"I think that the only reason Clarence Thomas is on the Court is because he is black. I don't believe he could have won had he been white. And the reason is, I think it was a cynical ploy by President Bush." That's what Joe Biden said about Clarence Thomas in 1992, nearly a year after the latter's Senate confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court.
When Democrats elevate African Americans to positions of power, idealism motivates. When Republicans do the same, cynicism drives the action. This liberal narrative leaves little room for the actual achievements of office-holding African Americans to explain their rise. The causal agents are either benevolent Democrats or manipulative Republicans, but rarely the actual people to whom the accomplishment rightfully belongs.
It's not that Biden opposes affirmative action. "Senator Biden has been a strong supporter of affirmative action," his website notes. "He opposed attempts to ban affirmative action in federal contracts and to bar funds to administer affirmative action programs." Indeed, the NAACP awarded Biden a 100 percent rating, reflecting his fidelity to racial preferences and quotas. It's just that Biden opposes affirmative action when he senses that his political opponents are engaged in it.
If Biden thought Thomas, a sitting federal judge with more than ten years experience as chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, an affirmative action justice, does he believe his running mate will be the first affirmative action president?
When Geraldine Ferraro, the first affirmative action vice presidential nominee, issued such heretical utterances during the primary season, she was deemed a racist by Obama's fervent supporters. "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position," the former Queens congresswoman noted. "And if he was a woman, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."
When Biden was Barack Obama's opponent rather than his running mate, he made a similar, though more diplomatic, observation on the qualifications of the Illinois senator. As John McCain's effective advertisement reminded us, Biden said of Obama: "I think he can be ready, but right now I don't believe he is. The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training." Without invoking race, the 35-year veteran of the Senate called into question his "clean" and "articulate" colleague's qualifications. Listeners were left to fill in the blank regarding why someone with such flimsy credentials was receiving such strong support among Democrats.
Certainly there have been men with less impressive resumes than Barack Obama nominated for president. But one has to go back to 1940, when the Republicans nominated corporate leader Wendell Willkie, to find a major party nominee with less relevant experience for the job of president than Obama. For a Democratic candidate less experienced, one has to go back more than a century to 36-year-old, two-term Nebraska congressman William Jennings Bryan's first of three presidential runs in 1896.
Obama has sat in the U.S. Senate for less than four years. Before that, he served in the Illinois state legislature for eight years. Other than those twelve years in public life, his resume, well, could use some padding. Obama never ran a business. He never served in the military. Instead, he worked as an organizer for groups angling for the longest feed at the government trough. How, precisely, does that prepare one to be commander in chief?
For his liberal patrons, Obama represents the affirmative action success story. With their helping hand, they elevated a fatherless black man to the precipice of the presidency. And on November 4, they will receive voting-booth absolution for the sins of their fathers, whereby pulling back the curtain and doing the penance of marking "Barack Obama" will wash away all that white liberal guilt. The quasi-religious nature of casting this ballot explains much of the venom, self-righteousness, and certainty that characterize affluent, suburban, Obama voters. Will it be their victory on November 4, or his? It is an indecent question neither Obama nor his patrons want asked.
This is, from one perspective, insulting to Obama. Did not his underdog campaign stop a gender-politics juggernaut in Hillary Clinton? Isn't he electrifying Democratic voters in a manner his two immediate 9-volt predecessors failed to do? And what of the current occupant of the Oval Office? Did not he, a president's son and senator's grandson, benefit from the "legacy admission" version of affirmative action?
From a competing perspective, the notion of the affirmative-action candidate helps explain the underqualified political phenom's meteoric rise.
How did a law student with no published articles get elected president of the Harvard Law Review? How does a thirtysomething, nondescript community activist get a fat book contract to pen his memoirs? How does an obscure Illinois state senator running for U.S. Senate become the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention? Michelle Obama, a diversity overseer who pulled in nearly $300,000 from the University of Chicago's hospitals, knows the answer to these questions better than most. Joe Biden, who mused over the qualifications of Obama during the primary-season debates, knows it too.
Is it a stretch to think that the political party most enthusiastic about racial preferences for college applicants, private contractors seeking state jobs, and delegates to their national convention would also heartily support affirmative action when it comes to selecting a president? No, it's not a stretch to think it. Just don't dare say it.
Some of my best friends are black.
The guy is an empty suit who only has words and the race card to play, which will not work with me. I would challenge all the left wing lunatics,who see a racist behind every rock, to know exactly how many black children are in their child's school, how many blacks live within 2 houses from their own home, and how many blacks do they hang out with on a routine basis?
I am a very conservative person who resides in a fairly large deep south city and I can tell you, I can answer affirmative on all the above questions. I never even think about race,it's a non-issue for me and I judge individuals as just that, individuals who,like Martin Luther King stated, individuals should be judged on their character,not color of their skin.
Unfortunately these RICH, white, guilty, left wingers who live in their little insulated bubbles are the ones who are guilty of racism, not by words but by their actions,especially the patronizing of blacks and refusing to see a black person as an individual,but as a member of a specific group, similar to a herd of cattle or other type of livestock.
How many black families live in Nancy" the plastic faced,air head" Pelosi's neighborhood? her husband has made millions off non-union labor, and she claims it is selfish not to beg for higher taxes,when she uses all her money for her daily botox injections.
What about Harry Reid?
Why didn't B.Hussien Obama send his own children to a public school in Chicago,especially when he runs his mouth about how he will improve public education?
They are nothing but complete frauds,end of story!
Ah. But you see, Clarence Thomas is an intelligent accomplished Black Man who never asked anything from the affirmative action crowd. That was his crime against the Affirmative Action politboro.
He owes nothin' to nobody. That's what sticks in their craw.
How is giving an African American a position simply because 1) they applied for it, 2) you don't have enough African Americans at that level, and 3) because the Affirmative Goon squad will come get you if you don't--any better than cynical?
Yet that's what they project when they imply that condition #2 is enough to warrant that #3 is necessary. I don't have to buy that the case in point is "cynical", in order to see that if cynical, it still operates a lot like Affirmative Action, something which is supposed to be a good thing.
Instead of drawing from a 40-year line of judges that had to pass Democratic/liberal muster, Bush wanted somebody not in the queue. By stacking the deck, they can insist that Thomas was "not as qualified", when the President was never given the power to appoint judges as they came off the assembly line.
