I love me some Dr. Julianne Malvaeux and it ain’t hard to get me to tell you why. Dr. Julianne Malvaeux had been unbought and unbossed for all of her life. She ain’t knew to the liberation party, she threw the party.
Her name and reputation has been attacked lately. Dr. Malveaux made a statement to the public that many black activists have made in private. She intimated that she would not be hurt if Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas added a lot of eggs and other unhealthy staples to his daily regimen.
Fox News gave a pretty good background on their website a couple of weeks ago.
Malveux issued an apology for the remark in 2011, clarifying that her comment was a “wisecrack” misconstrued as hate speech after Thomas said he would live to 120 to stay on the court to “frustrate liberals.”
“I replied that the average black man had a life expectancy of about 65, and that if his wife fed him lots of butter and eggs, ingredients for high cholesterol and heart trouble, he’d die an early death,” she explained.
This matter cropped up again this week as Dr. Malveaux earned a new job. She is the incoming dean of Cal State University Los Angeles’ newly created College of Ethnic Studies.
Dr. Malveaux is more than qualified and her detractors are left with dew arguments against her except that statement about Injustice Clarence Thomas.
Malveaux entered Boston College after the 11th grade and within three years she earned two Economics degrees, a Bachelor’s and a Master’s. She went on to secure a Ph.D. in economics from MIT and has a few honorary degrees to boot.
But they had the nerve to, and holds honorary degrees from Benedict College, Sojourner- Douglass College and the University of the District of Columbia.
As a standing Supreme Court Justice, Thomas is by far the least popular in history and for good reason. The jury of nine is now overrepresented with Conservative extremists and Thomas is among the worst. Thomas never met a law that favored White Privilege that he did not like. He is the portrait of Black self-hate and self-loathing.
Supreme Court Justices are granted a lifetime appointment and are to be apolitical in their carriage of justice. SCOTUS decisions over the past decade have proved that the court is more political now than ever.
When you read articles about Supreme Court decisions they rarely even mention Clearance Thomas. He never writes a significant opinion for the Court, never speaks publicly, and is notorious as the least likely to proffer an independent thought.
Injustice Thomas made a decision early on that he would whatever it took to be accepted by the powerful and elite in the Republican Party. Dr. Malveaux will not accommodate or acquiesce and that’s what I love about her. She admitted that her comments may have been mean- spirited, but she stood by the context of her comments.
“While acknowledging that the comment was in “poor taste,” she said that the apology “does not mitigate or reduce my contempt for Clarence Thomas and for his arrogant dismissal of liberals and for the African American community.”
She also claimed that her words were distorted by conservatives who have “both fingerprints and footprints in the poisoned language that poses as free speech.”
Dr. Malveaux is picture perfect for Cal-State’s newest mission. She will develop leaders “who will engage in rigorous, self-reflexive study that motivates critical engagement, self-determination and decolonial understandings of the world.” And we need them now.
According to the statement she released defending her past opinions, she made another brilliant observation.
“Learning about people of color, learning about marginalized people, learning the whole of American history is as important as learning quantum physics or English literature.”
Clarence Thomas should enroll in this class. It’s never too late to learn!
Vincent L. Hall is an author activist, and an award-winning columnist.
Vincent L. Hall is an author, activist, and award-winning columnist.
