"I can attest that to speak as a black man often at odds with the stated consensus of his fellow blacks can be liberating."

"Just as often, however, race becomes a burdensome constraint on how one’s statements are received. For some, I will always be speaking, thinking, and acting 'as a black man.' The specter of race always threatens to impart an undue exemplarity to whatever I—or whatever any black people—say or do, as though the firing of every synapse in our brains could be traced back to a racial origin. In that sense, race is both qualifying and disqualifying—a reason to believe a speaker’s account of himself (for, of course, blacks are always 'authentic') and, at the same time, a reason to disbelieve it (for, of course, a black person would say that)...."

Writes Glenn Loury in "Clarence Thomas and Me/To speak as a black man at odds with the consensus of other blacks can be burdensome—and liberating." (City Journal)

The loyalty trap does not spring unexpectedly and maim you; it welcomes you in and fills you with the warmth of comradeship. That is what makes it so deadly: it feels good to be trapped....

Thomas is often accused of bitterness.... I, too, have felt that bitterness. To some extent, I even gave in to it when I became something of a liberal in the 1990s and 2000s. At the time, when I “left” conservatism, I did so because I could no longer endorse its attitude toward race problems in America. But some part of me also wanted to be free of the burden of dishonor that my thought and beliefs had accorded me in the eyes of black peers....

For his part, Thomas seems never to have wavered....