Clarence Thomas: "Americans today are too sensitive about race"

Clarence Thomas, not being content as the supreme court's anti-Thurgood Marshall, has decided to add his two-cents (or nonsense) to the conversation regarding race in the United States.

Yes, the same Clarence Thomas who has barely uttered a syllable in over 20 years as a supreme court jurist wants to share his insight on the subject. The same man that utilized every affirmative action opportunity before comparing it to slavery

The same man that attends events sponsored by extreme right-wing and Birch Society influenced billionaire Koch brothers.

Clarence Thomas doesn’t talk — at least not during Supreme Court oral arguments. But a speech he appears to have given at an event hosted by the Koch brothers, the anti-Social Security, anti Clean Air Act, libertarian oil and paper magnates who have become key sponsors of tea party conservative groups  – and conflicting statements he gave about it — may soon cause him some headaches. source

Mr. Thomas on race:


 "Americans today are too sensitive about race, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas told a gathering of college students in Florida on Tuesday. Speaking at Palm Beach Atlantic University in West Palm Beach, Fla., Thomas, the second black justice to serve on the court, lamented what he considers a society that is more 'conscious' of racial differences than it was when he grew up in segregated Georgia in the days before — and during — the civil rights era.

 'My sadness is that we are probably today more race and difference-conscious than I was in the 1960s when I went to school. To my knowledge, I was the first black kid in Savannah, Georgia, to go to a white school. Rarely did the issue of race come up,' Thomas said during a chapel service hosted by the nondenominational Christian university.

'Now, name a day it doesn’t come up. Differences in race, differences in sex, somebody doesn’t look at you right, somebody says something. Everybody is sensitive. If I had been as sensitive as that in the 1960s, I’d still be in Savannah. Every person in this room has endured a slight. Every person. Somebody has said something that has hurt their feelings or did something to them — left them out.'

More From Thomas:

"The worst I have been treated was by northern liberal elites. The absolute worst I have ever been treated," he said. "The worst things that have been done to me, the worst things that have been said about me, by northern liberal elites, not by the people of Savannah, Georgia."

Now, I know he was talking because his mouth was moving. But I swear his sentiments seemed to channel a Robert E. Lee/Strom Thurmond/Jesse Helms type. The type that first romanticized the Antebellum south and latter the pre-civil rights Jim Crow south.

I'm not going to refute his northern experiences nor reject his contention that we all have dealt with some kind of abuse or discrimination (which alone should not deter our success). But Thomas -- forever toting water for his conservative benefactors -- has to know that just below the veneer of southern hospitality, historically, legal segregation (Jim Crow) or institutional racism locked blacks out of social, economic and political full participation.

In the myopic and narcissistic world of Clarence Thomas, he seems to suggest racial harmony or dissonance is predicated on how he is personally treated. Hence, if the white neo-confederates adopt him as their token, treat him good and provide him economic/career advancement they are good -- regardless on how the masses fair.

This personality trait or flaw has served him well and he continues to play his designated role.