There is nothing "smarter" about deciding to trash your entire race because white people will reward you for doing it. There's a cold blooded short-term-individual-self-interested case for what he did, but nothing in any sense equivalent to wisdom.

The Black community- and especially his own sister, whom he slandered as a stereotypical "welfare mother"- the kind of person that only exists in right-wing myth- when she had only been on welfare for two years, and only WENT on welfare because she had to quit her job to take care of the elderly relatives he had been taking care of but no longer could because affirmative action got him into law school- the Black community did NOTHING to deserve "Justice" Thomas building a political career out of insulting and disrespecting it for the benefit of his white overlords.