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Clarence Thomas Says His African-American History Museum Exhibit Is Wrong, Doesn't Want To Talk About It

I'm willing to talk about why Thomas hates affirmative-action, even if he's not.

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Justice Clarence Thomas

When the National Museum of African American History and Culture opened, some people thought there was a glaring omission. Clarence Thomas, only the second African-American to serve on the Supreme Court, did not have a spot.

On the one hand, sure, he’s black. And on the Supreme Court.

On the other hand, it’s not called the National Museum of Self-Loathing and Antipathy Towards Racial Justice.

Whatever, movement conservatives complained, and a year after the museum opened, it included an exhibit to Justice Thomas and Justice Thurgood Marshall.

That was two years ago. Last week, for I believe the first time, Thomas weighed in on his honor:

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Oh, you want to talk about why Clarence Thomas is against affirmative action, which is only the most successful social program to address racial injustice ever implemented? You want to talk about why Justice Thomas, a beneficiary of affirmative action, has come to hate the program?

Fine, let’s talk about that. Because his views have little to do with any sound reading of the Constitutionally permissible use of race as one factor among many to consider in college admissions. Instead, they have everything to with Thomas being a bitter little man who has never gotten over personal mistreatment and indignities he suffered over his career.

While at Yale Law School, Thomas was treated, by white people, as an affirmative-action admit. Instead of respecting his intellect and talents, he felt other students dismissed him as needing special help to get into school. I understand how annoying this is, as it happened to me. It happens to EVERY black person. No matter where you go or what you do in this country, there’s always a white man waiting for you who thinks you’re dumb.

MOST black people learn that the problem is not them, but the white people. Most black people figure out that some white people will always diminish their accomplishments, no matter what, and learn to keep on stepping. Thomas never did. Instead of rejecting the white people who stereotyped him, he’s spent his career seeking to join them. Thomas blames affirmative action for confusing these white people into thinking he’s less than, and imagines a world where every white person respects a black person for their accomplishments. Somehow he’s twisted affirmative action into part of the problem.

In reality, affirmative action has been the thing that forces white people to interact with black and brown people, and helps some of them learn through exposure that a person’s color has nothing to do with their brainpower.

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And that’s the charitable way of explaining Clarence Thomas’s views. If you wanted to be more unkind, you’d point out that Thomas is the classic example of a person who climbs a ladder into a treehouse, then quickly pulls the ladder up behind him, preventing others from scaling those heights. Thomas is obsessed with proving, to white people, that he is where he is on his own “merits,” without any “help,” that he assumes that all other black people would also benefit from receiving no assistance in fighting against racism and injustice. The “meritocracy” argument might be compelling to those who are too addled to remember that we’re not actually living in a meritocracy. Especially when it comes to admissions, people get all sorts of help. There are legacies and there are networking advantages. And sometimes your mom writes an entire op-ed to help you get a Supreme Court clerkship and it works.

Now, I’ll give Thomas points for intellectual consistency here: he seems to hate legacy admissions just as much as he hates affirmative action. But the problem is that neither he nor his conservative cabal makes any attempt to end the practice of legacy admissions, or all the other “side doors” into college that disproportionately benefit white students and rich students. It’s only affirmative action — it’s only the program that does NOT directly benefit white people — that Thomas places under constant legal attack.

So, yes, the African-American History Museum does not do justice to the petty and damaged reasons Clarence Thomas is against affirmative action. But something tells me he doesn’t want all of his psychological dirty laundry hanging on his plaque for all to see. Maybe we should just change the entry to “Clarence Thomas is opposed to affirmative action, because white boys at Yale never hugged him,” and leave it at that.

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and a contributor at The Nation. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

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