During yesterday’s hearing on the nomination of Kristen Clarke to head the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, the nominee was asked about an article she wrote while a student at Harvard. In that article, Clarke argued that Blacks are superior to Whites in numerous respects. We discussed Clarke’s racist claim here.
Clarke told Senators that the article was satire. But, as David Harsanyi points out, there is no evidence to support this claim.
In fact, all contemporary evidence is to the contrary. Around the same time she published her racist article, Clarke invited a rabid anti-Semite, Tony Martin, to speak at Harvard.
The anti-Semite used the platform Clarke provided to excoriate Jews. Clarke praised him for his intelligence and the veracity of his work. Was her praise satirical?
Harsanyi points out that the anti-Semite in question held some of the pseudo-scientific anti-White views Clarke peddled in her article — views that had currency among Black campus radicals at the time. If Clarke had presented these views as satire — to hold them up to ridicule — she would not have invited a blatant racist who promoted them to speak at Harvard and then praised him.
Furthermore, Clarke declined opportunities to say that her article was satire. Staffers at the Harvard Crimson, in which Clarke published her piece, denounced it and demanded a retraction. They noted, correctly, that there isn’t a hint of irony in her article.
Clarke never responded that the article was an attempt at humor. Clearly, it wasn’t.
At least Clarke was being honest back then. Yesterday, she was dishonest — and not just about her racist article.
Her unwillingness to tell the Senators the truth under oath is reason enough not to confirm her.
