Clarence Thomas is an incredibly inspiring justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, a champion of clarity, logic and the actual meaning of the Constitution, absolutely steadfast in his devotion to rule of law over the worship of ideological certitudes. You know what all of this means, right? If he is caught in situations of the kind the late, rightly applauded Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was involved in, he could be thrown to the wolves.
And sorry to say, it has happened. His wife, Virginia (Ginni) Thomas, is a pro-Trump, dedicated, activist right-winger who sent emails to Donald Trump’s chief of staff after the 2020 presidential election arguing that Joe Biden won through fraud. Most of us say phooey to her conclusion, but she had every right to do that. She and her husband received no financial benefit. He stays away from her political doings and therefore does not need to be investigated or recuse himself from a whole bunch of cases in which he will continue his decades-long judicial consistency on the side of truth as he sees it.
Oh, but wait, it is angrily said, he was the only justice to vote against this chief of staff having to turn over certain material related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and being sought by the House of Representatives. This material included the Ginni Thomas emails, but they had already been turned over to the House and Thomas’s vote was in harmony with his record of honoring executive privilege.
Compare that to Ginsburg whose husband, a lawyer named Martin Ginsburg, made big money handling cases connected to Supreme Court decisions in which she participated. He did divest himself of stocks in companies that could benefit by such decisions, but understand there are lots of judges who have crossed such lines with no equivalent of divestment, and what about Joe Biden and his son Hunter’s ultra-profitable associations with foreign businesses having special governmental interests? The Jan. 6 House committee is nevertheless now probing Thomas like a skunk that has smelled something funny.
The thing about Thomas is that his political thinking fits a style of despised traditionalism linked to beliefs in liberty, democracy, equality under the law, our precious rights and upholding laws prohibiting public entities from racial discrimination referred to as affirmative action. The humiliation was once forced on Thomas with no evidence of his somehow lacking the merit of his white competitors.
To read his writings is to understand his writings, as opposed to the obscure, confusing legalese justices so often employ by way of warily defending the indefensible. In explicitly saying what he really means, Thomas is like the late, great Antonin Scalia, just as he resembles him in embracing basic principles. Thomas’s integrity shines, even if he did have to survive a disgraceful, often mischaracterized hearing conducted by then Sen. Joe Biden prior to the Senate approving his nomination to the court.
I do not think every time a minority is criticized it is because he or she is a minority, but I do believe racism remains a dreadful sickness to contend with and that the widespread, vitriolic attacks on Thomas have something to do with his being Black. Leftist supremacists of varied skin colors, for instance, have referred to Thomas as an Uncle Tom appeasing racists. What the supremacists really want is to reshape the best of America in the name of unconscious “wokeness” abetting the worst of America.
Thomas’s story is a marvelous story about real improvement in the lives of Black Americans, a story of his being raised by an incredible grandfather who refused to give in to racism, who believed in self-determination, hard work, overcoming obstacles, pride in accomplishments, who passed all of this on to Thomas whose example surely passes it on to others. The people having at him now obviously include those who think differently, who assume their implicitly degrading attitudes about maltreated minorities requires their imagined superiority.
