Bill To Honor Clarence Thomas With a Statue at Georgia’s State Capitol Meets Backlash From Democratic Lawmakers

Georgia lawmakers are set to take up a bill that would have a statue of Justice Clarence Thomas erected at the state Capitol, and the proposal is already drawing fire from the justice’s critics.On Tuesday, republicans on the Georgia House’s Rules Committee are set to consider the bill, proposed by a state representative, Ben Watson, who represents the district where Justice Thomas was born.“This native son of Georgia deserves a place of honor and recognition on our Capitol grounds, a place where future generations of Georgians can learn valuable lessons from his legacy and gain inspiration and the belief that their lofty dreams are attainable too in America,” Mr. Watson, who is a longtime friend of Justice Thomas’s family, said on the floor of the state House.The measure would approve the erecting of a statue, which would be built using private funds, and the state House would oversee its construction.It’s not the first time that Mr. Watson has pushed to pass the bill. Since first introducing the measure in 2021, Mr. Watson has been struggling to get the bill through the state House.Mr. Watson has explained that he supports the measure because he sees Justice Thomas’s life as a story that Georgians can take inspiration from. Many lawmakers — Black Democrats in particular — see the issue differently.The bill has already drawn fierce criticism from opponents of Justice Thomas in Georgia, like a state senator, Emanuel Jones, who attacked Justice Thomas’s record on the Court.“In the Black community, we have an expression — and I don’t want to use this label too deeply here because 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,” Mr. Jones said on the state Senate floor. “That term that we use is ‘Uncle Tom.’”Mr. Jones added, “When we think about a person in the Black community who’s accomplished, but yet whose policies seek to subvert — some may even say suppress — the achievements and accomplishments of people of color, I couldn’t help but think about that term.”The statue bill is not the first time that efforts to honor Justice Thomas have met with public backlash. In 2001, members of the Savannah-Chatham County library board turned down an offer from billionaire Harlan Crow to complete renovations at a local branch if they named it after Justice Thomas.“Clarence Thomas has never cared anything about Black folks and he made that very clear to us,” one library board member, Robert Brooks, told the Savannah Morning News at the time. “I call him Judas because he sold his people out.”The library board later made a counter offer to Mr. Crow, saying that if he paid for the construction of a new wing for the library they would name it after Justice Thomas, who spent time at the library as a child.Other state Democrats, like Nikki Merritt of the state Senate, have suggested that any measure to honor Justice Thomas right now would be premature, citing Justice Thomas’s wife’s involvement with efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.“At minimum, this bill should be tabled until such time that Justice Thomas and his wife are cleared of collaboration in this dark chapter in our history,” Ms. Merritt told the Current. “This is not the type of shame we want to enshrine on Capitol grounds.”

Bill To Honor Clarence Thomas With a Statue at Georgia’s State Capitol Meets Backlash From Democratic Lawmakers

Bill To Honor Clarence Thomas With a Statue at Georgia’s State Capitol Meets Backlash From Democratic Lawmakers

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