Theoretically speaking, 40 years is not a long time, especially when you consider that the planet we live on has existed for an estimated 4.5 billion years and Homo sapiens have walked the face of Earth since 190,000 B.C.E.
So it comes as somewhat of a surprise to learn that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said as recently as 1983 that he’d have been a different person were it not for affirmative action in the United States.
In an illuminating piece he wrote for The Washington Post, Timothy Bella quotes Thomas telling staffers in 1983 at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (which he was chairman of):
“God only knows where I would be today” if it wasn’t for affirmative action.
“These laws and their proper application are all that stand between the first 17 years of my life and the second 17 years.”
God only knows, and yet Thomas happily took a wrecking ball to affirmative action protections this week in Students For Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College despite having been helped by them to the extent that he now sits on the highest court in the land and was admitted to Yale University in part because such policies were in place at the time.
Of course, this change of heart and mind in Clarence Thomas has been clear for years, such as in the 2013 concurring opinion he wrote in Fisher v. University of Texas when he took previous rulings and stood them on their heads, declaring, “The argument that educational benefits justify racial discrimination was advanced in support of racial segregation in the 1950’s, but emphatically rejected by this Court.”
“And just as the alleged educational benefits of segregation were insufficient to justify racial discrimination then … the alleged educational benefits of diversity cannot justify racial discrimination today.”
So what happened to that 1983 Clarence Thomas?
Well, it likely had a great deal to do with the privilege he has enjoyed and continues to benefit from as he sits on the Supreme Court and hands down decisions while simultaneously accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in fancy travel and vacations from wealthy Americans who often have business before the court he sits on. That’s the very definition of quid pro quo, and yet Thomas was enraged when anyone dared to report on such matters, suggesting that he had done nothing wrong despite appearances to the contrary.
What does all of this tell us at the end of the day?
First of all, it tells us that Clarence Thomas is, by his own words, a hypocrite of the highest order.
Secondly, it suggests that today’s Supreme Court has lost nearly all of the legitimacy it once had.
And, from a political perspective, it tells us that the 2024 election will be devastating for Republicans, and it will turn out that way largely as a result of the wildly unpopular opinions that have been handed down by Thomas and his five fellow conservative justices over the past couple of years.
What does that mean for the Supreme Court? Hopefully that one day the number of justices will be expanded and in time it can reclaim a modicum of respect.
