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books: Reading between the lines.

The Bonds of RaceWho is, and isn't, a sellout?

By Alan Wolfe
Posted Sunday, Jan. 20, 2008, at 7:15 AM ET

(Continued from page 1)

Count me unpersuaded. If we follow Kennedy's advice and judge each case on its merits, Clarence Thomas' critics may have engaged in rhetorical overkill, but they were right to accuse Thomas of selling out. To understand why, we have to rely on the one aspect of the phenomenon to which Kennedy pays insufficient attention: its psychology. For the more responsible of Thomas' critics, the issue was not what Clarence Thomas thought but why he thought the way he did. Thomas not only allied himself with a party and a movement that had never shown much support for racial equality, but he did so in a way bound to make enemies of those who made the struggle for racial justice their main priority.

Any group, but especially a group viewed as stigmatized by others, does not just rely on the threat of coercion to police itself. It also uses guilt, reinforcement, catharsis, and a variety of other psychological mechanisms to reinforce belonging. Because membership in the group plays such an important role in constructing an individual's identity, any decision to reject the group will be weighted with emotional significance. It takes unusual courage to break with such a group. But it also leaves scars.

Clarence Thomas did not leave what might be called the Civil Rights establishment quietly. There was—it seems there had to be—ritualistic condemnation and charges of betrayal, the kind of emotional turbulence associated with Whittaker Chambers leaving the Communist Party or Ayaan Hirsi Ali denouncing Islam. Clarence Thomas was, and is, an angry man. He took on the Civil Rights establishment, he believes, and the whole world is against him.

Unlike Kennedy, I believe it to be fair to accuse someone who was put on the Supreme Court because of his race, but who then votes against policies designed to help others of his race get a leg up, of being a sellout. Actions in these matters count more than words, and whatever words Thomas might express in support of the cause of racial justice, his actions will result in greater racial inequality. But the real problem with Thomas is not just that he sold out. It is that he lashed out. As Kennedy rightly points out, Thomas did not merely disagree with university officials who claimed that affirmative action helps achieve the educational goal of diversity; he charged them with willful deceit and hypocrisy. The whole process of being a race man yet dissing his race left Thomas too volatile to be gracious, let alone be an effective judge. We might want such a person to be the hero of a novel or the subject of a major motion picture. We should not want such a man on the U.S. Supreme Court.

To compound the problem, Thomas then sold out again—this time in reverse. Having broken with his race, he charged his critics with trying to lynch him. His conservative supporters were delighted, for his emotional outburst all but guaranteed his confirmation. They failed to realize that in appealing to the most primal of racial emotions, Thomas had sold them out as well. People about to be lynched are not in the best position to argue, as conservatives are wont to do, that race should no longer matter.

The Thomas case, far from serving as an example of illegitimate charges of selling out, should have led Kennedy to reformulate his ideas about race in general. Kennedy is right that we should view race as an option. But he pays insufficient attention to the fact that some options are much more difficult to exercise than others. Just because someone should be free to resign from his or her race does not guarantee that the person who does so will leave all traces of race behind. The great irony of l'affaire Thomas was that it took the appointment of a man who sold out his race to prove just how tightly the ties of race still bind.

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Randall Kennedy participated in a dialogue about race in America with Stephen Thernstrom in 1997. Dahlia Lithwick examined why Clarence Thomas does not think he and his fellow justices should engage with the attorneys during oral arguments. She also argued that his autobiography gave an insightful portrait of a man who often renders decisions with little nuance. Ray Fisman dissected the validity of Bill Cosby's statements on African-American spending patterns.

Alan Wolfe, professor and director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College, is the author most recently of Does American Democracy Still Work?

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Remarks from the Fray:

Did he rely on affirmative action to get ahead? Were his qualifications for college and law school indeed below the standard for admission?

Did he pull the ladder up after him? I don't see it. Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice were advanced just as he was, so I don't see how any of the opportunities he enjoyed were removed from others.

Nor do his conservative political views condemn others of his race to lives of poverty and desperation. They have plenty of ways to raise their standard of living. The only thing conservative politics has taken away from blacks is the opportunity to be paid with a life of leisure in exchange for agreeing to remain at the bottom without upward progress (the requirement to continue receiving Welfare payments). Blacks are still free to make use of the public library and cheap paperback books to educate themselves, to attend private colleges that admit high-scoring students regardless of financial need, to learn trades, to open Mom & Pop grocery stores, etc., etc.

Does he do the White Man's bidding? Ted Kennedy is a white man, and Thomas most certainly doesn't do his bidding!

So, basically, the accusations against Clarence Thomas are vile lies which, to the extent that they are not ignored, should be resented and condemned.

If whites can disagree about the advantages and disadvantages of socialism and free enterprise, then so can black people, and it is presumptuous and patronizing of black people to suggest otherwise..

--fsilber

(To reply, click here.)

It isn't necessarily a racist argument to say that someone owes something to a group of people defined, in shorthand, by their race or ethnicity. Think of an election where the winning candidate was supported disproportionately by people falling under any (leaky) ethnic term umbrella.

But to say someone owes something to a race is another thing. It's really saying that, if someone else can file you under a certain racial classification, then you must behave as dictated by some (elected? rich and famous? vindictive?) spokesperson for that race.

And such a claim refutes the diversity of thoughts and values (the most relevant form of diversity) that strengthen society and its overlapping sub-groups.

Within each claim that one must display certain opinions or betray their race there is an arrow pointed to a gulag, a killing field, a gas chamber.

--pcorning

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