“

By the time Thomas arrived at Yale Law School, he was militant on racial matters and more-or-less fully disillusioned with mainstream liberalism. Hillary Clinton, who overlapped with him in the early ’70s, recently declared that as long as she has known Thomas, he’s always been filled with “grievance,” “anger” and “resentment.” Unsaid, but critical context: These were feelings Thomas displayed toward white liberals in particular (like Clinton herself), who dominated Yale at the time, and who continue to dominate elite spaces today.

Thomas noted in a recent interview that people regularly assume he has difficulties around other Black people by virtue of his politics. “It’s just the opposite,” he declared. “The only people with whom I’ve had difficulties are white, liberal elites who consider themselves the anointed and us the benighted … I have never had issues with members of my race.”

In fact, there have been many prominent Black intellectuals and leaders whose Black nationalist-inflected mistrust of white liberals ultimately led them to conservativism. For Thomas, it was the work of Black economist Thomas Sowell that ultimately helped him channel his misgivings toward “white saviors” into a coherent, right-aligned political philosophy.

Musa al-Gharbi

What the reactions to Clarence Thomas post-Roe reveal about white liberals