The year of nappy-headed hos, the year Eddie Murphy kept quitting, the year of the Jena Six, the year Bill Cosby quit being funny (Or was that more like ‘83?), the year of Barack Obama’s potential, we also learned that Kara Walker and Clarence Thomas are seething with a black rage nearly indistinguishable from each other. Walker’s show won near-universal praise–indeed, I rated it my favorite art show of 2007 (post forthcoming)–while Thomas’s won, predictably, near-universal condemnation. (”The problem with black-and-white portraits is also that they produce cartoons where there might have been nuance” is actually a line from a review of Thomas’s book.) But the anger (and sometimes loathing) seem to come from the same place in black psychology. In some upcoming posts, the Ghosts will look for these similarities, as well as elaborating on the year in racism that was.