I was Catholic. You talk about a minority within a minority within a minority: a black Catholic in Savannah, GA.
Interpretation
Clarence Thomas reflects on his identity as a black Catholic in a culturally complex and challenging environment.
In this quote, Clarence Thomas is highlighting the layered complexities of his identity, being a member of three distinct minority groups—African American, Catholic, and a resident of Savannah, Georgia. This unique positioning shaped his experiences and perspectives, emphasizing how cultural, racial, and religious identities can intersect in profound ways, offering both challenges and insights.
In practice
During a speech on diversity in faith communities, this quote can illustrate the importance of representation.
Even as someone who's labeled a conservative - I'm a Republican I'm black, I'm heading up this organization in the Reagan administration - I can say that conservatives don't exactly break their necks to tell blacks that they're welcome.
We've talked more about civil rights after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than we talked about it before 1964.
Good manners will open doors that the best education cannot.
When I was a kid, we said that we were precluded from going to certain neighborhoods because of the color of our skin Now the neighborhoods are the neighborhoods of ideas, youre not supposed to be there because of the color of your skin.
The myths that are created about the South, about the way we grew up, about black people, are wrong.
Fundamentalism as it is called is not confined to the Muslim world. It is something that we have seen in different parts of the world. Let us hope that a dialogue between the followers of the three great monotheistic religions could help in putting an end to this.
We are compelled by reflection to recognize that God is not to be placed against the material world [as in Christianity], but must be placed as a 'divine power' or 'moving spirit' within the cosmos itself ... All the wonderful phenomena of nature around us, organic as well as inorganic, are only various products of one and the same original force.
It's a controlling thing on stage - you're directing the action, getting people to play their role. In real life, I take being kind and nice seriously, so the last thing I'd ever want to be is that weird, controlling, manipulative character.
For, in truth, an image is only dead matter shaped by the craftsman's hand. But we have no sensible image of sensible matter, but an image that is perceived by the mind alone: God, who alone is truly God.
She mixes religion with desertion to make it sound noble.
I am beginning to believe that nothing can ever be proved. These are honest hypotheses which take the facts into account: but I sense so definitely that they come from me, and that they are simply a way of unifying my own knowledge. Not a glimmer comes from Rollebon's side. Slow, lazy, sulky, the facts adapt themselves to the rigour of the order I wish to give them; but it remains outside of them. I have the feeling of doing a work of pure imagination.
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