ABSTRACT
This chapter considers Clarence Thomas, whose biggest appeal is that he will stand in and speak for all black people while speaking exclusively about himself. Clarence Thomas looked like Horatio Alger, Miss Jane Pittman, and Colin Powell all wrapped into one. The newspapers reported that Malcolm X was one of Clarence Thomas's role models. The substitution of role models for complete understanding of the political implications of certain philosophical doctrines results in the privatization of the political, and shifts focus from the implications of philosophy to the personalities of its proponents. One reason is a sociopolitical climate in which both formal and informal burdens of proof make it harder and harder to have anything recognized as discrimination. Another is a kind of calculated confusion and rhetorical gaming, of which the spectacle of Clarence Thomas's hearing was exemplary, and which clouds all discussion of the rights of minorities and women in the United States, and of Thomas himself.
