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From: Jasper
Date: 12/17/00
Time: 9:36:04 PM
Chalotte, Charlotte,
As you may be able to tell by the triple posts, I’ve been having problems with my computer. I have also been seriously bummed out by the conduct of the election in Florida and the conduct of the media in reporting on it. I tried to get a discussion going on that on the Firm League Board but, as you know, I didn’t get much response. Haven’t gone into my e-mail in over a week.
Anyhow, I think that you are on to something with Clarence Thomas and his wife. I’ve known of all kinds of interracial relationships and been involved in some myself, so I know that there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all-explanation for why blacks and whites marry each other. Most of the time I would imagine it boils down to pure chemistry that we don’t have as much control over as we’d like to think. I know that my black aunt and my white, Jewish uncle (I wrote about them in The Invisible Warriors) loved each other very much. But I know from experience that mixed marriages need not be free of the worst kind of racism imaginable.
When I was a kid, we lived in a neighborhood that was just beginning to “change.” There were two interracial couples. I can’t tell you about one of them because I never saw them. I only knew about them because the white woman’s son from another marriage was constantly stared at and pointed to as the kid whose mother married a black man. I can tell you about the other couple because the white husband treated his black wife like a slave — literally — in public. The only things missing were her chains. Then again, who knows what went on behind closed doors? They both seemed to be happy with the roles they chose to play, so I don’t have a problem with that. Some of these relationships are, no doubt, a variation on dominant/submissive themes that manifest themselves in a number of ways that don’t involve race. They are nobody’s business but the people involved.
The problem comes when people like that assume positions of power and carry their racial attitudes with them. Can you imagine a stereotypical black pimp with a sable of with hookers as a judge in a predominately white jurisdiction? The idea is a non-starter. Apart from the criminal aspect of his chosen career, you know enough about him to reasonably expect him to have some serious racial issues and to act them out. You shouldn’t be surprised if one of his women in a similar position behaved in an identical way. You’d have to see how they treated white people to know what was up.
That’s what I saw in the confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas after reading his record in the EEOC with horror. The women who accused him of sexual harassment were all black. The women who said that he treated them with nothing but the highest resect were all white. EVERYTHING I saw and read about the man told me that he was a black man who hated black people as a group and worshiped white people as a group.
Bigots always allow for exceptions to the rule. Consider Mark Fuhrman’s black “friends.” Even Hitler thought that some Jews were O.K.; it was just Jews in general that he had wanted to kill. --Jasper