Clarence Thomas and the Tough Love Crowd

Counterfeit Heroes and Unhappy Truths

Ronald Suresh Roberts

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 1994
• Print ISBN:
  9780814774816
• eBook ISBN:
  9780814776667
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In recent years, black neoconservatism has captured the national imagination. Clarence Thomas sits on the Supreme Court. Stephen Carter's opinions on topics ranging from religion to the confirmation process are widely quoted. The New Republic has written that black neoconservative Thomas Sowell was having a greater influence on the discussion of matters of race and ethnicity than any other writer of the past ten years.
In this compelling and vividly argued book, Ronald Roberts reveals how this attention has turned an eccentricity into a movement. Black neoconservatives, Roberts believes, have no real constituency but, as was the case with Clarence Thomas, are held up—and proclaim themselves—as simply and ruthlessly honest, as above mere self-interest and crude political loyalties. They profess a concern for those they criticize, claiming to possess an objective truth which sets them apart from their critics in the establishment Left. They claim to be outsiders even while sustained by the culture's most powerful institutions. As they level attacks at the activist organizations they perceive as moribund, every significant argument they advance rests on fervent mantras of harsh truths and simple realities.
Enlisting the ideal of impartiality as a partisan weapon, this Tough Love Crowd has elevated the familiar wisdom of Spare the rod and spoil the child to the arena of national politics. Turning to their own writings and proclamations, Roberts here serves up a devastating critique of such figures as Clarence Thomas, Shelby Steele, Stephen Carter, and V. S. Naipaul (Tough Love International). Clarence Thomas and the Tough Love Crowd marks the emergence of a provocative and powerful voice on our cultural and political landscape, a voice which holds those who subscribe to this polemically powerful ideology accountable for their opinions and actions.

Index

Abortion. See Women, right to choose

Achebe, Chinua, 181, 183

Affirmative action, 40

and Stephen Carter, 7

Clarence Thomas’s shifts, 6, 122–25, 160–63

distinguished from “preferences,” 7

and Randall Kennedy, 54

Africa: and V. S. Naipaul, xii, 177, 191

and Paul Theroux, 191

Ancestor worship, 58–60

Apolitical, myth of, 6, 7, 16, 21, 66, 87, 89, 128, 130, 142, 168

Appiah, Kwame Anthony, 44

Aryan Brotherhood, 147

Atwater, Lee, 120

Authoritarianism versus totalitarianism, 175

Autobiography: and law, 8

of Malcolm X 8

Backlash: and feminism, 100

and racism, 12

Baker, Houston, 57

Barthes, Roland: and Julien Benda, 19

and Randall Kennedy, 56

Bate, Walter Jackson, 55

Bell, Derrick, 8

and Julien Benda, 23

and Stephen Carter, 45–46, 63, 64, 65, 67

and critical race theory, xii

and Randall Kennedy, 44, 50, 56

and Thomas Sowell, 46

and Clarence Thomas, 21, 121

Benda, Julien, 10, 19–26

and Stephen Carter, 38–39, 46, 48

conservative ideology, 20–22

and Randall Kennedy, 38–39, 44, 52, 54, 56

and law schools, 73–74, 77, 102

and partisanship, 194

and Clarence Thomas, 127–28

and the U.S. Constitution, 145

and V. S. Naipaul, 181, 184

Black conservatives, lack of constituency, 17–18

Blackmun, Justice Harry: death penalty, 134, 155

habeas corpus relief, 135, 136, 137, 157

and Haitian refugees, 139–40

hate speech, 148

prisoners’ rights, 159

standing to challenge minority set-aside program, 164

Black Panther party, 67

Black voice, xi, 44, 52–53, 61

Bloom, Allan, 8

and Randall Kennedy, 51, 55

and Clarence Thomas, 9

Bolick, Clint: and Civil Rights Act, 1991, 12

and Stephen Carter, 12

and Lani Guinier, 12, 169

and judicial impartiality, 169–70

and Randal...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• I The Truth Trap
• II Tough Love U.S.A.
• III Negro Crit Law
• IV Tough Love Judge
• V Tough Love International
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Index