I am just a lead customer service representative at a hospital, a miniscule cog in a gargantuan rolling wheel, devoid of any real power to change things. Apart from the members of my immediate family, nobody really takes me seriously. Because for many people, a word of wisdom imparted from a person like me, someone regarded as inherently dispensable, is not worth heeding.
So then, why am I confident in my belief that millions of people share my view on Clarence Thomas, the second black man to serve on the United States Supreme Court? Well, one of the great things about my job is that I have become a master at performing it. My modest health services career does not bleed into life after work, nor does it require the application of concentrated brainpower.
In fact, job performance and promotions have become a secondary consideration for me. My goal is to gain insight about the wider world, especially in the area of politics and public policy. Therefore, I read for multiple hours every single day during client phone calls, lunch breaks, and for hours before my prescribed bedtime.
Yesterday, as I pored over an article written about Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first black female Supreme Court Justice, I became even more curious about the Supreme Court. So I performed a google search until happening upon an online article written by Hayes Brown, a columnist for MSNBC Daily. In his article, Jackson, Thomas, and the end of the Supreme Court’s Black seat, Brown writes about the historical significance of having two black Supreme Court justices — Clarence Thomas, a right wing conservative and Ketanji Brown Jackson, progressive liberal — serving at the same time. Hayes put forth this prediction: “On issues from abortion to voting rights to the power of the presidency, the two are certain to clash. But when they begin to serve together, there will be a roundness to the Black experience represented in the final arbiters of our Constitution.” After reading the quote I actually smiled and thought, Finally, there will be a counterweight to Clarence Thomas, embodied in the form of a black woman.
Hayes Browns also writes extensively about Thurgood Marshall, the civil rights icon who became the very first black Supreme Court Justice. As the only black progressive man serving on the court during the second half of the previous century, Marshall, in addition to being an adjudicator, took on the additional role of informal educator. Through his explicit teaching, Thurgood Marshall enlightened the minds of his white colleagues on the court, opening their eyes. Sandra day O’Connor, the first woman appointed to a seat on the court, appreciated Marshall’s efforts, saying “by the power of his presence — a power gained through his life experience — reminded us…that judges, as safe guarders of the Constitution, must constantly strive to narrow the gap between the idea of equal justice and the reality of social inequality.”
After Thurgood Marshall announced his retirement from the bench in 1991, there was alacritous chatter about replacing him with another black person. Marshall was somewhat skeptical of this method for choosing his successor, arguing against the elevation of the wrong kind of black man. During an interview in June 1991, a candid and irascible Marshall said this: “I don’t think race should be used as an excuse one way or the other…I mean for picking the wrong Negro and saying, ‘I’m picking him because he’s a Negro. I am opposed to that. There is no difference between a white snake and black snake. They both bite.” President George Herbert Walker Bush, eager to appoint a “principled” conservative, went on to select Clarence Thomas, a very young (age 43) and conservative black man.
After Clarence Thomas was confirmed to his seat on the court, there was hardly any discontent in the black community. Although a staunch conservative justice, Thomas was still a black man who’d spent his formative years in Pin Point, Georgia, an area founded in 1896 by freed slaves. So, of course Thomas was aware of racism’s deleterious impact on black lives over centuries. In an article for the St. Louis Dispatch in 1990, Hal Riedl wrote this about the selection of Thomas: “the perspective of a black judge is indispensable, and black Americans need to know that their experience will be represented in these discussions.”
Riedl assumed Thomas would speak from the perspective of millions of black Americans, traditionally undervalued voices in our American society. Riedl explained his reasoning for guarded optimism: “he(Thomas) is less a conservative than a man who chose the Republican Party, less congested with black rivals, as his career path. Once free of the political constraints that have at once shaped and limited him and having taken possession of that unique combination of power and independence that adorns a member of the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas may display some fire and bite.”
The NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) was less assured about Clarence Thomas, as they would have preferred a judge who espoused the same values as Thurgood Marshall. Still, the NAACP operated in line with the larger black society, opting for a wait and see approach with Justice Thomas. In fact, Black Americans, in general, were lukewarm about Thomas. Slightly above fifty percent of black Americans were in favor of Thomas’ ascension to the court, while a very small percentage were against his nomination outright. Few blacks imagined Clarence Thomas embodying the slithering metaphor employed by the late Thurgood Marshall.
Nevertheless, after thirty years of watching Clarence Thomas hand down opinions that create barriers for traditional marginalized communities, the majority of black people now realize that Clarence Thomas is indeed the snake Thurgood Marshall warned us about. Today, only eighteen percent of black Americans approve of the job that Clarence Thomas is doing as a Supreme Court justice. That is an incredibly low approval rating, since a black person of Thomas’ caliber should expect to enjoy a much higher approval within the broader black community. Barack Obama, the first black president of the United States, routinely polled in between eighty to ninety-five percent.
Recently, Thomas joined four other conservatives in striking down Roe v. Wade, effectively sundering the right to body autonomy for millions of American women. This decision will disproportionately affect the lives of black women and other women of color, as a significant amount of these women lack the monetary resources needed to travel out of state for abortion care. Some white supporters of abortion rights have expressed their anger with Thomas by protesting vociferously at his home residence. Many others have aired their grievances through various social media platforms. Unfortunately, some people have resorted to employing racist language when publishing their criticisms about the longest serving Supreme Court Justice, which is never good. People should be able to criticize the man without using racialized language.
Moveon.org, a progressive public policy group, has advocated for the impeachment of Thomas, receiving approbation from more than one million individuals through a signed petition. However, Thomas remains laser focused on his mission to roll back civil rights, encouraging rightwing ideologues to advance cases that threaten the existences of women, people of color, and queer people, all of whom are traditionally marginalized members of our society. Thomas clings to an antiquated notion of what is right and wrong, often to the detriment of the most vulnerable in our society.
Americans of every stripe profoundly despise Clarence Thomas. However, the entrenched disapproval of Thomas in the black community is more biting and subversive. Some black Americans refer to Clarence Thomas as “Uncle Clarence”, a derisive sobriquet to ascribe to any black man. Whenever I hear someone refer to Clarence Thomas as “Uncle”, I think of Uncle Ruckus, the hilarious and clueless cartoon character from the Boondocks series. Uncle Ruckus is a black man who despises black people, a traitor espousing white supremacy and domination. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, written by Harriet Beacher Stowe, an abolitionist, is a story about a tragic character, a servile black man who forgives the people who enslave and ultimately kill him. That is how black people see Clarence Thomas, as a tragic figure and a disappointment, a debased individual lacking basic self-respect and character.
The Supreme Court, consisting of six reactionary conservatives and three more progressive liberals, is set to reconvene this October. These nine justices will hear arguments on affirmative action, the constriction of voting rights, and religious liberty. Clarence Thomas, regarded as the most conservative of all the Supreme Court justices, is expected to vote with the other primitive constructionists. And Thomas is likely to go further in his refutation of black rights and LGBTQ protections, thereby increasing the pervasive and acute enmity directed at him. But Justice Thomas, who is set on bending society to match his world view, will most likely not care. This vindictive and spiteful man welcomes the hatred.
The snake is poised to bite.