Do you remember where you were 34 years ago on this fine day? Clarence Thomas almost certainly does.
On Oct. 15, 1991, he ascended to the United States Supreme Court and kicked off a career based on a catastrophically broken sense of ethics.
Thomas replaced Justice Thurgood Marshall, who had argued 32 cases before the Supreme Court, prevailing in 29, one of which was Brown v. Board of Education. But far from having such a storied legal career, Thomas served in various state and federal jobs for much of the 1970s and ’80s before serving for about a year on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He got the Supreme Court nod because he was one of a small number of Black conservative judges then-President George H.W. Bush could have tapped back in 1991.
Poppy Bush, never the most eloquent of speakers, came up with this ringing endorsement:
The fact that he is black and a minority has nothing to do with this sense that he is the best qualified at this time. I kept my word to the American people and to the Senate by picking the best man for the job on the merits. And the fact that he's a minority, so much the better.
From the very start, Thomas turned those sad feels about affirmative action being responsible for his success into a hard-right stance that no one else should get the benefits he, Clarence Thomas, happened to get. Yes, because Thomas allegedly felt like his admission to Yale Law School and subsequent cushy legal career was marked with an asterisk, he seemingly wanted to make sure no one else could have the benefit of affirmative action.
Thomas helped hobble the terrifying scourge of affirmative action two years ago, with him joining the majority ruling that considering race in college admissions is unconstitutional.
But Thomas also had to contend with the fact that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 still existed, just sitting there being all equitable and such. So, it must have been a real treat for him to spend the 34th anniversary of his confirmation to the court by laying the foundation to perhaps, maybe one day, if the stars align, take away racial minorities’ equal right to vote.
Members of the Supreme Court. Bottom row, from left, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, and Elena Kagan. Top row, from left, Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Yes, Thomas spent Wednesday with his fellow conservative justices gleefully kicking at the remnants of the VRA. He and his fellow far-right ideologues are now poised to use Louisiana’s racist congressional maps as a springboard for even more racism.
Thomas has been waiting for this for years. He whined about the pernicious effects of Black people having equal voting power all the way back in 1994! Thomas must have felt like his wildest dreams came true with Trump, a man who wouldn’t hesitate to hoist more straight-up racists onto the court.
Now, it looks like Thomas will probably get his wish, and we can all go back to real, foundational American freedom: the Jim Crow era.
One might speculate that after Thomas achieved this lifelong judicial dream of killing the VRA, he would step down. Certainly, there are any number of younger, more vicious jurists Trump could put on the Supreme Court to lock in decades more of this.
But if he stepped down, how would he continue to get all those private jet trips? And a man cannot live by private jet alone, now can he? He also needs dozens of luxury vacations, gratis. Oh, and maybe just a wee little RV, nothing too showy, mind you. One that costs $267,000 and comes with a loan he doesn’t have to fully pay back will do just fine. He certainly won’t get those things from wealthy conservative donors hoping to influence the Supreme Court if he’s no longer on the Supreme Court.
A man has to have a code, and Clarence Thomas’ code is all about what is good for Clarence.
