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‘This is not about the content of the court’s decisions or Justice Thomas’ personal views,’ the open letter stated

Dozens of academics have signed an open letter that condemned personal attacks on Justice Clarence Thomas in the wake of the reversal of Roe v. Wade.

Signers included Brown University economist Glenn Loury, Hoover Institute Research Fellow Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and dozens of other black academics and community leaders.

RealClearPolitics published the letter July 13.

“We, the undersigned, condemn the barrage of racist, vicious, and ugly personal attacks that we are witnessing on Clarence Thomas – a sitting Supreme Court justice,” the letter stated.

It criticized “[w]hite progressives” who want to “excommunicate a black man from his race because they disagree with him.”

“Whether it is calling him a racist slur, an ‘Uncle Tom’ or questioning his ‘blackness’ over his jurisprudence, the disparagement of this man, of his faith and of his character, is abominable,” the letter stated.

‘White progressives do not have the moral authority to excommunicate a black man from his race because they disagree with him,” it continued.

Some of the signatories agree with the court’s decisions and Thomas’ personal views and some do not, the document stated.

However, it affirmed Thomas as “among the pantheon of black trailblazers throughout American history” and “a model of integrity, scholarship, steadfastness, resilience, and commitment to the Constitution of the United States of America.”

The signatories added that Thomas’ attackers do not speak on behalf of the “majority” of black Americans.

“Character assassination has become too convenient a tool for eviscerating those who dare dissent from the prevailing agenda, especially when it is a black man who is dissenting,” the letter stated.

Dozens of prominent black intellectuals signed the letter

Black civil rights activist Robert Woodson’s name appears alongside Loury’s as the authors of the letter. Woodson is founder and president of The Woodson Center, a nonprofit he founded in 1981 “to help residents of low-income neighborhoods address the problems of their communities,” according to the organization’s website.

Both Loury and Woodson helped create “1776,” a project by conservative black scholars, pastors and activists “to create a counter-narrative to the one created by the NYT’s 1619 Project,” The College Fix reported in February 2020.

Woodson has also been head of the National Urban League Department of Criminal Justice and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Foundation for Public Policy Research.

Other notable academic signatories include Harold Black, emeritus professor at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Tess Chakkalakal, associate professor at Bowdoin College and Roland Fryer, an economist and professor at Harvard.

MORE: Cancel campaign against Clarence Thomas continues

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