Democrat Calls Clarence Thomas ‘Uncle Tom’ Who ‘Sold His Soul to the Slave Masters’ In Debate On Georgia Statue

Georgia Democrat Sen. Emanuel Jones took a state senate debate over a statue to new extremes on Tuesday, likening Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to an “Uncle Tom” who “sold his soul to the slave masters.”

“I’m just trying to tell you what we have in the African American community when we talk about a person of color that goes back historically to the days of slavery and that person betraying his own community – we have a term in the Black community,” began Jones.

“That term that we use is called ‘Uncle Tom'” he declared, before going on to explain that it’s meant to describe “a person who back during the days of slavery sold his soul to the slave masters.” Jones joined the rest of his Democratic colleagues in unsuccessfully opposing a bill to build a statue of Thomas using money raised from private donations for the Peach State’s capitol building on Tuesday. The bill passed the upper chamber of the state legislature by a 12-vote margin.

Thomas, who served as the chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in the Reagan administration before becoming the second African-American to be confirmed to the Supreme Court, was born in Georgia and spent his formative years in the Jim Crow South.

Jones is hardly the first progressive to charge the longest-tenured justice with being a race traitor. In 2014, Mississippi congressman and future January 6th committee chairman Bennie Thompson also called Thomas an Uncle Tom, also submitting that Thomas “doesn’t like Black people” or “being Black.” MSNBC host Joy Reid dubbed Thomas “Uncle Clarence” live on-air on election night 2020.

In a pair of slightly less egregious examples, CNN’s Don Lemon wondered aloud if Thomas should be dismissed as a “sellout” by his fellow African-Americans and Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass — the runner-up to Kamala Harris in Joe Biden’s veepstakes — speculated that “Many people would like to see an African-American on the Supreme Court.”

“We don’t really need to go into Clarence Thomas’ background or his behavior on the Court,” continued Bass, before asserting that there hadn’t been “an African-American voice” on the court “since Thurgood Marshall,” whom Thomas replaced after Marshall’s retirement in 1991.

Last year, the Washington Post ascribed the “thinking of White conservatives” to Thomas while credulously quoting the aforementioned Thompson in a criticism of Thomas.

The Republican-controlled Georgia House and Governor Brian Kemp will likely follow the state senate’s lead and approve of the commemorative measure.

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