06 Jun 2013 Project 21 Members Echo Justice Thomas Comments on Elitist Expectations for Blacks

During a recent interview with C-Span, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas took the Washington establishment and the media to task for their intense love of President Obama and virtually everything he does while — at the same time — exhibiting mostly disdain for black conservatives and their opinions.

Asked if he ever expected to see a black person elected to the American presidency during his lifetime, Thomas replied that what he “always knew is that it would have to be a black president who was approved by the elites and the media.”

Thomas added that “any black person who says something that is not the prescribed things that they expect from a black person will be picked apart.”

And Clarence Thomas, of all people, should know.  For his own conservative beliefs, he went through a brutal Senate confirmation battle related to his nomination to the Court in 1991.  And he’s endured vicious treatment at the hands of liberals ever since.

Black conservatives with the Project 21 black leadership network echo Justice Thomas on his views of the D.C. elite, the media and their supporters and can relate to the demands on black conservatives to the liberal line.

For example, Project 21 member Darryn “Dutch” Martin, a former member of the diplomatic corps who now lives in D.C., said:

One need only compare the horrible way that Justice Thomas is treated by the mainstream media over his entire career to the media’s “walk-on-water” treatment of President Obama during his entire tenure in office.  One can see a glaring difference.  Justice Thomas has probably been called every nasty name in the book over his entire tenure on the High Court — many times by the mainstream media.  Yet Chris Matthews apparently still hasn’t gotten over that “thrill up his leg” he got when Barack Obama was first running for the White House in 2008.

Project 21 member Lisa Fritsch, an author and radio host who lives in Austin, Texas, also sees the need for blacks to toe a political line as an even broader demand of the elite.  Lisa believes that all blacks are expected to behave in the same manner of groupthink, from the highest to the lowest levels of black America.  She said:

It is more than what the media expects.  It is what they have demanded of blacks: that we group think and hate conservatives.

This feeling of a need on the part of the liberal establishment for a legion of like-minded blacks is echoed by Project 21 member Jimmie L. Hollis, a veteran of the U.S. Air Force and tea party activist in southern New Jersey.  Citing pressures in the black community to conform to liberal political ideology, Jimmie said:

I agree with Justice Thomas.  As long as blacks toe the politically correct line and stay within the liberal guidelines of speech and actions, they will win the approval and the smiles of the liberal elites.