Clarence Thomas Urges Blacks To Bear Arms

Am I reading this right? Did Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas just tell black folks that we need to arm ourselves against the tyranny of white Militias?

But I'm not the only one that picked this one up, Courtland Milloy over at The Washington Post picked up on it too.

In-fact Courtland Milloy has a great piece in The Washington Post covering how Clarence Thomas's gun rights opinion, color/race played a major role in developing his opinion.

Courtland writes; He hardly ever speaks during oral arguments, often appearing asleep on the bench. 

 

But in his written opinion Monday supporting the right to bear arms, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas roared to life. 

Referring to the disarming of blacks during the post-Reconstruction era, Thomas wrote: "It was the 'duty' of white citizen 'patrols to search negro houses and other suspected places for firearms.' If they found any firearms, the patrols were to take the offending slave or free black 'to the nearest justice of the peace' whereupon he would be 'severely punished.' " Never again, Thomas says. 

In a scorcher of an opinion that reads like a mix of black history lesson and Black Panther Party manifesto, he goes on to say, "Militias such as the Ku Klux Klan, the Knights of the White Camellia, the White Brotherhood, the Pale Faces and the '76 Association spread terror among blacks. . . . The use of firearms for self-defense was often the only way black citizens could protect themselves from mob violence."

This was no muttering from an Uncle Tom, as many black people have accused him of being. His advocacy for black self-defense is straight from the heart of Malcolm X. He even cites the slave revolts led by Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner -- implying that white America has long wanted to take guns away from black people out of fear that they would seek revenge for centuries of racial oppression. 

Of course, Thomas's references to historic threats posed by white militias might have been dismissed if not for a resurgence of such groups in the year after Barack Obama's election as the nation's first black president. 

And if their behavior turns as violent as their racist rhetoric often threatens, then Thomas will almost certainly go down in history as the nation's foremost black radical legal scholar. Read More HERE

AAPP:  I cannot believe this but for the first time, I agree with Clarence Thomas. 

Courtland Milloy is right as well, Clarence Thomas's advocacy for black self-defense is straight from the heart of Malcolm X.



Maybe the national office of the NAACP and other "negro" groups should revisit their own lack of advocacy for black self-defense against these growing so-called Militia groups.

Sen. Robert Byrd, KKK, and Hate

"My obituary will say I was a member of the Ku Klux Klan.”

The blog  Daily Caller.com is following how lots of politico's, including Barack Obama want to have the now deceased U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd to be positively remembered. But they seem to want to forget the facts, some that have been covered in The Washington Post,  that in the early 1940s, a politically ambitious butcher from West Virginia named Bob Byrd recruited 150 of his friends and associates to form a chapter of the Klu Klux Klan. After Byrd had collected the $10 joining fee and $3 charge for a robe and hood from every applicant, the "Grand Dragon" for the mid-Atlantic states came down to tiny Crab Orchard, W.Va., to officially organize the chapter. More HERE about the Senator's Shame.

As the Daily Caller notes, in passing, Sen. Byrd will also be remembered for having joined the Klu Klux Klan as a “young man.” The Right Wing Moon Bats Love It. Look out, the White Sheets of the KKK, will be Flown at Half-Staff Today.

There is more, as reported by Jeff Crouere with the Bayou Buzz.com, before his Senate career, Byrd was a recruiter for the KKK. Three years after he supposedly left the organization, he was still writing letters on behalf of the organization. In 1946, Byrd wrote the Imperial Wizard of the KKK, “The Klan is needed today as never before and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia” and “in every state in the Union.”
After his election to the U.S. Senate, Byrd worked against the landmark 1964 civil rights legislation and even filibustered against the bill.  He voted against the Supreme Court nominations of Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas, two African American nominees, and opposed the desegregation of the armed forces.

As the Daily Caller.com notes, a quick check of this morning’s obituaries reveal that in the eyes of the traditional media, Byrd the Progressive Porker is much more important than Bob the Exalted Cyclops. Byrd joined the Klan at the ripe young age of 24 — hardly a young’un by today’s standards, much less those of 1944, when Byrd refused to join the military because he might have to serve alongside “race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds,” according to a letter Byrd wrote to Sen. Theodore Bilbo at the height of World War II.

Today’s obituaries, however, made little mention of Byrd’s once-deeply held hatred for African Americans. Check out the Daily Caller for a collection of obituary snow jobs on Bob the Exalted Cyclops. Read more: Daily Caller.com

AAPP asks: Should he (Byrd) get a pass for his klan history? How many black folks was Byrd responsible for killing in West Virginia when he served as  Exalted Cyclops?  Are Americans suppose to forget that lynching of Black people in the Southern and border states became an institutionalized method used by whites to terrorize Blacks and maintain white supremacy? Should black politicians forget? Should the media forget? Should the families of those lynched by the KKK forget? Should America forget?  What do you think?

Was he the great emancipator as so many want to make him out to be? Or was he the  “white nigger,” an early 20th-century anachronism that Byrd employed not once, but twice during an interview with Tony Snow.

Before you answer those question read this:

Robert Byrd on his biggest mistake (1993):

“Well, it’s easy to state what has been my biggest mistake. The greatest mistake I ever made was joining the Klu Klux Klan. And I’ve said that many times. But one cannot erase what he has done. He can only change his ways and his thoughts. That was an albatross around my neck that I will always wear. You will read it in my obituary that I was a member of the Klu Klux Klan.”

So... What do you think now? Should we forget, or should Robert Byrd's obituary read that he was not only a member, but a leader in the Ku Klux Klan, an organization that not only  lynched, hanged and shot black men, women and children but also - burned black men women and children at the stake, maiming, dismembering, castrating and using other brutal methods of physical torture and sadism.