PERSPECTIVE ON POLITICS : With Friends Like These . . . : The legacy of the Thomas affair for blacks may be a split with liberals and an unholy alliance with the right.

President Bush scored a resounding victory. First, he divided black Americans on his nomination of Judge Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court; then, in the wake of Prof. Anita Faye Hill’s allegations and their painful recitation and debate in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, he won their overwhelming support for Thomas’ confirmation. How are we to understand black America’s support for a Supreme Court candidate seemingly so out of step with the mainstream of black political thought?

Initially, blacks were clearly divided by Bush’s transparently cynical ploy of replacing Justice Thurgood Marshall with a symbolic figure whose only similarity to his distinguished predecessor is the color of his skin.

On the one hand, “racial solidarity” and pride motivated some blacks to look favorably upon having another of their race on the court. They felt a genuine need to have a black perspective rooted in their experience brought to bear in discussions and decisions that will dearly affect their lives and those of their children.

But Thomas’ conservative views, especially on affirmative action and government support of black economic progress, are diametrically opposed to the mainstream of African-American political opinion.

Increasingly, blacks and whites are polarized on the issues of affirmative action and government support for black economic advancement, with most blacks in favor and most whites against such programs. Clearly, Thomas’ views on these issues reflect more closely those of whites than blacks.

Nevertheless, before Prof. Hill’s accusations, blacks were, according to most polls, split on Thomas’ confirmation (major black political and lobbying organizations opposed it). But Hill’s accusations and the debates in final hearings brought about a curious turnaround in the black community. On the eve of the Senate vote, President Bush could gleefully point out that blacks supported Thomas by a 2-to-1 margin.

Black solidarity increased for Judge Thomas precisely because of the rationale, first publicly provided by the judge in his testimony, and repeated ad nauseam by the Republican members of the committee, that Thomas was a victim of a “media lynching” organized by a coterie of women’s and liberal groups.

In a strategy that we now know was supported by the resources of the White House, the committee plunged America into the recesses of its racist past, a past we have not yet transcended--and a past in which blacks were viewed as a particularly “libidinous” people, possessed of extraordinary sexual organs and uncontrollable lust. Such a scenario runs deep in the psyches of black Americans, who have all felt the pain of these accusations against black men who dared smile at a white woman, only to be found later mutilated and castrated for their sin against the prevailing racial order.

But the solidarity that many blacks expressed for Thomas turned old enemies into new political bedfellows and old allies into potentially new enemies. The supporters of a “racialized” view of the accusation were none other than conservative Republicans--among them, politicians who, only 40 years ago, may have passed the noose that went around the neck of a black man accused of saying to a white woman what Thomas was accused of saying to Hill.

The Democrats ineffectively attempted to run from the charge by dismissing it as preposterous rather than by demonstrating its political and manipulative use by the Republicans, including President Bush. The Democrats then clearly became the enemy to many blacks, whose memories of past injustices are framed by sexual stereotypes.

In making this collective bond with conservative Republicans on this highly charged issue, African-Americans are now on a collision course with many of the traditional constituencies of the Democratic Party, especially those elements of the women’s movement that represented the most vociferous opponents of Thomas’ nomination and the most outspoken supporters of Hill’s charges. I am sure that the President himself could not have predicted such a fortuitous consequence of his cynical choice of Thomas.

In this time of crisis, African-Americans must reexamine and reaffirm their fundamental ideological and political beliefs. They must not be blinded by the cynical politics that have forced them into overwhelming support of a nominee to the Supreme Court whose ideology and philosophy will clash with the needs and aspirations of the majority of black people.

African-Americans need to think strategically about the potential of coalition politics in which women’s issues and those of blacks unite against a “white male” vote that has managed to ensure domination of national politics by the Republican Party for more than a decade.

Indeed, it would be the African-American community’s greatest loss if Bush’s diabolical nomination of Clarence Thomas and the racialization of the charges of sexual harassment became the impetus for an unholy alliance of black nationalists, former segregationists and free-marketeers. Not only would the Supreme Court be lost for the next half-century, but black political power would be diverted into an escape from reality.

The black community cannot allow the pain of the past week to push them into the empty rhetoric of self-serving politicians who have, at least up to this point in time, shown little interest in or concern for black America.