Posted on 02/16/2018 8:51:16 AM PST by Beautiful_Gracious_Skies
Justice Clarence Thomas decried the contemporary culture of victimhood during remarks Thursday, telling an audience at the Library of Congress that constant aggrievement would exhaust the country.
Ever a touchstone for controversy on racial issues, the justice related a story from a recent trip to Kansas, where a black college student told him she was primarily interested in school work, and less interested in the political tumult gripping college campuses.
“At some point we’re going to be fatigued with everybody being a victim,” he said.
Thomas has struck similar chords throughout his public life. He appeared on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News program in November 2017, and suggested contemporary activists could benefit from the example of his grandparents, who exhibited quiet fortitude during the heady days of white supremacy.
He made his Thursday remark in the context of a broader discussion about his childhood. Thomas was born in Georgia’s coastal lowlands among impoverished Gullah-speakers, and spent his childhood working his grandfather’s farm. He likened his upbringing to Kathryn Stockett’s 2009 novel “The Help” as most of the women in his life, including his mother, were domestics in white households.
Given the few options open to blacks in the Jim Crow south, Thomas’ family felt they had no choice but to do the best with what they had. The justice detects the hand of providence in those select opportunities open to him, like parochial education and Savannah’s Carnegie library, which served the black population.
“You always have to play the hand you’re dealt,” he said. “If you’re dealt a bad hand, you still have to play it.”
As detailed in his 2008 memoir, he inherited these sensibilities from his grandfather. Thomas was sent to live with his grandparents after a fire ravaged his mother’s home during his childhood.
By Thomas’ telling, his grandfather was the defining figure of his life. When he joined the Supreme Court in 1991, his wife commissioned a bust featuring his grandfather’s favorite quote.
“His favorite quote was ‘Old Man Can’t is dead. I helped bury him,'” Thomas said.
“If you’re dealt a bad hand, you still have to play it.”
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The reality of life.
Life is not fair.
It's time we began to address the underlying causes of Leftist-driven cultural dysfunction, especially in the black culture which fosters self-loathing, self-pity, and almost militant entitlement.
“His favorite quote was ‘Old Man Can’t is dead. I helped bury him,’” Thomas said.
The version I heard as a child was, “Can’t died in the corn field, and Couldn’t and Wouldn’t are lost out there”
Now children take thinks literally which is good, but I remember thinking: “There’s a dead guy out in the corn field! And two other guys that don’t sound so nice. I PLAY IN THAT CORN FIELD.”
He’s correct.
As for me; it’s become real easy to ignore the so called pain and suffering of these victims. But there’s a downside to that. I try real hard not to laugh and feel Schadenfreude at their injuries. And those real victims? Those who really are unjustly treated?
They get drowned out by the liberal left at every turn.
Booker T. Washington on victimhood....
There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.
I am afraid that there is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don’t want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public.
I noticed years ago that people have a tendency to want to establish their “bona fides” as a person, by first establishing their victimhood as if that makes their opinion more important or meaningful.
Its almost like a reflex action that many many people fall into.
I try to avoid it, myself. I prefer a reflex stance of gratitude. Or, failing that, the old cowboy virtue of shaking it off. “Just wrap it in an ace bandage and some baling wire, I’m fine”.
OK, I would never make a cowboy, but that’s what I admire. Not the reflexive victimhood that is almost, almost, universal these days.
Booker T, Lipton Tee, Ice Tea:
Stone Cold & Booker at that Frog grocery store- a classic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVS4UySbeE0
Booker talked of running for Houston’s mayor, I hope he does and wins.
Booker T. Washington got it right. I would add that MLK and Co. found an eager listener in the federal government as an opportunity to expand government size and power howbeit unconstitutionally. That s why the Delusional Lying Left wants to keep blacks in their dysfunction and co-dependency.
The Left is no friend of the blacks and “entitlement” blacks are no friend of the black community.
Love this guy!!!!!
Thomas and his wife Ginny are a class act.
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