The Clarence Thomas myth that refuses to die

If there is going to be a reevaluation of one of the most powerful black figures in the US, it’s time we ground it in facts, not myths.

Yet many white conservatives keep recycling the same selective stories about Thomas. These stories don’t just distort black culture — they carry an undercurrent of racism.

He’s not the only black leader who talks about self-reliance

Start with the way conservatives celebrate Thomas’ upbringing.

But the way some white conservatives tell the story of Thomas’ rise from poverty also perpetuates racist stereotypes. They imply that Thomas and his hard working, no excuses grandfather are unusual characters in the black community. They depict Thomas as this lonely apostle of self-reliance, as if most black people prefer sitting on the couch drinking Kool-Aid while waiting for the government to send them a check.

Thomas’ stern grandfather is a familiar figure in the black community. Plenty of black people can tell you stories of grandparents, pastors, teachers, and coaches who all preached the same message: Rely on yourself, because you can’t rely on white people.

It’s almost impossible to find a revered black leader who didn’t preach some form of this message.

He cast an ‘atrocious’ vote against black America

There’s something else many white conservatives miss: The contradiction between Thomas’ words and actions.

“His entire career is a result of thrusts for diversity that he would deny in others,” Lawrence Goldstone, author of “On Account of Race: The Supreme Court, White Supremacy, and the Ravaging of African American Voting Rights,” told me.

“How many highly talented black or Hispanic kids are out there who could really make a difference if only the starting line was staggered to take into account how much baggage they’re carrying.”

“A large portion, if not the majority, of black women over time began to think that Clarence Thomas may have in fact lied and that he almost certainly did,” says Ravi Perry, chair of the political science department at Howard University.

But it’s Thomas’ voting record that has cemented the cynicism many blacks feel toward him.

“It is atrocious, right alongside such judicial delinquencies as Plessy v. Ferguson, Giles v. Harris, and Korematsu v. United States,” Kennedy wrote. “Yet here is Thomas providing a crucial vote to cripple legislation for which the proponents of racial justice marched, bled, and in some instances died.”

He has a bleak vision of integration

You won’t hear many white conservatives address these deeper questions that many black people have about Thomas. Why is that?

I have a theory. It’s part of what I call the Clarence Thomas con — a way to divert people’s attention away from the more unpleasant aspects of Thomas’ legacy.

It’s far easier to mislead the public about the true nature of Thomas’ isolation in the black community than to defend accusations that his judicial decisions harm black people and other marginalized groups. Or to deny charges that his opposition to affirmative action is “at war with his own biography.”

Focusing on Thomas’ biography also takes away attention from his pessimistic views about integration and some white Americans.

One of the reasons why The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech still captivates people is because he portrayed a future America where whites and blacks would “be able to sit down at a table of brotherhood.”

It’s a beautiful vision of an integrated America for which countless people literally died. But I wonder if many people understand Thomas’ bleak view of racial progress.

He is a persistent critic of integration. He once said, “The whole push to assimilate simply does not make sense to me.”

He’s also skeptical about white America’s ability to see past skin color.

He once told a black reporter: “There is nothing you can do to get past black skin. I don’t care how educated you are, how good you are at what you do — you’ll never have the same contacts or opportunities, you’ll never be seen as equal to whites.”

Thomas believes that “white supremacy is ineradicable in America,” says Corey Robin, author of “The Enigma of Clarence Thomas,” a new biography that has earned widespread praise. “Thomas does not believe that politics in any sense of that term — electoral politics, social movements, state action and regulation, organizing, even more radical notions of transformative change — can positively affect black people; he thinks politics mostly hurts black people.”

Thomas’ skepticism about integration, though, is not rare in the black community. It’s not uncommon to hear black people say in private that integration hurt them in some ways because their children were put into schools with white teachers who didn’t believe in them, and their institutions were weakened.

“I don’t see how the civil-rights people today can claim Malcolm X as one of their own. Where does he say black people should go begging the Labor Department for jobs? He was hell on integrationists. Where does he say you should sacrifice your institutions to be next to white people?

He forgets his history

Here is where Thomas loses many black people.

He laments what black people lost due to integration. He praises black individuals like his grandfather who were able to build their own businesses and live with dignity despite segregation. Individual excellence seems to be his solution for racism.

But here’s the not-so-big secret of segregation that people like Thomas never mention: “Separate but equal” never gave blacks anything that was actually equal. They could never get the same economic resources or political power under the “separate but equal” world of Jim Crow.

Individual black excellence was never enough. Black people had to mobilize as a group to demand political power before life got better.

If other black leaders had adopted Thomas’ belief that they could never get past their dark skin, or that the individual approach was better, there would have been no “Brown vs. Board of Education,” no “I Have a Dream,” and no Obama.

There would have been no Thomas on the Supreme Court.

He tells powerful white people what they want to hear

Then there is another part of Thomas’ persona that alienates some black people. White conservatives often portray him as a courageous truth-teller because he tells black people what they don’t want to hear.

Here’s another truth they ignore: It doesn’t take a lot of courage for a black person to tell powerful white people want they want to hear. In fact, they get plenty of rewards for doing so.

I know this from a personal experience.

I was a rookie reporter at a Southern newspaper when Thomas was nominated to the US Supreme Court in 1991. I was criticized by several black journalists after I wrote an essay defending Thomas. One famous black journalist called me a “house n*****.”

I said then what I believe now: There is no one way to be black any more than there is one way to be white. Respect Thomas’ decision to be an independent thinker.

After my essay was published, a new world opened before me. A conservative white editor at the paper took me out to lunch and invited me to become an editorial columnist even though I was barely out of college. Interview requests poured in. I was invited to speak on national television. People thought I was a black conservative.

I’ve seen this pattern over and over: If you’re a black journalist who wants to lecture black people about not whining about racism and playing the victim, your career will blossom. Conservative institutions it seems will always find a place for black-on-black critics.

Toobin caps the story by saying:

“On this night, in other words, Thomas, while celebrating the courage to speak unpopular truths, was telling some of the most powerful people in the worlds of government, business, and finance precisely what they wanted to hear—that affirmative action was bad, that black people didn’t want or need their help, that government did more harm than good.”

“If you’re a black person who rises to a high level in politics or law, many folks in the black community expect you to use that position to better the living conditions of people who look like you or at the very least speak truth to power,” says Perry of Howard University. “Clarence Thomas has done neither.”

Yet his stature will probably grow as the Supreme Court’s new conservative majority asserts itself. We will continue to hear stories about Thomas’ work ethic, his stern grandfather, the price he paid for telling black people to stand on their own.

These stories, though, are decoys that lead people away from a richer discussion of Thomas’ legacy — his impressive rise from poverty, yes, but also his contradictions, his scorn for integration, his belief that “There is nothing you can do to get past black skin.”

Don’t fall for the Clarence Thomas con.