The Color of Hate

Have we reached peak irony?

A black Supreme Court justice does his part to undo two public policies born of and steeped in racism, and is rewarded with viciously racist attacks.

Clarence Thomas authored the NYSRPA v Bruen decision LINK, a ruling that overturned New York State's "may-issue" doctrine regarding gun concealed carry permits. The laws that codified that doctrine were the children of New York City's Sullivan Law, written in 1911 to deny Irish, Italian, and Jewish immigrants access to guns. And, as an added bonus, it kept guns out of black people's hands, then and to this day. As asserted in a sheaf of amicus briefs urging the Court to rule for gun rights in Bruen, New York's laws were, in practice and outcome, discriminatory against minorities. New York was not alone in this behavior - the history of gun control is a history of racism, and a black woman recently presented the discomfort Californians of today are exhibiting at the thought of more black citizens carrying guns.

Clarence Thomas was one of six Justices to vote to overturn Roe v Wade. One of six, on a nine person Court. He could have voted the other way, and the Dobbs decision could still have emerged as it did. Yet he, more than Barrett, more than Gorsuch, more than Kavanaugh, more than Roberts, and more than Alito, who authored the opinion, has been the focus of leftist ire and their freely-proffered racist epithets.

Samuel L. Jackson, who really should know better after portraying a "house slave" character in Django Unchained, took to social media to call Thomas "Uncle Clarence."

Samuel L. Jackson @SamuelLJackson

How’s Uncle Clarence feeling about Overturning Loving v Virginia??!!

Then there's the "n-word." Years, perhaps decades, of relentless condemnation has established, culturally, that there is no circumstance wherein a white person may utter the word. Not in context, not referentially, not in quotation. It's so taboo that Huckleberry Finn has been "cancelled" from culture and history. Advocates of this de facto ban of the word routinely allege that conservatives who object to the prohibition merely want to sneak the word into conversations because they like the word.

Now, however, we find out there's an exception. White people are freely calling Clarence Thomas that epithet. Not in context, or referentially, or in quotation, but with full racist intent, and black people are giving them a free pass.

All for what? Adhering to the plain language of the Constitution in removing infringements to rights protected by the Second Amendment? Returning the matter of abortion to the voters - to the "democracy" that the Left screams has been undone by the Dobbs decision?

Here is where the other racist shoe drops. Margaret Sanger, progressive icon and founder of Planned Parenthood, was a racist and a eugenicist.

Birth control itself, often denounced as a violation of natural law, is nothing more or less that the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit of preventing the birth of defective or of those who will become defectives.

Abortion has been seen by some on the Left as a means of population control for decades (often cloaked as "who's going to take care of all these babies"), and we bear witness to a highly disproportionate rate of abortion in the black community (13% of the population, 35% of abortions). 62% of Planned Parenthood abortion clinics are located in black neighborhoods.

Thomas didn't vote to ban abortion. Neither did the other five Justices who voted to overturn Roe. All they did was say 'Abortion isn't in the Constitution, so it's up to lawmakers, not the Court, to make laws about it.'

The Court isn't supposed to write laws. It's supposed to determine if laws conform to the Constitution. It is quite telling that the dissent to Thomas's Bruen opinion is heavy on statistics and other "guns are bad, mmkay" handwaving and light on actual Constitutional permission for governments to arbitrarily restrict citizens' Second Amendment rights. It is also widely accepted by those who actually pay attention to the law that Roe was legislating from the bench, not Constitutional jurisprudence.

None of this matters to the pro-choice sky-screamers whose true colors are shining through. Thomas, despite being only the second black Justice ever to sit on the Court, is not celebrated by the leaders of the black community as an admirable icon and and role model. Instead, he is denounced and denigrated, in the worst possible ways, with language that we've been told is never OK.

Why?

It's clear that Thomas's transgression, his "ultimate sin," is that he dared stray off the plantation. His political philosophy doesn't align with the progressive narrative or the policies that the self-appointed Best-and-Brightest have decreed are good for blacks and therefore must be dogmatically supported. It used to be identity-based advocacy groups celebrated the achievements of blacks or women or gays or what have you no matter their politics. No more. Now, if one dares deviate from the required viewpoints, one is a traitor who deserves especial and extreme condemnation.

The irony of calling him ‘Uncle Clarence’ and a ‘n#####” in the face of all this is immeasurable. The hatred for a man who, in both his life and the sharpness of his legal mind, should be celebrated as a black icon and a great American overall, is as disheartening as it is telling.

---

If you enjoy The Roots of Liberty, please subscribe (if you have already, thank you!), and  please recommend the blog to your friends! While I share it as much as I can on social media, subscribing ensures you won't miss a post.

If you really like The Roots of Liberty and want to help keep it rolling, please consider becoming a paying subscriber here at Substack, or at a lighter level as contributor to the blog via Patreon.

Thank you for your support!

Yours in liberty,

Peter.