Well, the great Supreme Court justice is actually just sort of wrong. He was speaking in the past tense when he said that “The worst I have been treated was by northern liberal elites. The absolute worst I have ever been treated,” Thomas said at Palm Beach Atlantic University in Florida. “The worst things that have been done to me, the worst things that have been said about me, by northern liberal elites . . .” One could infer from the rest of his remarks that he thinks his experience is nearly universal, in that white liberal elites treat black people, especially conservative blacks, worse than the majority of southern whites do or maybe even did. And he may well be right. As Justice Thomas is quite literally the single living American I respect the most (aside from my own family, of course), I am inclined always to think his words are wise.
But I submit that the worst treatment of black people who think for themselves comes not from southern rednecks or northern liberal Chablis drinkers, but from . . . racist Southern blacks.
Just a little while ago, on the floor of the Alabama House of Representatives, the black longtime state representative Alvin Holmes explained why he so dislikes Clarence Thomas: because “he’s married to a white woman.”
Question for MSNBC, re the Cheerios ad: Now just who is it again who objects to biracial families?