened to. Haidt didn't start out aiming at such conclusions but the data and results left him appreciating the merits of psychological conservatives.
It isn't as though human nature as a discipline to study is new. People involved in marketing have exploited our characteristics for years. Even if things weren't finely understood, say, in the 1950s, marketing folks had some ideas about what sells. Leadership is a related field. Real experts in leadership can be found in the branches of the United States military. Notice also how much Simon Sinek, for example, bases his leadership lectures on evolutionary biology.
I look at a comments section and think, "Geez, what's the use?" There are lots of elephants stampeding around here. It would be cool if we were all our own riders. Couched in terms of a conflict for the survival of our country, though, can make a discussion's priority being the identification of enemies. I don't mean here. Glenn has set a very high bar for public discourse. I must mean the perception I have of the wider social landscape. Including what passes for and shows the trappings of news. Anyway, good luck, all.
Agree, Haidt is one of my "Must Read" authors—I read everything he writes and co-writes. Human nature is really the only thing worth studying once the family is whelped, fledged, and sent off to do the same and one's retirement home has been secured. I'm glad you're a posting member here. Welcome.
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:
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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?
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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.
"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."
Obama didn't say anything that was any more racially insensitive than practically any White president in living memory but as our first African American president, he was given zero grace or room for error in matters of race, particularly by Republicans.
As far as the question at hand goes, in his speeches, Obama has been quite consistent in voicing what he sees as a path forward for Black Americans. With Thomas, we're pretty much left to speculate or cobble together excerpts from his judicial opinions to try and get a comprehensive sense of his perspective on the matter at hand; I can't even think of an occasion where he's directly addressed Black Americans on a major platform.
How do you square Justice Thomas being the more principled with his refusal to document financial gifts that he received along with his failure to recuse himself when cases supported by his wife appeared before the court?
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.
Barry Goldwater gave support to white supremacists and did not agree the Civil Rights legislation. He essentially said Blacks would have to wait for the hearts of whites to change before they could expect things to change. He received 6% of the Black vote. Ronald Reagan began his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi where three civil rights workers were slain. Reagan also spoke of welfare queens. The fact that white Republicans are unaware of this history speaks volumes about party interest iin attracting Black voters.
Black voters remember the racists history of the Democratic Party. They know of Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. After the passage of Civil Rights laws, Dixiecrats became Republicans. Today Blacks see Republicans as hostile to their interests. It is hilarious to watch Republicans deny history.
Rand Paul went to Howard University years ago to “educate” the students. The students were fully aware that Lincoln was a Republican. They also knew about the Dixiecrats and Gold water. Rand Paul could not remember the name of the black Republican Senator Edward Brooke. The Howard students reminded him.
The Democrats are guaranteed 80% of more of the Black vote simply because of the willful ignorance of the GOP.
BTW, the current Black unemployment rate is about 5% under a Democratic President. The Democrats thank Republicans for ignoring history.
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.
Changes in latitude...
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.
How many Democrats have refused to disclose gifts from the likes of George Soros and others?
If you have evidence about Democrats, please present it.
Thomas is a lawyer, he should have known better. Justice Abe Fortas had to resign because of a similar breech of ethics.
As it stands, I would want youth to avoid following the path of Clarence Thomas.Thomas attended an elite law school and still had trouble finding employment. All of his Black law school peers found gainful employment. Thomas was the runt of his law school class.
Typical Conservative response………Whaddabout the other guy?
Fortas was a personal advisor to LBJ and that was a clear conflict of interest. Justice Douglas accepted money from environmental interests; Bragg, Gardner and Foxx accepted money from Soros and a Democratic state judge in New York just resigned for taking money from a lawyer to remove a case to another venue, As far as Thomas having trouble finding a job that has no reflection on his character. Liberal do not like Thomas because he's a conservative.
So you do not dispute that Thomas hid gifts he received? Stay on topic.
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.
Which of the 3 authors are you referring to?
Each.
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.
Caught on tape, Fox News was so afraid of losing its low information audience so it fed them lies about the election. The fact that Loury and McWhorter don’t address this head on is telling.
Yep.
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.
I'm still a novice at commenting in arenas such as this. With apologies, here goes again.
It was your comment, thoughtfully put, which reminded me yet again of Jonathan Haidt's book, The Righteous Mind. Haidt is a social scientist who studies thought, attitudes and actions the way a proper social scientist would, via an empirical process welcoming comment and, ultimately, peer review.
In The Righteous Mind, he examines (in part with tools such as brain imaging with functional MRIs) whether we humans use logic to "decide" and act or whether we act impulsively and what might drive that. He illustrates with the metaphor of an elephant and rider, with the rider doing his best to guide the elephant but having to accept what the elephant "decides" to do and then serving as sort of an advocate, explaining and rationalizing the decisions to the noticing world afterwards.
It turns out we humans aren't great at making logical decisions ourselves but are damned good at noticing the flaws in the thinking of others. That isn't such a bad thing, considering the benefits of having the group keep us in line and influencing us against our more hare-brained ideas. One might call it an oft overlooked benefit of being pack animals. The trouble is, of course, if there's something which immunizes a person from the benefits of critique, such as things which prevent a person from ever hearing (or needing to hear) the word "no". But enough about celebrities, some public figures and rich people. I'm suddenly thinking of Mr. Crow.
Another feature of our thought and decision making processes is what Haidt calls "Can I?" and "Must I?" thinking. Butchering it with brevity, I'll paraphrase it this way: If there are 20 factors bearing on a decision to do something I really want to do ("Can I? mode) and 19 say no but one says yes, I tend to hang my hat on the one and take that decision. If I really don't want to do something and 19 factors say to do it while one cuts against ("Must I?" mode) then I ignore the 19 and decide based on the one.
To me, it seems that what influences us to be in either "Can I?" or "Must I?" mode will describe our priorities. And yes, good people, even great people, have competing priorities and aren't precisely conscious of them. Which is a very long way of getting at where we are in our social and political discourse today. While considering these, it's a good idea to remember we are all human and are all governed by our human nature. At least if we want to be accurate. Obviously, accuracy can take a back seat to other priorities. Such as survival, even social survival and the peer pressure of social environments.
Skin color isn't human nature. Reactions to it can be. That's another topic in the world of evolutionary psychology.
With apologies again for the long intro, I'd like to pull it back to Justice Thomas again. Justice Thomas is a multidimensional human being, forged of his experiences over his lifetime. These have constructed his identity and have included triumph and public scrutiny the likes of which are unique to him. He has his own priorities, the things he favors, the things which rankle, the things he will and won't stand for if it's up to him. He has a concept of who he stands for and wants to stand with. He's a man, not a cartoon character.
I especially identified with your paragraph beginning with, "Thomas is now the leader of the originalist wing..." and including, "whether you like his jurisprudence or hate it...". It strikes me as measured and dispassionate. In our present world of habitually prioritizing who we identify as friend and enemy, so often fueled with passion and other emotions, I'm drawn to your thinking and how you frame it. So thank you. (another widely under appreciated aspect of human biology is that our heavy calorie demanding cortex shuts down when our amygdala is activated; the amygdala is where emotion and impulsivity live, as well as "fight or flight".)
I happen to disagree with a good deal of the originalist approach and so have most often disagreed with Justice Thomas. At least to the extent his opinions are based solely on that approach. It's a bit like, "the Constitution said it, I believe it, that settles it." The ever important context goes neglected. There are very, very good reasons why some concepts, brilliantly sensible at the framing, stand up today and can withstand debate. There are others which spoke to conditions in the run up to 1789 which make perfect sense to have been included but don't make sense today. That is, if debate on their rationale is permitted.
I disagree that denying his agency is deeply racist. Such denial can indeed be motivated in some by racism. There are other explanations for a person denying his agency on the court. Such denial can simply be wrong. It doesn't have to be deeply racist. I'll bet we agree on that. I agree with much of what you wrote.
In reading a lot of the comments here (quite a task) I'm struck by how Haidt might read them and shake his head at how the debate can so often fall into "Can I?" and "Must I?" thinking, of how the things expressed advance one priority (for example, friend or enemy identification, a form of virtue signaling) while unwittingly couched in something else. I just thought your comment wasn't like that.
Wow! Novice no more. Fine comment with lots of meat on the bone. Digesting...
Thanks, Richard. I think we would all do well to read The Righteous Mind. It was published in 2012 but there's a TED Talk touching on some of the subjects from 2008. I think people who are actually psychologically conservative (as distinguished from just the politically, culture warring type) come out pretty well and demonstrate many reasons to be listened to. Haidt didn't start out aiming at such conclusions but the data and results left him appreciating the merits of psychological conservatives.
It isn't as though human nature as a discipline to study is new. People involved in marketing have exploited our characteristics for years. Even if things weren't finely understood, say, in the 1950s, marketing folks had some ideas about what sells. Leadership is a related field. Real experts in leadership can be found in the branches of the United States military. Notice also how much Simon Sinek, for example, bases his leadership lectures on evolutionary biology.
I look at a comments section and think, "Geez, what's the use?" There are lots of elephants stampeding around here. It would be cool if we were all our own riders. Couched in terms of a conflict for the survival of our country, though, can make a discussion's priority being the identification of enemies. I don't mean here. Glenn has set a very high bar for public discourse. I must mean the perception I have of the wider social landscape. Including what passes for and shows the trappings of news. Anyway, good luck, all.
Agree, Haidt is one of my "Must Read" authors—I read everything he writes and co-writes. Human nature is really the only thing worth studying once the family is whelped, fledged, and sent off to do the same and one's retirement home has been secured. I'm glad you're a posting member here. Welcome.
Very incisive comment. Agree entirely.