The Enigma of Clarence Thomas
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- USD 14.99
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- USD 14.99
Descripción editorial
The Enigma of Clarence Thomas is a groundbreaking revisionist take on the Supreme Court justice everyone knows about but no one knows.
“One of the marvels of Robin’s razor-sharp book is how carefully he marshals his evidence.... It isn’t every day that reading about ideas can be both so gratifying and unsettling.” – The New York Times
Most people can tell you two things about Clarence Thomas: Anita Hill accused him of sexual harassment, and he almost never speaks from the bench. Here are some things they don’t know: Thomas is a black nationalist. In college he memorized the speeches of Malcolm X. He believes white people are incurably racist.
In the first examination of its kind, Corey Robin– one of the foremost analysts of the right (The Reactionary Mind) – delves deeply into both Thomas’s biography and his jurisprudence, masterfully reading his Supreme Court opinions against the backdrop of his autobiographical and political writings and speeches. The hidden source of Thomas’s conservative views, Robin shows, is a profound skepticism that racism can be overcome. Thomas is convinced that any government action on behalf of African-Americans will be tainted by racism; the most African-Americans can hope for is that white people will get out of their way.
There’s a reason, Robin concludes, why liberals often complain that Thomas doesn’t speak but seldom pay attention when he does. Were they to listen, they’d hear a racial pessimism that often sounds similar to their own. Cutting across the ideological spectrum, this unacknowledged consensus about the impossibility of progress is key to understanding today’s political stalemate.
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Robin (The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump), a political science teacher at CUNY, offers a radical reinterpretation of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's jurisprudence, contending that Thomas is first and foremost a kind of conservative black nationalist. He argues that Thomas's opinions are driven not by a coherent theory of constitutional law but by personal experience, particularly his upbringing: Robin recounts that Thomas, deserted by his father, was raised by his successful and idealized capitalist grandfather, who felt making money was the salvation of black America and was therefore pro-deregulation. Robin deconstructs Thomas's decisions on high-profile issues including racial discrimination, voting rights, the Second Amendment, and campaign finance, concluding that, for example, Thomas considers affirmative action a tool of elite Americans to protect their privilege and stigmatize African-Americans, and that it is imperative that the Second Amendment extend to personal gun ownership because historically arms were necessary for the protection of black citizens in a racist and hostile society. Robin credibly mines Thomas's speeches, opinions, and writings in support of his thesis, but the weight he gives to Thomas's formative experiences feels overstated, and his conclusions are simultaneously too speculative and too pat to sway skeptics. Nonetheless, this novel view of the often-inscrutable Thomas will give court watchers food for thought.
