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.
Lie is more worth living, more full of interest when you are likely to lose it. It shouldn't be, perhaps, but it is. When you're young and strong and healthy, and life stretches ahead of you, living isn't really important at all. It's young people who commit suicide easily, out of despair from love, sometimes from sheer anxiety and worry. But old people know how valuable life is and how interesting. - Jane Marple
I realize that I'm black, but I like to be viewed as a person, and this is everybody's wish.
But most it is presumption in us when the help of heaven we count the act of men.
Remember that you are an actor in a play, and that the Playwright chooses the manner of it: If he wants you to act a poor man you must act the part with all your powers; and so if your part be a cripple or a magistrate or a plain man. For your business is to act the character that is given you and act it well. The choice of the cast is Another's.
Our daily deeds as ordinary South Africans must produce an actual South African reality that will reinforce humanity's belief in justice, strengthen its confidence in the nobility of the human soul, and sustain all our hopes for a glorious life for all.
We are little flames poorly sheltered by frail walls against the storm of dissolution and madness, in which we flicker and sometimes almost go out…we creep in upon ourselves and with big eyes stare into the night…and thus we wait for morning.
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