On Clarence Thomas, White Liberals and Acceptable Racism

Many on the left seem to think racism is perfectly acceptable when committed by folks like themselves and against people they view as "race traitors" (itself, a racist concept). It says a lot.

There were six Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade this week. The majority opinion was authored by Justice Samuel Alito. However, in the aftermath of the ruling, there has been an intense and particular focus on a different justice: Clarence Thomas. This may have been in part a product of Thomas’ post-ruling remarks urging the court to review and reconsider other Supreme Court precedents as well. But there also clearly seemed to be… something else…. at play.

Soon after the court handed down its decision, many pro-choice advocates began hurling outrageous and overtly racist remarks Thomas’ direction with impunity – to the widespread acclaim of other liberal whites. A brief sampling:

The remarks were so ubiquitous that “Uncle Clarence” began trending on Twitter, a reference to the eponymous character of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, who has emerged as a symbol of Black men perceived to be too subservient to whites.  In practice, however, the term is primarily deployed today against black people who strike positions that elite liberals find distasteful. For instance,  “Uncle Tim” previously trended on Twitter after Black Republican Sen. Tim Scott’s rebuttal of President Joe Biden’s inaugural address to a joint session of Congress. They called him an ‘Uncle Tom’ for challenging a white guy. It’s wild.

Then again, in other cases, minorities who violate the preferences and sensibilities of liberals are literally declared to be white instead. At least insofar as Thomas and Scott are branded as race-traitors, critics still recognize their race. Glass half full.

Nonetheless, there is a deep irony in characterizing Thomas as an “Uncle Tom” (or worse) given that, prior to pursuing public service, he identified with Black nationalism. He is currently married to a white woman and has aligned with the GOP. However, as political theorist Corey Robin has shown in his book The Enigma of Clarence Thomas, his views on race and racial issues have remained highly consistent over the course of his life.

Black Nationalists, White Liberals

Many assume that Thomas’ rulings flow out of a commitment to conservative orthodoxy, fervent Christianity, or partisan politics. The truth is much more interesting than that, albeit perhaps more unsettling.

Thomas’ alignment with the Republican Party seems to be driven first and foremost by a deep mistrust of white liberals, the institutions they control, and the policies they try to advance in the name of ‘social justice.’ This mistrust was widely shared among black activists of his generation. Malcolm X, for instance, famously declared:

“In this deceitful American game of power politics, the Negros (i.e. the race problem, the integration and civil rights issues) are nothing but tools, used by one group of whites called Liberals against another group of whites called Conservatives, either to get into power or to remain in power… the white liberal differs from the white conservative only in one way: the liberal is more deceitful than the conservative. The liberal is more hypocritical than the conservative. Both want power, but the white liberal is the one who has perfected the art of posing as the Negro’s friend and benefactor; and by winning the friendship, allegiance, and support of the Negro, the white liberal is able to use the Negro as a pawn or a tool in this political ‘football game’ that is constantly raging between white liberals and white conservatives. Politically the American Negro is nothing but a football.”

Thomas first encountered the work of Malcolm X while pursuing his undergraduate degree. He had a poster of the man in his dorm room. He memorized many of Malcom’s speeches by heart and continues to evoke him frequently to this day.

But it wasn’t just Malcolm who was skeptical of white liberals. Not by a longshot. In 1966, for instance, the influential Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) issued a position paper arguing:

“More and more we see black people in this country being used as a tool of the white liberal establishment. Liberal whites have not begun to address themselves to the real problem of black people in this country…  previous solutions to black problems in this country have been made in the interests of those whites dealing with these problems and not in the best interests of black people in the country. Whites can only subvert our true search and struggles for self-determination, self-identification, and liberation in this country.”

Ultimately, the SNCC would vote to expel whites from the organization entirely. Reporting on the purge in New Republic, journalist Andrew Kopkind noted at the time, “What galls SNCC people most is the way white radicals seem to have treated SNCC as some kind of psychotherapy, as a way to work out problems of alienation and boredom and personal inadequacy.” 

James Baldwin would find himself frustrated by the same. In 1972, he observed that even when white liberals tried to engage critiques by frustrated African Americans, they seemed to convince themselves (and tried to convince their interlocutors) that other white liberals were the problem. They sought to maintain themselves as an exception, and aligned themselves fervently with Black Power and civil rights as a kind of indulgence (in the Catholic sense) for their ongoing sins:

“It seemed very clear to me that [white liberals] were lying about their motives and were being blackmailed by their guilt… struggling to hold on to what they had acquired. For, intellectual activity, according to me, is and must be, disinterested. The truth is a two-edged sword – and if one is not willing to be pierced by the sword, even to the extreme of dying on it, then all of one’s intellectual activity is a masturbatory delusion and a wicked and dangerous fraud.”

For his part, Thomas did not just embrace Malcolm X. Corey Robin highlights that he also “championed the Black Panther leader Kathleen Cleaver and the Communist Party member Angela Davis, who were in flight from the American government because of radical involvements and allegations of criminal activity.”

In his Supreme Court confirmation hearings, when asked what he majored in, Thomas answered “English Literature.” When asked about his minor, he famously answered, “Protest.” Robin details how Clarence Thomas’ first trip to Washington D.C. was “to march on the Pentagon and against the Vietnam War.” According to Robin, “ The last rally he attended, in Cambridge—one of the most violent in the city’s history, in which two thousand cops assaulted three thousand protesters—was to demand the release of the Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale and the Panther leader Ericka Huggins. ‘I was never a liberal,’ he said at a talk in 1996. ‘I was a radical.’”

Thomas seems to have been put on this path by the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. King had advanced a particularly optimistic view of white liberals and cross-racial advocacy. However, in the months leading up to his death, even he was forced to concede:

“Negros have proceeded from a premise that equality means what it says, and they have taken white America at their word when they talked of it as an objective. But most whites in America in 1967, including many persons of goodwill, proceed from a premise that equality is a loose expression for improvement. White America is not even psychologically organized to close the gap — essentially, it seeks only to make it less painful and less obvious but in most respects to retain it. Most abrasions between Negros and white liberals arise from this fact.”

Robin notes that in the aftermath of King’s assassination, “by his own report, Thomas has a realization that nobody is going to do anything for black people. And by nobody, he means white liberals and white leftists. Thomas is then in college at Holy Cross in Worcester, not far outside of Boston, and he begins thinking about modes of self-organization that won’t be dependent upon white people.”

By the time Thomas arrived at Yale Law School, he was militant on racial matters and more-or-less fully disillusioned with mainstream liberalism. Hillary Clinton, who overlapped with him in the early ’70s, recently declared that as long as she has known Thomas, he’s always been filled with “grievance,” “anger” and “resentment.” Unsaid, but critical context: These were feelings Thomas displayed toward white liberals in particular (like Clinton herself), who dominated Yale at the time, and who continue to dominate elite spaces today. 

Thomas noted in a recent interview that people regularly assume he has difficulties around other Black people by virtue of his politics. “It’s just the opposite,” he declared. “The only people with whom I’ve had difficulties are white, liberal elites who consider themselves the anointed and us the benighted … I have never had issues with members of my race.”

It is precisely concern about erstwhile white saviors that drives Thomas’ opposition to race-targeted assistance programs. Thomas has compellingly argued that the primary purpose of contemporary affirmative action and DEI programs is to allow elite institutions to sustain selection criteria known to “produce racially disproportionate results” without running afoul of antidiscrimination law. Rather than making painful and more radical changes that would render their institutions more accessible for the genuinely marginalized and disadvantaged, manufacturing diversity by picking and choosing ‘exceptional’ individuals in a race-conscious way advances “the racial prerogatives of white elites, enhancing their ability to bestow the blessings of society upon a lucky few African Americans whose fortunes white elites chose to advance.”  It creates a clientelist relationship between dominant-group elites and those who aspire to be ‘consecrated’ thereby. In Thomas’ view, the main reason elites pursue diversity is to make their institutions “look right.” An appearance of diversity is “critical to the self-image of the ruling class… it is how white elites signal to other white elites their sophistication, taste and cosmopolitanism.” (see Robin, pp. 69-71).

In his understanding of how these programs work and whose ends they serve, Thomas is not very far from contemporary left-aligned scholars like Adolph Reed Jr. Indeed, I have advanced similar arguments myself.

Although concerns of these nature need not lean one to the right, Thomas is far from the only black nationalist whose mistrust towards white liberals ultimately led him to conservativism. While conservative parties often seem overtly hostile to civil rights, even this, many black nationalists find refreshing.

In the 1960s, some black nationalists went so far as to explore partnerships with white nationalists, out of their shared conviction that peaceful co-existence was both undesirable and implausible, and to advance their shared goal of a nation for whites, and a nation for blacks. Many more expressed that, in many ways, it was actually easier to deal with overt racists and right-wingers over liberals because you knew where they stood. You could plan around that. You could work around that. You could have honest conversation with them. It was much harder to make progress with people who claimed to support the cause in principle at every turn, but who always came up with excuses to avoid making changes in practice, in their own lives, in their own communities, etc. MLK Jr. said the Southern Campaign was much easier than the Northern Campaign for just this reason.

Insofar as they assume that few whites really care much about black emancipation, many black nationalists find it easier to surround themselves with people who are transparent about this reality than people who pretend to be ‘allies’ of the cause.

For Justice Thomas, the work of black economist Thomas Sowell ultimately helped him channel his misgivings towards erstwhile ‘white saviors’ into a coherent, right-aligned, political philosophy.  Nonetheless, black nationalist impulses continue to directly inform his rulings and judicial philosophy.

For instance, one core element of Thomas’ thinking is a “a belief in black self-defense.” This commitment undergirds his staunch support for the Second Amendment. It also plays a role in his opposition to abortion. Thomas has expressed repeatedly that his aversion to the practice is significantly informed by its deep and longstanding ties to racial eugenics programs. It should be noted that these eugenics initiatives were also pushed heavily by white liberals of the time, likewise in the name of helping the marginalized and disadvantaged. Thomas has no trust in similar social justice rhetoric being deployed by abortion rights advocates today.

Instead, the reactions many contemporary liberals have been directing toward Thomas for diverging from their preferred policies on abortion – to include an unabashed embrace racial epithets and slurs, in the name of social justice advocacy no less! – this seems to be a clear vindication of black nationalists’ longstanding suspicion that, at bottom, many self-described ‘allies’ are themselves deeply racist and simply use the ‘black cause’ as convenient to shore up their own power and influence.

Self Interest, Self-Deception

There is a deeper tension in these racialized attacks because many on the left, sometimes contemporaneously with their racist discourse towards Thomas, attempt to present abortion rights as especially important for marginalized and disadvantaged populations.

By far the most popular framing is to describe abortion access as a political conflict between men and women, wherein men are attempting to impose abortion restrictions in order exert their will upon women, violate female bodily autonomy, confine women to the household, and generally uphold the patriarchy. Yet men regularly perceive themselves as benefitting from abortion access too (indeed, men regularly pressure partners to pursue abortions in the event of an undesired pregnancy, so as to avoid responsibility of caring for the child or supporting the mother). In reality, there seems to be very little difference between men and women with respect to abortion attitudes. Polls and surveys show that support and opposition are largely equivalent across gender lines and have been quite stable over time. The big divides on abortion do not cut across gender, but rather, along the lines of ideological and religious affiliation, educational attainment and class.

In addition to portraying abortion restrictions as an instrument of the patriarchy, others have made striking assertions that abortion access is disproportionately important to LGBTQ Americans. This is perplexing because, as Phoebe Maltz Bovy aptly put it:

“Common sense suggests that women with the typical anatomy and the usual sexual orientation — cisgender, heterosexual women — are in fact the people most impacted by the legality of abortion. Even if trans women have a tougher time of it, all things equal, they are not often found wondering why their period is late that month. And yet, per a capitalization-happy tweeter, Roe’s demise ‘IS AN LGBTQ+ ISSUE AS MUCH AS IT IS A WOMEN’S RIGHTS ISSUE!’ Think of the gay men here, many of whom are lined up at Planned Parenthoods around the nation for emergency IUDs.”

Journalist Josh Barro elaborated, “if you’re talking about any problem, you say it disproportionately harms the LGBTQ community — never mind that abortion is the archetypal example of an issue that is of disproportionate importance for heterosexuals.”

Illustrative of this point, the ACLU issued a call to action in the leadup to the Supreme Court ruling, listing a whole range of historically marginalized and disadvantaged groups that are especially impacted by abortion restrictions. One group went curiously unmentioned: women! Literally no mention of women at all.

Phoebe argues that the source of bizarre posturing like this among pro-choice advocates is guilt over how earlier generations of feminists attempted to portray their idiosyncratic upper-middle class white preferences and interests as universal to all women. Such maneuvers are now gauche. But rather than simply being more honest that they’re advocating for their own personal rights and desires, many have instead shifted to trying to justify virtually all of their personal preferences in the name of the most marginalized and disadvantaged groups, even when it leads to absurd contortions like painting the mitigation of unplanned and undesired pregnancies as fundamentally about gay liberation. It has become shameful for many to overtly advocate for causes they have a personal stake in, and to be forthright about the reality that they are driven by their personal investment in the issue.

This is, itself, a shame because the whole intent behind the shift to ‘identity politics’ was to liberate people from such deceptions and self-deceptions, to encourage people to be more forthright about what they were trying to do and why. As the Combahee River Collective (who coined the term) put it:

“We realize that the only people who care enough about us to work consistently for our liberation are us. Our politics evolve from a healthy love for ourselves, our sisters and our community which allows us to continue our struggle and work. This focusing upon our own oppression is embodied in the concept of identity politics. We believe that the most profound and potentially most radical politics come directly out of our own identity, as opposed to working to end somebody else’s oppression.” 

The reality is that most abortions in the U.S. are pursued by twenty-something cisgender heterosexual women who live in a blue state, are attending college or have graduated therefrom, already have 1 or more children, are unmarried, and whose income skew towards the lower end of the distribution. A plurality of those who pursue abortion also happen to be white, although most are non-white.  Most of the time, the desire to terminate a pregnancy is not driven by health concerns for the mother or the child, but rather, out of concern that having (another) kid would adversely affect prospective parents’ current life plans, relationships and finances. And the sectors of American society that are most likely to support abortion are also those most likely to rely on abortion.

Yet rather than being honest about their personal stake in the issue, pro-choice advocates instead pretend as though they are driven primarily by concern for others, especially the most vulnerable among us. Worse, many seem to believe that expressing commitments to social justice somehow entitles them to engage in outright racist attacks against inconvenient black folks who get in their way.  

In light of these tendencies, it doesn’t seem hard to understand Thomas’ skepticism towards erstwhile ‘allies.’ As Yasmin Nair put it, “Clarence Thomas is not your ‘I can be a racist’ card, people.” This is something that should never even have to be said to those ostensibly committed to social justice. The fact that it apparently must be said is telling…

A version of this essay was originally published 7/1/2022 by NBC Think.