Amul Thapar, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and the son of Indian immigrants, wants to show that Clarence Thomas is not alone in his views or somehow a fluke, a mistake, or an aberration as a minority jurist. In other words, Thapar wants to make clear that Thomas’s relationship with the American community of color is not defined solely by the people who hate him.
I decided that I wanted to write a commentary that focused on Black conservatives. One reason for this was obvious: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is one of the most famous (or infamous, take your pick) Black conservatives in the country. I was certain that if the court overturned college admissions affirmative action, Thomas would write the majority decision or a lengthy concurrence. He did the latter.
One may reasonably disagree with the views of Black people who attended the recent Old Parkland Conference this month in Dallas. But it is the height of intellectual, cultural, and political dishonesty and irresponsibility to call these people Uncle Toms or sellouts. They can only be understood as part of a Black tradition of thought, the rise of new ideological descendants of Booker T. Washington.