What Would Happen if All People Condemned Personal Attacks on Others?

            The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday is the need to ignore and/or condemn the racist, sexist, vicious, and ugly personal attacks inflicted on members of our society. Those who attack and those who remain silent are both guilty of enabling this abuse.

Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court is undergoing such an attack. White progressives are threatening him with impeachment because they do not agree with him. They insist that he is not black enough because of his decisions. A group of concerned Americans are condemning that attack and signed the following public letter:

We, the undersigned, condemn the barrage of racist, vicious, and ugly personal attacks that we are witnessing on Clarence Thomas – a sitting Supreme Court justice. Whether it is calling him a racist slur, an “Uncle Tom,” or questioning his “blackness” over his jurisprudence, the disparagement of this man, of his faith, and of his character, is abominable.

Regardless of where one stands on Justice Thomas’ personal or legal opinions, he is among the pantheon of black trailblazers throughout American history and is a model of integrity, scholarship, steadfastness, resilience, and commitment to the Constitution of the United States of America.

For three decades, Thomas has served as a model for our children. He has long been honored and celebrated by black people in this country, and his attackers do not speak for the majority of blacks.

He is entirely undeserving of the vitriol directed at him. Character assassination has become too convenient a tool for eviscerating those who dare dissent from the prevailing agenda, especially when it is a black man who is dissenting.

This is not about the content of the court’s decisions or Justice Thomas’ personal views; some of the undersigned agree with his judicial decisions, and some do not. We speak out – as black people and Americans – to condemn these attacks and support Justice Thomas, because to remain silent would be to implicitly endorse these poisonous schemes, as well as his destruction.

            The letter is signed by Glen Loury (professor of economics at Brown University, Providence, R.I.) and Robert Woodson Sr. (founder and president of the Woodson Center, Washington, D.C.). There are more than one hundred co-signatories. I applaud the integrity and courage of the signers of this letter and encourage all Americans to condemn personal attacks.