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Clarence Thomas, Liberal Racism, and the Ongoing Denigration of Black Conservatives

Presidential candidate Joe Biden stirred up controversy during the 2020 campaign, when, in an interview with a black radio host, he said: “If you have a problem figuring out if you’re for me or Trump, you ain’t black.”

Biden got pushback on this, but he captured a pretty common view among liberals: that liberalism is genetically emblazoned in black DNA.

They see blacks who are not liberal as not normal, not really black.

As a black woman and a conservative for many years, I can testify to the prevalence of this view.

Now the liberal media is getting into a new version of this. Same story, but slightly different version.

The big scoop is that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has hired as one of his clerks a young woman who has been accused of racism.

Crystal Clanton, a magna cum laude graduate of Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University who most recently was a clerk for highly respected conservative Judge William Pryor on the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, was just hired by Thomas.

Clanton, according to liberal accusers, posted remarks back in 2015, while working at Turning Point USA, saying, “I hate black people”—along with some profanity accompanying the statement.

Far-left journalists, such as Ruth Marcus of The Washington Post, and Jane Mayer of The New Yorker, have been on the story for years. Mayer first reported about it in 2017.

This despite no definitive evidence that the racist post was the work of Clanton.

Now that Thomas has hired Clanton, liberals have shifted into high gear.

With all the supposed concerns of the Left about racism, none seem troubled or confused by the allegation that a black judge—no less the most prominent black jurist in the nation—would hire a racist.

How does that compute?

The answer is that in liberal eyes, black conservatives “ain’t black.”

Certainly, a black conservative as sophisticated as Thomas could in no way be black.

And therefore, he could even be a racist and sympathetic to racists.

Absurd? Of course. Is it demeaning and insulting to Thomas? Of course.

Liberals are not only very tolerant of sloppy thinking. They are also tolerant of sloppy journalism.

Mayer’s latest coverage of Clanton, which she first reported in the New Yorker in 2017, appears under the headline “The Scandal of Clarence Thomas’s New Clerk.”

What is the scandal? Thomas has hired Clanton, “who became notorious in 2015 for apparently sending texts that said, ‘I hate black people … ‘”

“Apparently” is enough for Mayer and her liberal compatriots to convict.

When Pryor hired Clanton, who had a previous clerkship with Judge Corey Maze in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, seven congressional Democrats called for an investigation. An investigation was conducted by Chief Judge Debra Ann Livingston of the 2nd Circuit.

The end of Livingston’s investigation of the incident was a green light for Clanton.

Livingston pointed out that both Maze and Pryor knew of the allegations when they hired her, rejected their validity, and found her to be highly competent.

As part of the 2nd Circuit investigation, Thomas sent a letter saying, “I know Crystal Clanton and I know bigotry. … Bigotry is antithetical to her nature.”

Thomas and his wife, Ginni, have known Clanton for years. Clanton actually lived with them for almost a year.

If she was a racist, how could Thomas not know it?

Yet despite this, liberal journalists continue on about Thomas’ hiring a racist as his clerk.

When will we realize that the real racism belongs to liberals who see every black American as a liberal mannequin, denying their uniqueness, integrity, and individuality? When will we realize the disservice to black Americans and all Americans in denying the humanity of black Americans who are conservative?

(C) 2024 CREATORS.COM

The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.

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The post Clarence Thomas, Liberal Racism, and the Ongoing Denigration of Black Conservatives appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Clarence Thomas, Racist?

(John Hinderaker)

One of the big stories in the New York Times today is another Clarence Thomas smear, but with a twist: “Justice Thomas Hires Law Clerk Accused of Sending Racist Text Messages.”

The story is about Crystal Clanton, who graduated from the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University in 2022. She is coming off a clerkship with Judge William Pryor of the 11th Circuit, who calls her “an outstanding law clerk.” Justice Thomas has now hired her to clerk on the Supreme Court.

For the last seven years, Crystal Clanton has been dogged by reports of an email that she allegedly wrote, in which she supposedly said, “I hate black people.” The Times story admits that they have not seen any such message, and are relying on reporting by the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, perhaps the least trustworthy source in America.

In 2017, Clanton was running field operations for Turning Point USA. Mayer did a hit piece on Turning Point that included a variety of allegations, including the one against Clanton. Mayer claimed to have seen a screen shot of the text. The story has dogged Clanton ever since. When she was offered a clerkship on the 11th Circuit by Judge Pryor, seven left-wing members of Congress lodged an ethics complaint against Pryor, based on Clanton’s alleged text. That complaint was investigated by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which found the complaint to be without merit and dismissed it.

This January 2022 story has the details. Clanton left Turning Point after the claim against her was first made, but the Second Circuit found it to be false:

The Turning Point executive “had determined that the source of the allegations against (Clanton) was a group of former employees,” [Second Circuit Chief Judge Debra] Livingston wrote. “One of these employees was fired after the organization learned that this person had created fake text messages to be used against co-workers, to make it appear that those co-workers had engaged in misconduct when they had not.”

Pryor and Maze knew about the allegations against Clanton when they interviewed and hired her. And both determined the allegations of racist behavior by Clanton were untrue and found she was highly qualified to serve as a clerk for them, Livingston wrote.

“There is nothing in the record to dispute any of this,” she noted.

Charlie Kirk is also quoted in that story:

“The media has alleged that Crystal said and did things that are simply untrue,” Kirk wrote. “I have first-hand knowledge of the situations reported on and I can assure that the media has made serious errors and omissions. The sources of these reports are a group of former employees that have a well-documented desire to malign Crystal’s reputation.”

The employee who was fired had “created fake text messages to be used against other employees,” Kirk wrote.

Crystal Clanton got to know Ginny Thomas when she worked at Turning Point, and she was evidently so distraught about her departure from that group that she lived with the Thomases for nearly a year. So Thomas knows her well. He wrote a letter in connection with the Second Circuit investigation:

“I know Crystal Clanton and I know bigotry,” Thomas wrote. “Bigotry is antithetical to her nature and character.”

Clanton didn’t respond to the Times’s request for comment in the story they published today, but back in 2017 she told The New Yorker that “I have no recollection of these messages and they do not reflect what I believe or who I am, and the same was true when I was a teenager.”

So there the matter rests. The moral of the story, I suppose, is that the Left never forgets. No matter that she was cleared by an investigation by one of the nation’s courts of appeals; once the Left gets its hands on a smear it never lets go. It will never stop trying to destroy your life. And of course, The New Yorker and the New York Times are two of the worst offenders.

Also, what makes this old story worthy of the Times’s A section? Only the fact that Justice Thomas is involved. The Times doesn’t care about a law clerk of whom few people have heard, but it cares deeply about smearing the country’s top conservative African-American. But what, exactly, are we supposed to infer from the Times story? That Clarence Thomas is weirdly favorable to those who hate black people?

A final irony: Supreme Court justices have no doubt hired any number of clerks who have written and spoken favorably about DEI, which actually is racist. But there is no controversy there: on the contrary, endorsing that form of racism is a badge of honor.

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