Clarence Thomas proves why a Conversation about Race is Vital

In an article titled “Clarence Thomas: Americans are more ‘sensitive’ about race than in the 1960s” written by Adam Serwer is all the proof needed of the importance of race discussions.  In it, he states how race was for him during his forming years and based on that he surmises that his childhood and maturing time is how this world should be about race.  While I can respect Mr. Thomas’ opinion about this matter, I cannot and strongly disagree with his premises.

The article reports that “Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said Tuesday that Americans are more “sensitive” about race now than in the 1960s – a time when public facilities in his home state of Georgia were segregated by race, the occasional Ku Klux Klan billboard dotted the Southern landscape, and where Thomas, by his own recollection, was forced to “steer clear” of certain parts of Savannah” as were first reported by Yahoo News, and were delivered at an event at Palm Beach Atlantic University in West Palm Beach, Florida.

It states that he said “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 non-denominational 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.  The worst I have been treated was by northern liberal elites. The absolute worst I have ever been treated…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.”

“Thomas’ recollection of events seems somewhat at odds with his 2007 autobiography, My Grandfather’s Son, in which he wrote of growing up in Savannah that “No matter how curious you might be about the way white people lived, you didn’t go where you didn’t belong. That was a recipe for jail, or worse.”  “Thomas also recalled being in “a constant state of controlled anxiety” as one of two black students at his seminary, which he left in 1968 after a fellow seminary student expressed the hope that Martin Luther King Jr. would die of his gunshot wounds, which King eventually did”.

The article does go on to offer fairness to Mr. Thomas but painted it in a much clearer sense of today versus yesterday.  It says that “In fairness to Thomas, it’s probably true that Americans of varying racial, religious, and social backgrounds are more willing to acknowledge and take pride in their differences than they were in the 1960s, when all manner of discrimination was legal and to be a white, Christian heterosexual male was to not only fit an unquestioned definition of what it meant to be American, but the only way to access the full benefits of citizenship. Minorities really are much more likely today to challenge the kind of casual bigotry that once upon a time, would have been considered fit for conversation in “polite” company. It’s just not clear how that’s a bad thing”.

So why are race conversations so vital today than it has ever been before?  Simply because each of us who lived through it and is currently involved in it, the results are different for each.  We sum up our experiences to these events and from there make our suggestions as to how it should be and even differ as to how it was.  These conversations need to be vocalized if for no other reason than to demonstrate how very little difference there is in those experiences.  We need these conversations to see clearly just how much we share in similarity than we share in differences.  We need these conversations to learn and grow to respect another’s take of the subject while making ours plain for all to see and maybe, just maybe we will finally obtain that perfect union if only on that subject. 

I will not say that Mr. Thomas is wrong because he brings us his take from his experience and since his is very much different than mine and I have never walked in his shoes, honestly saying who is right or wrong is fruitless.  What does bear the ripeness of knowledge is listening, trying to understand and being fearless to state your position and stand your ground.  This is not a competition nor should it become an argument, it should be just a simple discussion with all parties making their points and parting as equals not as rivals.  The conversation should begin now.