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What African American Supreme Court Justice?
It turns out the new National Museum of African American History and Culture determined the second African American Justice on the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas, considered to be one of the greatest jurists of our time, has made no contributions worthy of note.
Well, he did get away with sexually harassing Anita Hill because an all-white-male Senate committee didn’t care much about the rights of a professional black woman. His life experience overcoming racial discrimination in coastal Georgia and throughout his life is certainly not worthy of retelling.
I’m not sure how this happened and why there isn’t more pressure to fix this glaring bias. It sends the message that blacks hold a variety of left-wing ideas and there’s no need to pay attention to those unconventional radicals. I seriously think there ought to be a petition to get this rectified and would be willing to give it my support. I can’t put up with this crap.
I wonder if they have anything on Shelby Steele, Thomas Sowell, Walter E Williams. . .
Thomas isn’t black for the same reason Condoleezza Rice isn’t and Ms Rice isn’t a woman for the same reason Bruce Jenner is.
Your betters have decided. And you and your children and mine will eat that crap sandwich forever and like it.
I’m thinking of starting a petition drive to shed some light on the issue. We’ll see what the museum says if they respond to requests for comment on the issue.
If the only black people who achieve anything are stereotypical liberals, then the liberals can secretly ascribe the success to liberalism. You’d think that blacks could achieve in any field or arena (in fact, that’s precisely what Clarence Thomas proves), but apparently this museum doesn’t think blacks can achieve anything unless they stay close to lily-white liberalism.
Good idea, Bereket. Start your petition, post a link, and we’ll sign it and recruit more signers. Every single Ricochet member? Make it a contest.
On the bright side, if the Smithsonian African-American museum is as boring as the Smithsonian American Indian museum was, nobody will really be paying that much attention anyway.
The hideous architecture will probably scare off a fair number of people. What were they thinking? I’m curious about what’s inside, but the outside . . .
I think I’ll do a post on my own blog about this issue.
For the museum, that’s a feature not a bug.
I live 25 miles from them both, and I have yet to make time for a visit, cannot image why, Strange.
Sometime since the 70s, museums decided they had to have a point of view. In my experience, they have all deteriorated, except for car and motorcycle museums.
One part of me thinks we should count ourselves lucky if they included Frederick Douglas in the exhibits, the way Civil Rights is taught these days.
Quixotic though it may be, draw up the petition. I’ll sign it.
That is really awful, Bereket. I will definitely sign any petition you bring forth, and maybe make objections in person when I’m in DC in the spring.
I wrote this about the question when it comes to black law enforcement. Oh, it bodes ill.
What are these people thinking?!?!
Is there any organization which identifies by race that’s worth heeding?
If such a group did include Thomas, his inclusion would not move the museum as a whole toward truth and justice. It would remain a poisonous experience.
Let them keep their temple to progressivism. Promote alternative museums and groups.
Bereket,
Would Frederick Douglas be happy with the museum or would he consider it banal even an embarrassment?
Regards,
Jim
Haven’t been to D.C. since childhood. As I remember it, there was the Air and Space Museum, and all the other ones were boring and not really memorable.
Does this same reasoning keep Douglass and King out of the museum as well?
I seem to recall reading somewhere that the downtown Air & Space museum has the most traffic of all of the other museums located on the mall, and about 25% of the annual visits to all of the museums. American and Natural Histories are also very popular, the rest meh…
And shame on me because I have yet to get out to Udvar-Hazy Air & Space museum, because I so loath the traffic on that side of the beltway. But I have been assured that it is fabulous.
It is worth the trip. Well worth it.
Apparently someone used Minecraft to design an African-American museum to look like a box cut afro. And if that’s what you see, you’re a racist.
Please link to it here.
I am often so sad for Justice Thomas- his scurrilous treatment from the left must cut him deeply.
Is Condi represented there?
Clinton will guarantee only one Black viewpoint forever, Hers. It’s over when she gets in so enjoy three months of petitioning.
Me, too. I’ll see if I can get the DC Young Republicans, and DC Republican National Lawyers Association people to support it, too.
When you do, be sure to object to their failure to include Charles Curtis, the first formal Senate Majority Leader, Hoover’s VP, one of the chief figures behind the US keeping out of the League of Nations, behind Native American citizenship, behind the pause in immigration, and a host of other critical actions. His story is more than a little like that of Justice Thomas’s, and appears to be excluded from the American Indian Museum on essentially the same basis.
I would like to work with someone who could be the point of the spear for this effort in DC. This could require someone to talk with the press and possibly deliver the petitions to the Smithsonian.
Not to exaggerate or be overly dramatic, but this situation reminds me of a hymn Rev. King once quoted- ‘Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne.’
In the long term I think Clarence Thomas will be vindicated.
I don’t believe she is represented but I can’t say for sure. She certainly deserves to be.
It looks like scaffolding to me. I wasn’t impressed.