Clarence Thomas and the Republican Far Right

If you are not a straight male of specific Northern European ancestry, you are in real trouble with these people. Another article said, “Negroes, Asians and Orientals have no temperament for democracy.” Yet another states, “Italians, Jews and Puerto Ricans” live in New York, not “Americans.” Another article claims that, “The tides of immigration turned negative: were characterized by the losers of political history...the Italians and the Irish...the dull-spirited and pagan, such as the Scandinavians...and by people to whom the tenets of our republic were altogether aliens, such as the hieratic Jews.…” 

As for the role of women, the Partisan has stated that, feminism is a “revolt against God” and “Feminists, ethnic minorities, sodomites and other ‘victims’ of the majority culture are demanding special recognition and privileged status.” 

Ashcroft has been quoted praising the work of the Southern Partisan. He stated that the southern revisionist must stand up for these beliefs “or else we’ll be taught that these people [confederate soldiers] were giving their lives, subscribing their sacred fortunes and their honor to some perverted agenda. No wonder the attorney general is endorsed by the John Birch Society. 

What’s Thomas thinking when he hears about Bush’s links to the southern apologists, such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), which has been referred to as the “Uptown Klu Klux Klan?” The CCC claimed that Dr. Martin Luther King was a communist. (This, of course didn’t keep Bush from appearing with Coretta Scott King on the day commemorating her husband to declare the great civil rights leader “an American hero.” Blacks constitute a valuable voting block and must be assiduously courted or disenfranchised, depending on how they are expected to vote at the polls.) 

Writers for the CCC have also stated that whites are superior to blacks in “intelligence, law abidingness, sexual restraint, [and] academic performance.” What of Bush’s refusal to take a stand on the flying of the Stars and Bars over government buildings, a flag which has extreme racial connotations for our nation’s blacks? 

What does Thomas think of Rep. Bob Barr and Trent Lott’s close association with the CCC? As Fairness and Accuracy in Media (FAIR) has pointed out, Barr was the keynote speaker at the Council’s national conference and was pictured in the group’s newsletter, Citizens Informer, addressing the Council’s board and posing with several CCC leaders. FAIR also notes that the Washington Times and the Village Voice have both reported that Sen. Lott is a longtime member and supporter of the organization. Jesse Helms has been a featured speaker. 

FAIR reports that the CCC website featured an essay titled “A Call to White Americans,” urging “fellow white Americans to look at the faces around you: Find the faces like yours and see them as your brothers and sisters. Find the fair-skinned babies and see them as your children.” Another section of their website featured a screed called “Our War” with one section entitled “The Values of the Traditional White South That Have Been Targeted for Destruction.” 

As a justice, was Thomas bothered when Bush refused to grant a pardon to a black inmate, Kevin Boyd, who had spent 12 years in prison and then was exonerated when DNA proved conclusively that he could not have been the rapist? 

What about the complaints by the NAACP when Bush was governor of Texas that his organization provided hardly any jobs for blacks on the construction and operation of the Texas Ranger stadium, which was paid for by the taxpayers? 

Does Thomas rally behind Bush’s efforts to appoint anti-civil rights judges? What of the Pickering nomination? As a law student, he had written articles in support of segregation. He intervened to try and reduce the sentence of a man who burned a cross on the lawn of a ‘mixed-marriage‘ couple and then fired shots into their house (never mind Pickering’s lackluster, mediocre career in jurisprudence with an impressive number of reversals to his credit). 

What about allegations that Chief Justice Reinquist, as a Republican operative in Arizona, challenged and harassed minorities at polling stations in an effort to intimidate them from voting? 

What does Thomas think of Dick Cheney, a man who opposed sanctions for South Africa because of their apartheid policies? He was against requesting the release of Nelson Mandela from prison. 

What does he think of Pat Buchanan’s racist screeds? In the 1996 primary, his campaign chair had to resign when his ties to white supremacists became known. What about reports of Ann Coulter’s anti-Semitism, her slurring of Mineta with overtones of prejudice against Asians, and her opinion that there should be racial profiling of “swarthy males?” 

Surely, Thomas must be aware that the Republican Party is the home of the former secretary of the interior, James Watt, an anti-environmentalist and mentor to Gale Norton. He once commented, “We have every kind of mix you can have. I have a black. I have a woman, two Jews and a cripple.”  

Then there’s Jeb Bush? Does it bother Thomas that when asked by a black women, when he was running for office, what he would do for Afro-Americans if elected, that his response was, “Probably nothing.” What about his efforts to dismantle affirmative action programs? By now, even the mainstream press is being forced to acknowledge that Jeb and Katherine Harris deliberately planned to disenfranchise black voters. According to books such as The Best Democracy Money Can Buy by Greg Palast, Michael Moore’s Stupid White Men, and Jews for Buchanan, black votes were suppressed by the use of faulty voting machines in predominantly black neighborhoods, the purging of innocent people wrongly accused of being felons, faulty ballots, the relocation of voting centers days before the election without announcement, police roadblocks near minority polls to intimidate and harass blacks, and the lack of computers for voter verification at the polls. 

What can Clarence Thomas think about the rampant racism that exists to this day in the Republican Party? Thomas’s political stance serves to deny that justice to other blacks. Having benefited from policies designed to ensure that, as a black, he would have certain advantages in gaining an education and a career to compensate for years of discrimination against his race, he would now end that benefit for other African-Americans. 

Blacks in the administration of George W. Bush give the cosmetic appearance of racial equality to the Republican Party and may sucker some minorities into voting for them, but to anyone who has paid attention to the policies of Dubya and his supporters, they know that they plan to turn back the quest for equality several decades.                                Z