(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



Uncle Clarence? [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-06-30

As a black man well over the age of consent, I grew up in an enlightened era that redefined the internal struggles and descriptive narratives that condemned my people to destructive and indivisible thinking. Phrases like good hair—describing black people with hair closer to the texture of white people was a psychologically degrading term for those like me learning to love our naps and kinks, and Uncle Tom condemning my people to monolithic thinking. The moniker Uncle Tom was reserved for the worst of the worst, at least in the opinion of people like me, as part of the first generation of recipients of the civil rights era. Like most things in life, labels and stereotypes stick like tar. I remember having friends who would say, How dare Sammy Davis Jr., a self-proclaimed Democrat, vote for and hug Richard Nixon. Even the Godfather of Soul, James Brown, took his lumps for daring to accept an invitation to Nixon’s Inaugural (ironically, he performed "Say It Loud— I’m Black and I’m Proud"), which we saw as his camel-walking the fine line of his black identity. Even sports legends Jesse Owens and Jackie Robinson were whispered about for being old-fashioned Republicans.

He knows better and should do better…

I did then, and I still get a knot in my stomach when a person's blackness is questioned. The weight of being called an Uncle Tom was a heavy axe wielded too recklessly by too many people. I have prided myself over the years for practicing restraint and recoiled at the load those who carried the burden of those two words throughout the 40s and 50s, especially. I am still loath to restore any dignity to the poisonous phrase. On Friday of last week, a black man moved to extract further some of the last remaining teeth of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Almost like a cruel joke, his last name is Thomas. The Supreme Court was ready to table any voting rights rulings for the season until Associate Justice Clarence Thomas spoke up. The Justice used his privilege to dissent against tabling arguments that would remove Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the part of the law that assures fair representation of minority voters in congressional, state, and local redistricting. Thomas’s opposition stems from the case of Louisiana v. Callais over redistricting maps. Judge Thomas is anxious to continue the dismantling of voting rights for minorities to go along with his previous votes to remove sections 3 and 5.

Thomas, a longtime opponent of key landmark components of civil rights legislation, now says that Section 3 conflicts with the 14th Amendment. Ironically, the 14th Amendment grants all citizens (black Americans) equal rights and protection under the law. The whiplash from Thomas and his seeming self-loathing is akin to a high-tech lynching—he once complained about—or, dangling like Strange Fruit. I lived through years of the first black Associate Justice, Thurgood Marshall, who understood not only his loyalty to the court but also his loyalty to the advancement of black Americans' fight for equity. The latest of the three black Justices in the history of this nation is also a woman, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Her fiery dissents against some of the recent rulings of the conservative court should give us all hope.

I mentioned earlier that ad hominem attacks are rife with inaccuracies and generalities. Having seen Thurgood Marshall lead the legal fights to desegregate schools in the years before he was appointed to the Supreme Court, and his successor on the Court fighting actively to return black America to the 50s, leaves me with little choice but to lend credence to a term I have long despised, Uncle Tom.

Your Vote is Still Your Voice

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/6/30/2330892/-Uncle-Clarence?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/