Internalized Racism

The response of the “dissed” (disadvantaged) to physical, institutional, and psychological racism when they categorize and value themselves and their own people by how closely they identify with compare to and/or approximate their perpetrator in his “white value system” and “diss” (disrespect) those who do not.

Clarence Thomas

            Clarence Thomas, the name alone, has become a standard for the Black community to use in criticizing any one of its own as a sellout, an Uncle Tom’s, etc. The Black community is able to do so because Clarence Thomas has selectively chosen to remove himself from his Black roots, values and sensibilities.

BIO:

            Clarence Thomas was born in Pin Point Georgia, a small predominantly Black community founded by “Freedmen” (freed slaves) after the Civil War. His father was a farmer and his mother a domestic. His great grand-parents had been slaves. As a young child after his father left the family and his mother couldn’t support him and his brother they were sent to live with his Mother’s parents in Savannah, Georgia where he lived until maturity. He praises the lessons of hard work, persistence and self -sufficiency learned from his grandfather.

Clarence Thomas attended highs school as the only Black student, attended St. John’s Vianney’s Seminary and later transferred to the College of Holy Cross in Massachusetts where he received his B.A. degree as an honor student. At the College of Holy Cross he formed the Black Student Union and was active in civil rights issues for Black students. He entered Yale Law School upon graduation from the College of Holy Cross where he received his Juris Doctor Degree in Law.

Clarence Thomas, when applying for internships and work as an attorney, was confronted with a lack of respect for himself and his Yale Law degree. He attributes this to his accomplishment being considered a “gift” of Affirmative Action and not due to his scholarly attributes by the firms interviewing him. He describes himself as a “victim” of civil rights legislation.

BIO:

In 1987 Clarence Thomas married Virginia Lamp, a white woman born in Nebraska to upper middle class well connected Republican parents. Virginia attended Creighton University, a Jesuit school, and received both her B.A. in Political Science and Business and her Juris Doctor in Law.

Virginia Lamp was employed by the United States Chamber of Commerce where she attended congressional hearings and argued AGAINST the passage of the Family and Medical Leave Act that provided “leave” to employees to care for a newborn child and/or suffering from a serious illness. While working with the United States Department of Labor she argued AGAINST comparable-worth legislation that would promote equal pay for men and women doing comparable work. She now organizes conservative activists to “protect the core founding principles” of the nation through her 501© Liberty Central lobbying group.

So how does a poor Black boy raised in Georgia by his grandparents, attend school as the only Black student, completes a college degree with honors, while becoming the founder of the Black Student Union, and receives a Law degree from an Ivy League school, Yale, and become “Clarence Thomas,” a traitor to the Black community? How does Clarence Thomas, the new, 21^st century “Uncle Tom” caricature “diss” his parents, his great-grandparents, and his grand-parents by complying with his wife’s philosophies of “core founding principles” of the Constitution that exclude the Constitutional amendments, # 13, 14,and 15 regarding slavery and #19, regarding women’s suffrage, with his family’s history?

Clarence Thomas has distanced himself from everything “Black” that could suggest that he is somehow “less” because he is Black. He is unable to take pride in his accomplishments achieved as a Black man, the  assets, talents and skills given to him by his African ancestry and acquired values from his Black family and instead views his accomplishments as “in spite of” being a Black man. He, in this mind set, disavows/rejects the values, attitudes sensibilities of the Black community as being “inferior” and his self-hate allows him to critically condemn them and support legislation that threatens their viability because he is now “better” than that. He is ‘White.”

Clarence Thomas is one of the most conservative justices on the Supreme Court. Clarence Thomas is a coward who epitomizes the adage “if you can’t beat them, join them.” Clarence Thomas aspires to be the “whitest” justice on the Supreme Court. Clarence Thomas is an embarrassment to himself.

Clarence Thomas is a victim of Internalized Racism.

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