Mark Paoletta and Michael Pack: Clarence Thomas on Who’s Banning Thoughts

Recent false news reports announced that the State of Florida had banned the iconic novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee from its state-wide curriculum, supposedly indicating Governor Ron DeSantis can’t handle a book on race relations.

It was utter nonsense, particularly since it is the Left that has banned this important book and in recent years from public school curriculums, such as in Burbank, California.

Based on this false reporting, Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers and others on the Left expressed outrage that Florida would ban this book from its schools. But these Leftists and their allies in the corporate media are hypocrites because they are perfectly happy to ban black Americans from having certain views.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has been writing about this racism for years, and he discussed it in our new book, Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words.  The book is a follow on to the very successful 2020 documentary by Michael Pack of the same name, which is based on 25 hours of interviews he conducted with Justice Thomas.

Clarence Thomas grew up in the Deep South in Savannah, Georgia, under state-enforced segregation. He spoke candidly about having to go to a separate library and a separate school, being banned from drinking out of certain water fountains and from going into the city’s main park – all because of his race. He talked about how morally wrong that was, and he made the following observation:

We agree that it was wrong for me to be prevented from going to the Savannah Public Library. Okay. People agree. That’s just against society.

So then, okay, what if they let me go in the library, but they said, “There’s a certain part of the library, or certain stacks in there, that are off limits to blacks?” Oh, that would also be wrong. Oh, okay. What if they say, “There are certain books that are marked, ‘No coloreds allowed’”? Would that be right? No, that would be wrong.

If all those things are wrong—it’s wrong for them to prevent me from being in the library, it’s wrong for them to prevent me from going to certain parts of the library, it’s wrong for them to prevent me from going to certain books in the library—why is it right for them to tell me I can’t have certain thoughts that are in the books in the library? Obviously, there’s no answer. It’s absurd.

Thomas recounted how when he first came into the Reagan administration, he was attacked for having his own views that were different from the black leadership:

It’s an interesting world we’re in, where people claim to be tolerant, but they really aren’t. For minorities, or if they put you in one of their designated groups, you’re not supposed to have certain thoughts. There were these set opinions that were supposed to be universal among certain groups, and to criticize these policies, particularly their effects, you were a bad person. Then license is given to others to attack you in whatever way they want to. You’re not really black because you’re not doing what you expect black people to do. You weren’t supposed to oppose busing; you weren’t supposed to oppose welfare.

But Thomas never bowed to these attacks, even when Hodding Carter, a white Southerner whose own father was at one time a white Supremacist, used nakedly racist language to attack Thomas, calling him one of those “chicken-eating preachers, who gladly parroted the segregationists’ line in exchange for a few crumbs from the white man’s table. He’s one of the few left in captivity.”

No one on the Left called Carter out.

According to Thomas, these attacks from the black leadership and white liberals had their intended effects: “There are any number of times there were blacks who would come up to me and whisper, ‘Oh I agree with you, but I’m not saying that’. . . And so the criticism, as a result, has its effect.  It creates a fear of being honest. There was that great line in Invisible Man where Ralph Ellison says that the worst he has ever been treated is when he told the truth.  So you’re not supposed to tell the truth.”

Ironically, even though the black leadership claims to be representing black Americans views, it is Thomas’ views that are more in line with the majority of black Americans.

Not surprisingly, the Left went berserk on Justice Thomas after the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade.  Despite the fact that black Americans  have historically been against abortion , and have opposed same sex marriages much more than whites, somehow it is acceptable for whites and blacks to call Justice Thomas an “Uncle Tom” for his legal views on these issues. The black leadership has long seen Thomas as a threat to the progressive views they spout.

Which brings us back to the Left’s over the top reaction to the bogus report that Florida was banning To Kill a Mockingbird from its school curriculum.  It’s stunning the Left could have this reaction, while simultaneously banning black Americans from holding the ideas of certain books.

Justice Thomas famously called out the Left’s attacks on him as a “high tech lynching.”  It was true then and even more true today.  Fortunately, Justice Thomas has stood strong and has provided the model for others to not cave to the rigid and racist ideology of the Left.

Mr. Pack and Mr. Paoletta are co-editors of the new book Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words, taken from over 25 hours of interviews Mr. Pack conducted with Justice Thomas for the film of the same name.  Mr. Pack is a documentary filmmaker, president of Manifold Productions, and former CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media. He has produced over 15 documentaries for public television, most recently “Created Equal.” Mr. Paoletta is a partner at the law firm Schaerr Jaffe LLP. He previously served as a lawyer in the George H.W. Bush White House, where he worked on the confirmation of Justice Thomas.