The irony is too rich to ignore.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, someone who has loudly loathed Black people receiving things from the government, has received lavish gifts from a rich benefactor while in his powerful government job.
Harlan Crow, the right-wing billionaire, Nazi memorabilia collector and Thomas crony, has been placed under the spotlight amid ProPublica’s reporting that he has lavished luxury vacations and other gifts on the Supreme Court justice. (A Washington Post report published over the weekend on another anomaly from Thomas’ financial disclosure forms didn’t help his case.)
ProPublica’s latest report says that Thomas’ mother has lived in a home Crow bought from Thomas in 2014 — and the justice never disclosed the transaction, which is possibly in violation of federal law. In addition, Crow reportedly added tens of thousands of dollars of improvements to the house in Savannah, Georgia.
Thomas now intends to amend his financial disclosure forms to acknowledge the real estate deal with Crow, CNN reported Monday, citing a source close to Thomas. Too little too late.
So, according to these recent reports, Thomas appears to have been leveraging his government job to get free stuff. And it seems very close to the kind of government dependency he has denounced in the past.
It’s a stance Thomas has used to browbeat Black people throughout his career. Keep in mind, for example, what he said about his own sister before he was nominated to the Supreme Court.
In a 1980 speech to fellow Black conservatives, Thomas claimed that his sister “gets mad when the mailman is late with her welfare check. That’s how dependent she is.”
He added: “What’s worse is that now her kids feel entitled to the check, too. They have no motivation for doing better or getting out of that situation.’’
But a decade later, reporting found that Thomas hadn’t been accurate in making his sister sound like a “welfare queen,” the racialized derogatory…
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