Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas recently raised the hackles of many progressives with his accusation that their attacks on him represents a level of racism equal to that of the southern segregationists of his youth. He noted,
“I’d grown up fearing the lynch mobs of the Ku Klux Klan; as an adult I was starting to wonder if I’d been afraid of the wrong white people all along — where I was being pursued not by bigots in white robes, but by left-wing zealots draped in flowing sanctimony”. (emphasis added)
“These people who claim to be progressive … have been far more vicious to me than any southerner…” (ABC News: Part I: My Grandfather’s Son)
For progressives, who conceal their racism with the false piety of multiculturalism, this accusation is a serious breach of their camouflage.
But progressive racism is not just a modern phenomenon. President Woodrow Wilson, the darling of progressives for his internationalism, was also a racist. As Charles Freund wrote in an article sub-titled ‘The menacing Mr. Wilson’,
“Domestically, however, Wilson was a racist retrograde, one who attempted to engineer the diminution of both justice and democracy for American blacks—who were enjoying little of either to begin with.
Wilson’s racist views were hardly a secret. His own published work was peppered with Lost Cause visions of a happy antebellum South. As president of Princeton, he had turned away black applicants, regarding their desire for education to be “unwarranted.”….
One legacy of post-Civil War Republican ascendancy was that Washington’s large black populace had access to federal jobs, and worked with whites in largely integrated circumstances. Wilson’s cabinet put an end to that, bringing Jim Crow to Washington.
Wilson allowed various officials to segregate the toilets, cafeterias, and work areas of their departments. One justification involved health: White government workers had to be protected from contagious diseases, especially venereal diseases, that racists imagined were being spread by blacks. In extreme cases, federal officials built separate structures to house black workers. Most black diplomats were replaced by whites; numerous black federal officials in the South were removed from their posts; the local Washington police force and fire department stopped hiring blacks. Wilson’s own view, as he expressed it to intimates, was that federal segregation was an act of kindness.” (Reason Magazine – Dixiecrats Triumphant)
Of course, modern progressive racism is more subtle than the Jim Crow mentality of Woodrow Wilson. Justice Thomas asserts that liberal whites have created a system of ideological segregation which keeps blacks inferior. He notes,
“People get bent out of shape about the fact that when I was a kid, you could not drink out of certain water fountains. Well, the water was the same. My grandfather always said that, ‘The water’s exactly the same.’ But those same people are extremely comfortable saying I can’t drink from this fountain of knowledge”
“It’s similar to what you had in the South, you know: ‘you’re stupid because you’re black,’ that ‘you smell bad because you’re black.’ I mean, it’s all the same thing”.
“Whites can think anything they want, and we can have opinions about frivolous things, like I could be a (Washington) Nationals fan, as opposed to being an (Baltimore) Orioles fan, Oh, that’s ok. But if it’s important, if you’re black, you all have to think the same thing”. (emphasis added) (ABC News: Part I: My Grandfather’s Son)
While progressives may dismiss Justice Thomas’s allegations, he is not the only black person to see the true face of progressive racism which is hidden under their false proclamations of multiculturalism and political correctness.
Just ask Michael Steele, Condoleezza Rice and Juan Williams how quickly, and viciously, the mask of racial tolerance disappears from the progressive face when a black person strays from the ideological plantation.
