← Slow Burn
Slow Burn
S8 Live Announcement & Bonus Conversation
00:25:45
Host Joel Anderson is interviewed by Slate's Dahlia Lithwick.
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Transcript26 lines
- [00:01]
A
Hey, I'm Elise Hu, host of the podcast TED Talks Daily. Did you know paylocity offers one platform for HR finance and it that means innovative solutions like on demand payment which offers employees access to wages prior to payday, flexible time tracking features which enables staff to clock in through their mobile device and numerous other cutting edge integrations are available to all your teams in one single place. Learn more about how Paylocity can help streamline work and bring teams together@paylocity.com webinar 1.
- [00:37]
B
Hey listeners, it's Joel Anderson, host of Slow Burn Becoming Justice Thomas. I'm here with a couple of announcements and a special conversation. So in case you missed it, just a week after our last episode, the Supreme Court voted to eliminate race based admissions in higher education. Clarence Thomas was part of the majority in the 63 ruling and wrote a concurrence attacking such admissions programs. He described them as rudderless race based preferences designed to ensure a particular racial mix. If you listen to our season, you know that Justice Thomas benefited from affirmative action at a few key moments in his career, yet was convinced that it held him back. Now that the decision is out, there's so much more to talk about, which is why we're hosting a live event later this month in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, July 25th. I'll be joined by special guests including Thomas's old college friend Eddie Jenkins, legal scholar and MSNBC commentator Melissa Murray, and at least one senator from the Judiciary Committee. And I'll be dishing out a few more juicy stories that we couldn't fit in the series. There'll be music, drinks and great conversation. So if you're in D.C. on Tuesday, July 25, please come join us. Just go to slate.com slow burn live again, that's slate.com slow burn live. Slate+ members get a special discount. And listen, if you can't make the live show, the next best thing might be this interview I did with Dahlia Lithwick, host of Slate's Amicus podcast. Amicus is Slate's podcast all about the Supreme Court. In this episode, I talk a lot more about how I reported this season of Slow Burn, Clarence Thomas's anger issues and what his mom really thinks of Jenni Thomas. I think you'll enjoy it. So without further ado, here's host Dahlia Lithwick.
- [02:28]
C
So Joel, first and foremost, thank you for being with us.
- [02:33]
D
Oh absolutely, my pleasure. Thanks for having me on Dahlia.
- [02:35]
C
I guess I just have a bajillion questions having listened to the show, but the one that I am sort of stuck in the thing that is so interesting to me as somebody who, you know, I've read Justice Thomas's autobiography. I sort of probably know as much of this material as a lot of people. And yet I'm just so struck by the sort of instability of his identity. You know, the idea that this is somebody who, you know, within the span of just like a very short handful of years, went from plans to be a priest at seminary to embracing deeply black nationalism, to pinging from that to reverence from Thomas Sowell and Ayn Rand. And it just feels to me like if I could knit together the whole narrative of the person that you offer. Joel is just somebody who's looking for a home, and he's so famished for home that he just keeps landing in these situations that are like almost like parodies of political movements and intellectual movements.
- [03:53]
D
Yeah, he's unmoored. When this all got started, I kept referring to him as a person without people, and that's how it always kind of felt to me. Especially like, as a child, he had this very difficult upbringing. There was not a lot of affection or love that was shown toward him. And so you can imagine in talking with people that knew him, that he was desirous of having people that appreciated him, people that wanted to be around him. He wanted friends. And so it makes sense that especially as a child, that you do the thing that your parents or your guardians want you to do. So that was where the priesthood thing comes in. Well, then he. That doesn't work out. He goes to school. He's school in the late 60s, this time of tremendous social upheaval. And what's cooler than being. If you're a young black man, what's cooler than being a Black Panther at that time? And the way that they talked and the way that they dressed, and that is a way to draw people toward you. Well, that doesn't work out. He once decides, I want to go be straight and narrow. And then he finds himself in company with all of these Republicans who not only want to associate with him, but they also want to pay him. They also want to elevate him. They want to give him opportunities. And you could see how easily somebody that is just looking for somebody to welcome him in could be taken with that. And, you know, the GOP pipeline today and certainly 40 years ago, it's very seductive. There's a lot of money behind it, if you're the right guy. And so, yeah, I think he kind of settled on an identity which is not to say that he's not sincere in his beliefs, but certainly the way into that GOP machine was that they wanted him, they recruited him, and they cultivated him.
- [05:31]
C
One of the. Through lines, through all of the episodes is this laughter, this, like, great booming laugh. And you have, like, several people actually try to do. Not great impressions of it. It's certainly something, you know, as somebody who watched him on the court, it's so arresting. And I think Lillian McEwan tells you it's not even real. Like, she thinks it's put on Former girlfriend who really, really feels as though by the end, when he becomes a sort of conservative legal movement superstar, he's entirely. I think her word is masked. But I want you to tell me about this interplay between this huge laughter and this sort of, like, Bonhommey, you know, hail, fellow, well met. Like, I love life, Clarence Thomas. And then there's this kind of counter programming about his anger. His anger, his anger. You know, most notably at his confirmation hearing where he just tears a strip out of the Senate. Can you help me think about again? It's just such an extreme set of performed identities. Is he a rage monster, or is he just, like, the cuddliest, warmest, I love my life, gregarious guy.
- [07:01]
D
I mean, it's tough, and I don't want to have to choose because I actually think he's both. And, you know, as somebody that, as a Supreme Court expert, the people that know him well and have spent time away from him, you know, out of the robes, away from the bench, say that he is the warmest, nicest, kindest, funniest person that they've met. There's a guy. It's actually funny. In the middle of the podcast being released last month, somebody reached out to me via Facebook and said I wrote a letter to Clarence Thomas criticizing him for his legal opinions. And he wrote back to me and welcomed me into his chambers and then helped me with my law school references. And he was very nice, and he's been very helpful to me in my career. I'm not a Republican, but that's just who he is. And I'm like, you know, man, he shows that side to a lot of people, but I think the people that he presumes are enemies or critics. That's where you get all the anger. And I think that anger, like, goes all the way back to his youth. Like, I think that anger is sincere, and it's like it's been honed over the years, and he's figured out the people that he needs to deploy it against. But I really do think that it's both that he's a very fun guy, that he may indeed like hanging out in Walmart parking lots and hanging laughing and drinking beer with Harlan Crow, but also think that he has very sincere of the people that have, in his mind, have made his life difficult. We can say a lot of things about Clarence Thomas. I do believe that he's had a difficult life and that he has been deeply wounded by the people that don't like him, that don't respond to this warm part of him.
- [08:33]
C
So that actually leads me to another line that was really arresting for me. I think in your episode three, you know, he says about eventually finding what you're describing as his people, his home, in the sort of Reagan extreme conservative legal movement. And he has this line where he says, at least they never smile at me. I know exactly what I'm getting, that he prefers the directness even when he doesn't agree with Reagan policies, but their direct and what he doesn't like is falsity. And that there's a way in which in the end, Joel, he kind of throws in his lot with the people who instead of in his view, like nodding and winking about race and racism are just straight up, you know, we're going to tolerate you. Some of us are super racist. You are an instrumental part of the solution for us. And he prefers that to what he sees as falsity.
- [09:44]
D
Oh, absolutely. You know what? I think that goes back sincerely to his grandfather. His grandfather, probably by most lights, like politically, he's a Democrat, right? Or what you might consider mainstream black liberal in that time, but he has a lot of conservative beliefs. And the other piece of this is that his grandfather was extremely cruel to him, just very mean. One example, and that didn't make it into the podcast, is that when his grandfather was making deliveries, grandfather owned his own business. So he delivers fuel, coal, oil, wood to black families across Savannah. And they would have to make these deliveries early in the morning, in the very cold. And his grandfather wouldn't even allow him or his brother to wear gloves. He said it was better if your hands froze because they would callous and eventually they would get used to it. And I think that's in some ways sort of an analogy that he thinks that the people that treat you the worst are the people that at least complimentary of you are the people that are telling you the truth. Like he thinks that harshness is a form of love or affection. And so you can see how he could look at these Republicans who, you know, a lot of people may say that they're racist, right? And he might look at these people and say, well, you know what? At least they're being straight up with me. Like, I know that there are liberals on the, on the Democratic side of the aisle, the liberal side of the aisle, but they're going to pretend at least I know what I'm getting here. It reminds me of my grandfather, and that is a form of love. He's even said that, like, my grandfather told me the truth, and that's what he thinks about Republicans. So you could easily see how somebody might find a home with those people, because that's what he was used to. That's actually the way that he was raised.
- [11:18]
C
So now I just have to ask you the gossipy piece, which is like, I need you to narrate for me meeting Clarence Thomas mom, which happens before the Harlan Crow news explodes, that, you know, Harlan Crow has purchased the house in which his mom lives. And I just, like, it's so amazing to hear that part of it where you clearly just are having this deep, connected moment with her. And I wonder if you could just tell our listeners what, given what you had thought in your head, Clarence Thomas was all about, what that brought to the table and what parts of it, if any, surprised you.
- [12:05]
D
Well, I mean, bottom line, the biggest surprise is that I got in the house in the first place, right? I don't know with the other mothers or the Supreme Court justices alike or anything. I doubt sincerely that you can get into their home. And so I'm walking up to the front door just totally expecting to knock on the door and to just get back in my car and go back away. But I think it's sort of a testament. I mean, some of this is race, class, all that other stuff. Clarence Thomas is not a man of a lot of means. Like, he didn't grow up with money. His family doesn't have a lot of money. And so they live in this very modest, very regular home. And as I'm walking there, I'm like, is there, like, you know, Secret Service? Is there somebody going to stop me from doing this? I'm like, surely I'm not going to get close. And so I get into the home and they're just so warm. And I think that it really is just a surprise. I can't imagine that very many people have ever knocked on that door or even thought to do it. And so when I got in there, and I didn't wanna lie about who I was, I Thought that that might get me in more trouble. And yeah, his grandmother was just so warm. She reminded me of a lot of people that I knew growing up. You know, I don't know how close Clarence is to his mother. I don't get the sense, like there was a point in our interview, we're looking at the wall of pictures in their home and she's pointing to her kids and. And she says, meyers, that was my boy. Myers is his younger brother who died in 2003. I think it was a heart attack. And she was very close to him. I don't get the sense that she's as close to Clarence. And so she's very unguarded. She's just talking about this. She talked about how she was closer to his first wife, Kathy Ambush, as opposed to Jenny Thomas, like that sort of stuff. There's actually another funny piece of this is that I'm sitting in the den with his grandmother. She's got her recliner on one side, she's got this little end table right next to her. And there's three pictures on there. One of them is of Clarence. I can't remember what the other one was. And the other one was of Kathy. And I'm like, wow, like, you're okay. She's like, yeah, Kathy. I talk to her pretty regularly. She's a sweetheart, I love her. I said, well, what about, you know, Jenny? She says, I don't know her that well. Like, you know, I could call her. She might not do the things I wanted to do, but just that sort of unguardedness with me was just shocking. Like you. I don't know if it comes through in the interviews, but I was over and over again. I'm just surprised that she's making these revelations. I'm getting she's a 94 year old woman, right? But still, like, I was surprised and I think that it was just sort of the fact that nobody has ever come probably that often to show up at their house to ask questions about her son. I just think that we were all sort of taken aback by the moment and we were able to sort of settle in and get to know each other really, really easily.
- [14:49]
C
You know, it's so clear that you see each other in a really deep way. That's what comes across like it's incredibly powerful and it's such a, such an amazing, arresting moment to have to really reckon with how much she loves him and how proud she is and how complicated it is. And your presence in there as a proxy for all of us. It's, it's glorious. Time now for a short break and more with Joel Anderson on becoming Justice Thomas. I do think I need to ask you, you know, since the arc of the, of the podcast and you know, obviously the affirmative action decision on which the term ends is this arc of, you know, and you put it, I think the same way, really elegantly, Joel, which is, it's kind of your arc too, you know, that there are a series of event where he clearly benefited from affirmative action. He insisted he didn't. It had nothing to do with getting into Yale Law School. It had nothing to do with his confirmation to the DC Circuit or the Supreme Court and how confounding it is for him that as the beneficiary of that over and over and over, each instance of it makes him feel smaller and more full of kind of shame and judgment by the world and less and less judged on the merits. And I guess that's kind of the problem you wanted to tackle with the show. And it's something that, you know, you toggle into and out of your own reckoning with that. It's awfully hard, Joel, not to hear this entire show as just a psychic wound that's being played out like on the biggest national scale. Every single kid who might have been the beneficiary of race based affirmative action loses that opportunity because Clarence Thomas found it wounding.
- [16:55]
D
Yeah. And it really starts, it seems to me, at Yale Law School. I think there was a time in his life when he can sort of say to himself, I was an exceptional student. Not many people in Savannah, Georgia, where he's from, have ever had the academic record that I had. I'm able to go off to seminary and I do very well there. I go to Holy Cross. And he gets in via sort of an affirmative action program. But it's not explicitly labeled as such. It's just sort of, they can just say that's sort of a new program to welcome in an underrepresented class of people. Maybe we can just tap into this talent pool. It's not like when he gets to Yale in 1971 and there is an explicit program, a quota system even, to bring in black and underrepresented minority students. So when he gets there and people say, hey, look, you're only here because of that program, it totally erases every academic accomplishment he'd ever had before. And that really wounds him. And, you know, you asked me about, you know, my piece of this. I think that a lot of black students, black professionals who come through the System, especially, you know, in majority white spaces, you deal with that very early on that people, especially, like the 80s 90s, when this is very, like, a hotly debated issue that people are saying to me and other people like me, you don't belong here. Like, you wouldn't have gotten here but for that. And there's a couple of ways to go at that. One, you could be like me, which you're like, it does hurt a little bit, right? You're like, I'm pretty good. I think I'm smart. I think I'm capable. Maybe I didn't get in through all the other pathways, but, like, I'm here, I've excelled. I belong here. And no matter what I do, you're never gonna think I'm qualified. I mean, actually, it's kind of funny because I just remember when Barack Obama was president, and I just, like, he felt to me like a brilliant person. Like, you can think whatever you want to think of him as a president, right? And his policies, whatever. But, like, in terms of his mind, his accomplishments, he seemed like a very brilliant person. Like, I always say, he could probably burn the eyebrows off your face with his intelligence, right? And people still thought that he wasn't smart, that he was not qualified, that he wasn't capable. And I'm like, well, if they can feel that way about a guy like that, but then who am I? You know? Like, so it will never matter what I do, never matter what I accomplish. I'm just going ahead and I'm going to take advantage of these opportunities and succeed no matter what. On the other hand, somebody like Clarence Thomas, and he mentions it, even in his concurrence, he found it demeaning, right? He finds this whole thing embarrassing, and it totally makes him question himself in a way. And instead of getting mad at the people that feel that way about him, he's taken that opportunity to get mad at people who have benefited similarly. And he just thinks that I was actually special. You all got in because of preferences, and there are a lot of people like that. Clarence Thomas is certainly not alone, but he chose among black people, I think, a fairly predictable pathway. It's just one. It's one of two. Not very many offers, but he went that direction. And, you know, Clarence Thomas chose that second pathway, and it's obviously going to affect a lot of other people, but he doesn't care about that because he's saying, I'm helping you, actually, I'm helping you from suffering the slings and arrows that I suffered throughout college and going Forward. So you may not thank me for it now, but you'll thank me for.
- [20:17]
C
It later, which is his grandfather. Right. And the gloves.
- [20:21]
D
Absolutely.
- [20:22]
C
I have to do this tough love so that you can someday stand on your own feet in a world that is hopelessly infected by racism, pain, cruelty.
- [20:31]
D
Is love in that household. Yeah.
- [20:34]
C
The other thing that is unavoidable, again, counter programming Clarence Thomas is just psychic pain at this, you know, deep dignitary injury, which is affirmative action, is the women in this podcast who are narrating their own pain and narrating as black women. Largely a story that's really different from, you know, the guys who are like, he's awesome. He's amazing. Get a load of the outfit he was wearing, you know, oh, my God, you know, this is what he used to do, you know, on the Holy Cross campus in student debate. And then you have this really interesting, again, almost musical counterpoint, which is these women who are just saying, this is actually my pain. This is what happened. And you frame it really beautifully, as these are the voices we didn't hear at the confirmation hearing. But it is an amazing kind of exploding of the idea that there is only one person in pain in this conversation.
- [21:45]
B
Yeah.
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D
I mean, Clarence Thomas feels victimized in a way that supersedes anybody else that may have come across this path. And I've tried to think about, where does this cause it? Certainly that the conflict here is not just women. It's with black women. And a lot of people say, well, this goes back to his mother, who sort of gave him up for his grandparents, and he has a lot more respect for his grandparents than he does his mother. Right. They were capable, they were strong. They thrived in spite of this discrimination. They showed me the way. Whereas this woman, she crumbled under the pressure of discrimination, racism, and she had to give me up. My grandfather was the one that was able to do it. And I feel like this resentment of black women sort of bubble comes up over and over again throughout his life. And he comes across all these, like, talented Black attorneys in D.C. in the 80s. Like, we talked to Sakari Hartnett, who worked for him at the eeoc. Very accomplished civil rights attorney in her own right. His ex girlfriend, Lillian McEwen, who became some sort of a judge. All these women who would just say, you know what? I had my own trials to get here. But he couldn't recognize that and didn't see that. And I really just think that's because he doesn't understand women. Very. Even goes beyond that. I Think that he's a sexist, that he fundamentally doesn't have respect for the challenges that women have. He can't see that his grandfather may have had opportunities and the ability to go out and seek out his own professional opportunities in a way that his mother may not have been. You know, his mother was abandoned by her husband. His grandfather would not help his mother. It's not like there were all these other professional avenues available to her in the 1950s and 1940s. He doesn't recognize that pain, that struggle, and it's a consistent theme throughout his life. And so, yeah, so by the time you get to when he is in a position of power at the EEOC or when he's a judge and he's in charge of all these other women, he's just like, look, you all serve me. I'm the great man here. You all, you have no idea what I went through without any regard or any thought about what their own challenges may have been or the challenges he puts in their way himself.
- [23:51]
C
It's funny, Joel, I was reminded when you made that point, both about his mom and his sister and his willingness to just devalue, that they didn't start life at the same advantages, relative advantages, with, you know, the caveat that he really, really had a very difficult and painful childhood. But that I was reminded of interviewing Anita Hill many years ago, who said, in that confirmation process, he got race, I was left with gender. And that is less. It is less.
- [24:26]
D
Yeah. No, that's right. That's absolutely right. And, you know, it's actually just really insidious because, you know, there's this belief, certainly among a certain kind of a man that she wielded like, that she was trying to attack a black man, like an ascendant black man, that she was a tool of these white liberals to take him down, like, without total regard. Like, it's not just Clarence Thomas. I believe that there's all these other friends and Republican supporters behind him that say, oh, I mean, she was used. Like, maybe we don't hate her. Maybe she didn't do anything wrong, but she was used. They have no. No sense of the pain that she went through. Or. No, they don't even. Like, I. You know, it's funny, John Danforth, the senator who ushered him through the process, who gave him his first job out of college, you know, he says, I would never believe Clarence would do that, or whatever. And. And so I asked him, I was like, well, do you think that Anita Hillis is making all this up? He says, I don't know. I don't know. And I said, well, did you watch your testimony? He said, no. And they were just blind to it. They didn't even care. Like it never occurred to them to even interrogate whether or not these allegations were true or not. And this is a fundamental dismissal of women's pain.
- [25:33]
C
Joel Anderson is a staff writer at Slate. He is co host of our Hang up and Listen podcast. He's also the host of seasons three and six of Slow Burn. And he has just wrapped hosting the latest, powerful, really superb season, season eight, Becoming Justice Thomas. Joel, it seems kind of perfect as we are all grappling with what to do with the affirmative action decision and the long, long trail that it took Clarence Thomas to get here talking with you. Thank you so much both for the show and for joining us today.
- [26:11]
D
Oh Dolly, again, I'm so glad I could join you today. So thanks so much and for all the work you do. Anyway, thanks. I'm happy to do it It.
- [26:22]
E
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