The Patriot Post® · Amazon Black-Holes Clarence Thomas

Of Black History Month, actor Morgan Freeman famously said it was “ridiculous.” In a 2005 interview with Mike Wallace of “60 Minutes,” Freeman contended, “You’re going to relegate my history to a month? … Which is White History Month? Come on, tell me. … I don’t want a Black History Month. Black history is American history.”

A clearly flummoxed Wallace wondered, “How are we going to get rid of racism?” Freeman shot back, “Stop talking about it.”

Well, the mainstream media led the charge in doing the exact opposite, elevating the Left’s insistence of identity politics above all else. In truth, Black History Month is really not about celebrating the accomplishments of black Americans. Instead, it is yet another instrument cultural leftists have used to further their political agenda of identitarianism.

A demonstration of this reality comes from tech giant Amazon, which suddenly removed the highly acclaimed and popular 2019 PBS documentary “Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words” from its Prime streaming service — during Black History Month. This action was taken despite the fact that Amazon’s streaming service actively promoted an entire section titled “Amplify Black Voices,” which it advertised as “a curated collection of titles to honor Black History Month across four weekly themes (Black Love, Black Joy, Black History Makers, and Black Girl Magic).” Why isn’t the nation’s lone living black Supreme Court justice worthy of a slot? (That’s rhetorical.)

Making matters worse, Amazon’s “Amplify Black Voices” featured two films celebrating Anita Hill, the woman who famously and falsely accused Thomas of sexual harassment during the confirmation hearings he called a “high-tech lynching.” Meanwhile, the only other black American to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, the late Justice Thurgood Marshall, is highlighted in two docudramas and two documentaries. This, of course, has everything to do with the fact that Marshall is an icon of the Left, whereas Thomas, a brilliant conservative thinker, serves to undercut the racial identitarianism of the Left.

The “Created Equal” DVD is still technically for sale but is no longer available on Amazon (sold out?). This is similar to Amazon’s recent move to suddenly, without notice or explanation, scrub Ryan T. Anderson’s book When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment from its site.

The Left uses race as a cudgel to promote and popularize stereotypes onto groups in order to divide Americans along identity and ideology lines. By conflating identity with ideology, the Left aims to deflect legitimate criticism of its bankrupt ideology. Since identifies are intrinsically personal and therefore emotive, and ideologies are not, to criticize an identity is to attack an individual’s personhood, whereas criticizing an ideology is to contend with a person’s ideas.

That’s ultimately the reason Amazon black-holed Justice Clarence Thomas during Black History Month, lest any black American identify with someone other than those espousing the Left’s ideology.