In his much-noted recent address to the National Bar Association, Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas finally got proper revenge on the critics who call him a race traitor, rebuking them to their face with courage and judiciousness: "I have come here today," he said, "to assert my right to think for myself, to refuse to have my ideas assigned to me as though I am an intellectual slave because I'm black. I come to state that I'm a man, free to think for myself and do as I please. I've come to assert that I am a judge and I will not be consigned to the unquestioned opinions of others."
While there are other members of the court who regularly rule against racial preferences, Thomas noted, he is the one who's regularly excoriated for it. He is the only justice who is regularly, and insultingly, described by black and white liberals as not really thinking for himself, but rather "serving a particular political master," as the particularly poisonous Time columnist Jack E. White, put it.
Thomas's was a masterly performance; indeed, it is hard to recall any Supreme Court justice delivering such a memorable speech in recent years. That must be what provoked a hissy fit at the New York Times editorial page, which has remained notoriously and unthinkingly hostile to Thomas. "The issue is not his race, but the content of his ideas," the Times intoned. Oh? THE SCRAPBOOK would like to see all the editorials the Times has published seriously addressing Thomas's constitutional and jurisprudential arguments.
The Washington Post, on the other hand, was editorially gracious: "Justice Thomas has no duty to parrot the orthodoxies of affirmative action simply because he is black," allowed the Post editorialist, adding that "it is time for Justice Thomas's critics to engage him in a debate on the merits and flaws of his work, instead of on the specious question of whether he is an adequately authentic black justice." Indeed.
Thomas's reticence after his nomination ordeal, however understandable, has been unfortunate. It's just one more example of the enduring damage done to public discourse by Anita Hill, her media handmaidens, and the U.S. senators who did their bidding.