“What’s Past is Prologue…"
Neither Enigma Nor Nationalist:
Clarence Thomas Is A Black Minstrel Theocrat, Raging
Misogynist and A Venal Demagogic Rightwing Advocate in Servile Defense of White
Supremacy and Global Capitalism...and He Always Was...
The Enigma of Clarence Thomas
by Corey Robin
Metropolitan Books, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
by Kofi Natambu
June 25, 2022
The Panopticon Review
June 25, 2022
The Panopticon Review
PHOTO: President George H.W. Bush and Clarence Thomas at the White House following Thomas's confirmation as a newly selected justice to the Supreme Court in 1991. President George H.W. Bush met with Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas on October 9, 1991 in the White House. Bush reaffirmed his "total confidence" in Thomas. J. David Ake/AFP/Getty Images
Corey Robin’s incredibly superficial, myopic, condescending, self serving, distorted, and utterly reductive “analysis” of the so-called “enigma” of Clarence Thomas--one of the most transparently reactionary and thoroughly far rightwing justices in the entire history of the Supreme Court--is essentially an intellectual and ideological cautionary tale in exactly how and why so many otherwise reasonably well informed and intellectually honest white American liberals and leftists have such an arrogantly boneheaded, patronizing, infantilized and wildly jejune perception/absurdly fuckedup ‘understanding’ of what the actual dynamics and complexities of the politics of ‘race and class’ (as well as gender) are in the United States. What’s even worse in Robin’s case is that a mind numbingly large cross-section of major white liberal/leftist publications and reactions by a disturbing number of individual pundits/public intellectuals are singing Robin’s praises as if he really knows what he’s talking about or has triumphantly unearthed some heretofore ‘hidden' deep and dirty secret about who and what Clarence Thomas “really is” beneath his bitter contempt for, pompous dismissal of and lazy indifference to not merely the masses of black people’s actual desires, needs, and expectations but I would strongly argue that of most white poor, working and even lower middle class Americans as well who in fact for example don’t make anywhere near the salaries say of the great majority of Trump voters and supporters whose median income nationally is $72,500. Even more significantly within the larger context of Thomas’s own ideological, philosophical, and doctrinal positions on law and its various relationships to political economy, labor, education, religion, and social status anyone who is paying serious attention to what Justice Thomas really thinks, believes, and thus acts on behalf of in his jurisprudence would notice that he is NOT an ideological or politically committed black nationalist of any kind whatsoever, conservative or progressive, and that he was ALWAYS a very carefully chosen, vetted, weaned, and rigorously trained figure who was clearly foisted upon the American public by the 41st President George H.W. Bush (known as 'Bushwhacker One’ to me and many others) to serve as a deeply committed rightwing reactionary replacement and ideological/juridical ‘alternative’ to the legendary black liberal and progressive justice Thurgood Marshall whom Bush’s White House and the entire GOP congressional caucus in the House and especially the Senate as well as conservative/reactionary justices like William H. Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, and Samuel Alito absolutely loathed. Besides who in their right mind actually believes the ludicrous and absolutely absurd LIE that Clarence Thomas, a thoroughly rightwing HACK and groveling GOP apparatchik was in Robin’s words. a “conservative black nationalist”. HOW UTTERLY MINDLESS AND FALSE CAN ANY POSITION BE?
Does Robin really think that Bush or any other American president would actually nominate a “black nationalist” to the Supreme Court? How idiotic! FOR THE RECORD: Louis Farrakhan is a “conservative black nationalist”, Elijah Muhammad, founder of the Nation of Islam was a “conservative black nationalist.” Hell, even MALCOLM X whom Robin and far too many other clueless white liberals and moderates still stupidly claim that Thomas is the way he is on the Supreme Court because he “admired Malcolm’s attitude toward white folks" in college, was actually a “conservative black nationalist” before he actively broke all ideological and political ties with Muhammad and the NOI and his own acolyte/protégé Farrakhan in 1963 and formed his own independent organization in March, 1964 known as the OAAU (Organization of Afro-American Unity) which in fact openly repudiated the views, positions, and stances of his former colleagues, as well as that of his own earlier black nationalist conservatism in the name of a new revolutionary anticapitalist and anti-imperialist position.
Now THINK!: Would ANY of these individuals or any other “black nationalists" with a formal legal education and background be even remotely considered for a position as a Supreme Court justice by a man (Bushwhacker #1) who was not only President but had also served in his utterly elitist 40 year political career as Vice President, Senator, Congressman, and head of the CIA? The same man who gave us the vile Willie Horton debacle and whose leading domestic policy advisor was the late despicable Lee Atwater, and who actively recruited, cultivated, and worked with such moral and political reprobates as Roger Stone and Paul Manafort?
And finally: Who has ever heard of a black nationalist--conservative or otherwise!--who would have married a white woman who also happened to be a dangerous and maniacal far rightwing extremist and Trump cultist like Thomas’s wife of 34 years, Virginia (“Ginni”) Lamp?. The entire thesis of Robin’s book is not merely wrongheaded and wildly distorted but ultimately moronic.
Furthermore, Robin’s entire dumbass argument in this book (and I would strongly suggest elsewhere as well) is in fact deeply racist itself because its ludicrous and intellectually insulting as well as deeply patronizing assumptions and pseudo analytical assertions about not only Thomas himself but black Americans generally blinds Robin to actually examining who and what Thomas really is and has always been both ideologically and politically and the major guiding role that religion has always played in Thomas life and jurisprudence—which in his case and that of a number of his fellow rightwing colleagues in the Supreme Court is informed by a deeply conservative and openly reactionary Catholic conservatism. Thus this explains to a great and disturbing degree not only the fundamental white supremacist roots of Thomas’s juridicial and social philosophy but its deeply misogynist and patriarchal attitudes, values, and behavior as well. In this ugly historical context does the real meaning of the agonizing public ordeal and humiliation suffered by Anita Hill finally ring a bell at this very late date Mr. Robin?
Finally: GET REAL Corey Robin and please take at least a few postgraduate courses in AFRICAN AMERICAN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY, 20th CENTURY AMERICAN POLITICS and CRITICAL THEORY writ large because on the basis of this absurdly ill-informed, deeply dishonest, bizarrely argued, and brazenly shallow book it appears that regardless of your vaunted Ivy League Princeton education YOU REALLY NEED IT…
Corey Robin’s incredibly superficial, myopic, condescending, self serving, distorted, and utterly reductive “analysis” of the so-called “enigma” of Clarence Thomas--one of the most transparently reactionary and thoroughly far rightwing justices in the entire history of the Supreme Court--is essentially an intellectual and ideological cautionary tale in exactly how and why so many otherwise reasonably well informed and intellectually honest white American liberals and leftists have such an arrogantly boneheaded, patronizing, infantilized and wildly jejune perception/absurdly fuckedup ‘understanding’ of what the actual dynamics and complexities of the politics of ‘race and class’ (as well as gender) are in the United States. What’s even worse in Robin’s case is that a mind numbingly large cross-section of major white liberal/leftist publications and reactions by a disturbing number of individual pundits/public intellectuals are singing Robin’s praises as if he really knows what he’s talking about or has triumphantly unearthed some heretofore ‘hidden' deep and dirty secret about who and what Clarence Thomas “really is” beneath his bitter contempt for, pompous dismissal of and lazy indifference to not merely the masses of black people’s actual desires, needs, and expectations but I would strongly argue that of most white poor, working and even lower middle class Americans as well who in fact for example don’t make anywhere near the salaries say of the great majority of Trump voters and supporters whose median income nationally is $72,500. Even more significantly within the larger context of Thomas’s own ideological, philosophical, and doctrinal positions on law and its various relationships to political economy, labor, education, religion, and social status anyone who is paying serious attention to what Justice Thomas really thinks, believes, and thus acts on behalf of in his jurisprudence would notice that he is NOT an ideological or politically committed black nationalist of any kind whatsoever, conservative or progressive, and that he was ALWAYS a very carefully chosen, vetted, weaned, and rigorously trained figure who was clearly foisted upon the American public by the 41st President George H.W. Bush (known as 'Bushwhacker One’ to me and many others) to serve as a deeply committed rightwing reactionary replacement and ideological/juridical ‘alternative’ to the legendary black liberal and progressive justice Thurgood Marshall whom Bush’s White House and the entire GOP congressional caucus in the House and especially the Senate as well as conservative/reactionary justices like William H. Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, and Samuel Alito absolutely loathed. Besides who in their right mind actually believes the ludicrous and absolutely absurd LIE that Clarence Thomas, a thoroughly rightwing HACK and groveling GOP apparatchik was in Robin’s words. a “conservative black nationalist”. HOW UTTERLY MINDLESS AND FALSE CAN ANY POSITION BE?
Does Robin really think that Bush or any other American president would actually nominate a “black nationalist” to the Supreme Court? How idiotic! FOR THE RECORD: Louis Farrakhan is a “conservative black nationalist”, Elijah Muhammad, founder of the Nation of Islam was a “conservative black nationalist.” Hell, even MALCOLM X whom Robin and far too many other clueless white liberals and moderates still stupidly claim that Thomas is the way he is on the Supreme Court because he “admired Malcolm’s attitude toward white folks" in college, was actually a “conservative black nationalist” before he actively broke all ideological and political ties with Muhammad and the NOI and his own acolyte/protégé Farrakhan in 1963 and formed his own independent organization in March, 1964 known as the OAAU (Organization of Afro-American Unity) which in fact openly repudiated the views, positions, and stances of his former colleagues, as well as that of his own earlier black nationalist conservatism in the name of a new revolutionary anticapitalist and anti-imperialist position.
Now THINK!: Would ANY of these individuals or any other “black nationalists" with a formal legal education and background be even remotely considered for a position as a Supreme Court justice by a man (Bushwhacker #1) who was not only President but had also served in his utterly elitist 40 year political career as Vice President, Senator, Congressman, and head of the CIA? The same man who gave us the vile Willie Horton debacle and whose leading domestic policy advisor was the late despicable Lee Atwater, and who actively recruited, cultivated, and worked with such moral and political reprobates as Roger Stone and Paul Manafort?
And finally: Who has ever heard of a black nationalist--conservative or otherwise!--who would have married a white woman who also happened to be a dangerous and maniacal far rightwing extremist and Trump cultist like Thomas’s wife of 34 years, Virginia (“Ginni”) Lamp?. The entire thesis of Robin’s book is not merely wrongheaded and wildly distorted but ultimately moronic.
Furthermore, Robin’s entire dumbass argument in this book (and I would strongly suggest elsewhere as well) is in fact deeply racist itself because its ludicrous and intellectually insulting as well as deeply patronizing assumptions and pseudo analytical assertions about not only Thomas himself but black Americans generally blinds Robin to actually examining who and what Thomas really is and has always been both ideologically and politically and the major guiding role that religion has always played in Thomas life and jurisprudence—which in his case and that of a number of his fellow rightwing colleagues in the Supreme Court is informed by a deeply conservative and openly reactionary Catholic conservatism. Thus this explains to a great and disturbing degree not only the fundamental white supremacist roots of Thomas’s juridicial and social philosophy but its deeply misogynist and patriarchal attitudes, values, and behavior as well. In this ugly historical context does the real meaning of the agonizing public ordeal and humiliation suffered by Anita Hill finally ring a bell at this very late date Mr. Robin?
Finally: GET REAL Corey Robin and please take at least a few postgraduate courses in AFRICAN AMERICAN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY, 20th CENTURY AMERICAN POLITICS and CRITICAL THEORY writ large because on the basis of this absurdly ill-informed, deeply dishonest, bizarrely argued, and brazenly shallow book it appears that regardless of your vaunted Ivy League Princeton education YOU REALLY NEED IT…
