Anita Hill on Clarence Thomas: "I Will Not Stand By Silently and Allow Him to Reinvent Me"

Posted by Oliver Willis at 1:00 PM on October 2, 2007.

This post, written by Oliver Willis, originally appeared on Like Kryptonite to Stupid

Eugene Robinson hits the nail so hard on the head about just how dumb Clarence Thomas is.

There are, as he ought to know, plenty of black conservatives. There are plenty of African American parents teaching their children the same lessons of hard work and self-reliance that Thomas's grandfather taught him. The black church, I would argue, is one of the more socially conservative major institutions in the nation.

Black America has never been monolithic in its views, but black Americans do vote almost monolithically for Democrats. That wouldn't necessarily be the case if Richard Nixon hadn't built an electoral strategy on a race-based appeal to Southern whites -- and if every Republican presidential candidate and party leader since Nixon hadn't followed suit. Just last week, the four leading contenders for the Republican nomination all skipped a forum at historically black Morgan State University. As long as snubbing black voters is seen as smart politics in the Republican Party, black conservatives have good reason to stick with the Democrats.

Robinson goes on to explain why, until the cows come home, black conservatives like Clarence Thomas will be known as the self-loathers they are.

UPDATE: Professor Anita Hill, the woman that this... troll... sexually harassed has written an op-ed in the NY Times to counter his slander of her in his book pimping tour.

ON Oct. 11, 1991, I testified about my experience as an employee of Clarence Thomas' at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

I stand by my testimony.

Justice Thomas has every right to present himself as he wishes in his new memoir, "My Grandfather's Son." He may even be entitled to feel abused by the confirmation process that led to his appointment to the Supreme Court.

But I will not stand by silently and allow him, in his anger, to reinvent me.

In the portion of his book that addresses my role in the Senate hearings into his nomination, Justice Thomas offers a litany of unsubstantiated representations and outright smears that Republican senators made about me when I testified before the Judiciary Committee -- that I was a "combative left-winger" who was "touchy" and prone to overreacting to "slights." A number of independent authors have shown those attacks to be baseless. What's more, their reports draw on the experiences of others who were familiar with Mr. Thomas's behavior, and who came forward after the hearings. It's no longer my word against his.

See, people. This is why the Supreme Court is more than Roe v. Wade. It's about getting good, decent people on the highest court in the land, and not absolute filth like Clarence Thomas whose odor wafts from every case he gets his grubby little paws on.

Tagged as: race, black conservatives, supreme court, thomas, hill, sexual harassment

Oliver Willis is the blogmaster at Like Kryptonite To Stupid