The left loves to point out the racism in all sorts of situations while ignoring their own biases and downright racist attitudes toward minorities who don’t buy into the preconceived progressive bubble. It’s nothing for politicians, pundits, and even journalists to throw epithets and insults at minority conservatives — black, Hispanic, gay, it doesn’t matter.
We also see examples of casual racism aimed at minorities on the right all the time. The term “casual racism” refers to incidents of racism that happen in passing or that aren’t as explicit as more shocking forms of racism.
“Subtle forms of racism often go unnoticed (except for the person feeling the impact of them) and therefore, unaddressed,” wrote Jacqueline Nelson and Jessica Walton at The Conversation to describe the concept of casual racism. “This racism can include speech and behaviours that treat cultural differences – such as forms of dress, cultural practices, physical features or accents – as problematic, manifesting in disapproving glances, exclusionary body language, and marginalising people’s experiences as invalid.”
There’s no better way to describe a passage referring to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in an article at the Washington Post than to call it casual racism. The sentence has since been “clarified” by editors, but the clarification mentions the original wording and thus the reporters’ casually racist intent.
Justice Thomas isn’t even the focus of the article by Cleve R. Wootson Jr. and Marianna Sotomayor, which discusses President Joe Biden’s relationship with Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) and how that relationship could affect the president’s choice to fill the Court vacancy left by Justice Stephen Breyer’s retirement.
Here’s what the updated passage looks like:
Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), a friend and ally of Clyburn’s for over 30 years, said even Clyburn’s critics respect his political instincts and his connection with a valuable but often disappointed subset of Democratic voters.
“Nobody that I’m aware of feels that opposing Clyburn’s nomination would be the wise thing to do,” he said. “If you know that a person has been vetted by Jim Clyburn, you know that person won’t go to the court and end up being a Clarence Thomas,” referring to the Black conservative justice.
The trouble comes in the description of Thomas in the original version of the article. Initially, Wootson and Sotomayor referred to Thomas as the “Black justice whose rulings often resemble the thinking of White conservatives.”
"referring to the Black justice whose rulings often resemble the political thinking of White conservatives"https://t.co/i2IodOwtFV pic.twitter.com/Wl7Q4JAFMx
— John Doe (@fedjudges) February 17, 2022
The editors issued a tepid “clarification” at the top of the updated article.
“A previous version of this story imprecisely referred to Justice Clarence Thomas’s opinions as often reflecting the thinking of White conservatives, rather than conservatives broadly,” reads the statement. “That reference has been removed.”
Yep, that’s it. The reporters editorialized about Thomas’ political bent under the guise of journalism, but to the editors, they were nothing more than “imprecise.”
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You see, in the eyes of the left, minorities are only supposed to hold one set of political positions. Remember when Joe Biden said to a radio host, “Well I tell you what, If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black”?
This is the thinking of far too many on the left these days. Anyone who deviates from leftist orthodoxy is a traitor to his or her minority status. He or she has sold out to whiteness. How dare a man like Clarence Thomas devise his own opinions and beliefs rather than taking the spoonfed grievances that the left prescribes?
Thomas himself pointed out this kind of thinking when he said, “People who will get very upset if someone said all blacks look alike are really comfortable saying all blacks ought to think alike. If you said that blacks should not be allowed to go [to] a library, you’d be against that. If you said that blacks couldn’t read certain books in the library, you would say that’s wrong. But now we are so comfortable saying that blacks can’t hold some of the ideas in some of the books in the library. That’s absurd.”
(And don’t get me started on the ridiculous capitalization of “Black” and “White.”)
On top of the assumptions of the left about minorities, there’s the matter of why that commentary even appeared in a straight news article anyway. It would’ve been one thing if Wootson and Sotomayor had written that thought at an outlet like PJ Media, where we have the privilege and pleasure of inserting opinions, analysis, and snark into a discussion about any topic (and you readers know y’all love it). But those two were writing for the Washington Post — and not the op-ed page. The Post claims to be one of the old media guardians of important, high-minded news reporting, not pettiness and assumption.
This type of casual racism has no place in journalism. You had better believe that the left would call out anybody on the right for injecting casual racism into a discussion, but Wootson and Sotomayor will get a pass because they’re of the left. All they’ll get dinged for is “imprecisely” injecting their opinions into a news story.
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