Clarence Thomas, Justice, SCOTUS, Supreme Court

Clarence Thomas, And All The Other Heroes Unfairly Excluded From The African-American History Museum

A comprehensive list of people excluded from the African-American History and Culture Museum.

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(AP Photo/Susan Walsh, Pool)

(AP Photo/Susan Walsh, Pool)

The National Museum of African American History is now open, and the early reports are that it is fantastic.

But it’s not perfect. The Daily Caller — a publication known throughout the African-American community for its steadfast commitment to civil rights and racial justice — points out that there is a glaring omission from our new, national repository of African-American history and culture. I’ll let them explain:

Justice Clarence Thomas, the second black man to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, is practically absent from the new National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Anita Hill, the woman who accused Thomas of sexual harassment, however, is given prominent billing in the museum.

The new Smithsonian, which opened in September, gives Hill pride of place in an exhibit on blacks in the 1990s. The exhibit features testimonies trumpeting her courage and the surge of women’s activism that ensued, while making only peripheral reference to the nation’s second black Supreme Court justice.

There is no showcase of Thomas’s own life and career, which ran its own harsh gauntlet of racial discrimination.

First of all: that is expert level trolling of Clarence Thomas with the Anita Hill exhibit.

But sure, Clarence Thomas is black and only the second African-American on the Supreme Court. He has certainly had a hand in… shaping the black experience in America. While I might disagree with his politics, there are others, like Thomas, who have played a part in the African-American experience, that the Museum overlooks. What follows is a comprehensive list. #NeverForget.

* John C. Calhoun: Where would black people be without the firebrand Senator from South Carolina? Probably stuck in some kind of Lincolnian nightmare where slavery was contained but alive in the South. But Calhoun fought tirelessly for Southern secession. Without Calhoun, the South might have never rebelled, and W.T. Sherman might never have had the excuse to stick his boot so far up Atlanta’s ass that it still smolders.

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* Brigham Young: Without Brigham Young, more black people might live in Utah. And Utah is a boring conglomeration of frozen mountains surrounding a big lake you can’t drink out of. Brigham Young did black people a huge favor by calling black skin “The Mark of Cain” and excluding us from his cult. His contributions should be recognized.

* Mike Tyson: I did a search on the Museum’s website and it showed no records for Mike Tyson. IRON MIKE. What a gigantic oversight. Nobody was a better symbol for the palpable fear America has for black masculinity than Mike Tyson. White people didn’t want to mess with him, black women really didn’t want to mess with him, but he’s nice now because he has pigeon coops in Brooklyn. You simply can’t talk about great African-American achievements in sportsmanship without a tasteful display of Evander Holyfield’s ear lobe.

* Richard Sander: Like Clarence Thomas, you might not agree with his politics. But who has done more to warn African-Americans about the dangers of going to a good college than Richard Sander? It was his mismatch theory, after all, that was quoted during Supreme Court oral arguments as a reason to oppose affirmative action. There are few who are willing to speak “hard truths” to the black community, but Sander’s tireless efforts to tell blacks that they are too stupid to benefit from advanced education, even if they want to try, deserves its own special place in any historical telling of the African-American life in America.

* Suge Knight: He’s freed more black people from white recording contracts than Moses.

* Donald Trump: If Clarence Thomas is going to get in, then I think we need to waive the five-year waiting period on Donald Trump. This guy, this African-American hero, valiantly forced President Barack Obama to release his birth certificate, thereby legitimizing his presidency far more than being voted into office (twice) ever could have. And like all heroes, he did it with much fanfare and over the objection of nearly every decent human being. How many times did Trump have to endure insults like, “You’re a racist colonoscopy bag,” or “You’re the bigoted scum that collects inside of a septic tank.” And yet, Trump persevered.

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We might not even have a museum to African-American history without people like Trump constantly willing to prove why it’s so very necessary.

Clarence Thomas Is Conspicuously Absent In The New Black History Smithsonian [Daily Caller]

Elie Mystal is an editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. That post felt good, but I guess I should turn my sarcasm to the off position before I get home.

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