In 1980 Thomas Sowell Received Backlash from the Civil Rights Establishment When Rumors Swirled He Was Joining the Reagan Admin, He Wasn’t

Reporter: “Because of some of the views that you take, which are considered by the professional civil rights leaders, who are traditional Democrats, they say that you are insensitive and they’re concerned that if you become a prominent person in the Reagan Administration, that you will harm black people. And one NAACP official is quoted as saying the following: ‘He,’ referring to you, ‘would play the same kind of role which historically the ‘house (bleep)’ played for the plantation owners. He could mete out the straight discipline. No matter how inhumanely administered, it would be presumed more acceptable because the hands of the disciplinarian are black.’”
SOWELL: “Pure (bleep). This kind of contemptible business is typical of what you find among people who have no arguments, no facts, no evidence, and who simply have to defend themselves and the positions they’ve taken. I think the NAACP itself is much more in the image of the ‘house (bleep),’ that they are simply the (bleep)-end of the civil rights — of the liberal white establishment. They follow wherever the head leads, and if that leads them to destroy opportunities for blacks, they do it because that keeps them in with the white philanthropists who support them, the white media who back them up, the editorial columns and elsewhere. It’s typical of the kind of garbage to which they’re reduced by the lack of anything better that they can offer.”