Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas

This is not an easy book to read by any means. I read it slow and put it down a few times just because it was so unpleasant. But I am glad I persevered to the end of the book. It tells a lot about Chief Justice Thomas. He is just a bad person and that is the inescapable conclusion I came to (he just might be this country's worst Supreme Court Justice). But what made me wonder is how he is disappointed how his fellow Blacks don't embrace him. Duh doesn't he realize how hurtful hjs thinking (decisions) have been to his own people?

The authors show how Thomas is divided to the point of having a compartmentalized personality. This is especially, but by no means limited to, his use of sexual language, as witnessed by the Anita Hill case. Re that, they talked with several moderate GOP Senators who supported Thomas and now indicate they regret it. And, without going into the confirmation hearings as much as Mayer/Abramson, it seems clear that, if Biden had rolled the dice differently and had Angela Wright testify, Thomas would never have been confirmed. That said, it seems Thomas has had many a chip on his shoulder long before we got to 1991. The authors do a good job of pointing out that many of these chips are directed toward certain sub-groups within black America, based on skin tone, class or money within black America. I'm sure they were able to handle this better than white authors could. That said, contrary to 1- and 2-star reviewers, this book is in no way a hatchet job. As for Thomas' judicial philosophy, it's clear they're not commenting at all on it one way or the other. They're not even commenting on whether he's "right" or "wrong" to spin his childhood, and its various influences, the way he does. At this stage in Thomas' life, this is probably the best, most well-rounded biography we can expect. What I learned from this is that Thomas seems fueled by anger more than anything else; I sometimes wonder if the thin skin he can exhibit is a shell that's about to implode. Beyond that, he seems quite conscious of the compartmentalized subselves he has, with different ones presented to different people. Beyond my disagreement with his political stances, I feel kind of sorry for him.

Despite conservative (and liberal) critics' naysaying, Merida and Fletcher's book is a fascinating and mostly even-handed analysis of the court's most controversial justice. The highest compliment I can give the authors is that both sides have lots to complain about. But the authors' extensive research--including first hand run-ins with Thomas--is beyond reproach. How can the reader not be drawn to the flawed figure of Thomas? His divided soul is so much like that of the United States itself (and like each one of us). For him, and us, a deep strain of ambivalence often blinds us to the less pleasant truths of race in this country. The idea that Thomas is the savior of conservatives because of his skin color is only as offensive as the idea that Thomas must represent all blacks (tow the line on racial issues, so to speak.) This reader was surprised in two ways: 1) I gained a healthy respect for Thomas' unique journey and 2) Despite my vociferous disagreement with the Constitutional "originalism" supported by Thomas and Scalia, I was able to separate Thomas' ethnicity from his decisions. As Scalia himself suggests, court-watchers would never intimate that he (Scalia)should give preferential treatment to Italian Americans. "Blackness" is not a monolithic state of being, nor should it be. Merida and Fletcher should be thanked for drawing a complex portrait where once only a thumb-nail sketch existed. If Thomas and Scalia are judicial creeps (at the very least they're stubborn and their decisions are hurting this country) then they're creeps because of their backward and narrow view of the Constitution; their race and ethnicity have little to do with it.

Michael Fletcher and Kevin Merida have taken on one of the hardest of hard targets and delivered a masterpiece. Clarence Thomas might just be the most intriguing and elusive figure in modern American society, the source of endless speculation and commentary, and yet no one until now has successfully cracked open the shell to look deeper inside. This is no liberal screed or conservative apologia. It's a thoughtful, balanced and insightful book that renders a fully realized portrait of a complicated man and his relationship to the world around him. These two reporters for The Washington Post were obviously devoted to tossing aside the easy stereotypes in favor of a three-dimensional biography that does not cast judgment. They chronicle Thomas's tumultuous relations with his own family, his searing experiences as a young man and his evolution from a devotee of Malcolm X speeches into the nation's most prominent black conservative. They portray a man nursing grievances at the political system that so bruised him, yet eager to sit in his chambers for hours at a time with strangers who happen to visit. They describe a man with strong world views who is anything but Antonin Scalia's puppet. They depict a man struggling with his place as the most powerful African American in a country where most African Americans revile him. It's unfortunate that Thomas refused to speak with the authors, but many, many others did, including relatives, friends and other justices such as Scalia. And it turns out that Thomas in his many speeches has been more revealing than many public figures, producing a body of work that the authors have ably tapped to explore his view of his own life. If you're interested in refighting ideological wars, this is not the book for you. If you're interested in gaining a better understanding of who Clarence Thomas really is, this is the only book to read.

Last week I finished Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas, Michael Fletcher and Kevin Merida's new book about you know who. But I found myself picking it up again this week, just to re-read certain sections. Some of the stories about Thomas' life (I'm especially interested in his time as Chair of the EEOC and his life post-Supreme Court confirmation) are just fascinating. The book is compelling in large part because Fletcher and Merida are meticulously fair to Thomas, chronicling his generosity to friends, willingness to mentor young people, and his loyalty, as well as his crushing insecurity, his childish resentment of light-skinned blacks, and his pathologically thin-skin (this guy never forgets a slight). This is no hatchet job. But it's also no tribute. It's a thoroughly researched book that bears the mark of damned good journalism. And yet you feel the authors' (both black) genuine effort to understand how Thomas came to be . . . Thomas. What emerges is a picture of a highly intelligent black man who has in almost every phase of his public life either been compelled or who has chosen to confront some of the thorniest, most complex questions about race. As the authors reveal, Thomas to his credit, is unafraid to address the conundrum of race. But what we see is a man so deeply damaged --both emotional and psychologically - that his answers to these difficult questions are almost always warped by his often very painful, personal racial experiences. And this damage was in place long before the infamous confirmation hearings. What emerges also is a picture of a man who has almost always lived a dual life, and so the book is aptly named. Thomas is, according to Fletcher and Merida, "a welter of conflicting personas." From his childhood -- principally spent not in the destitution of PinPoint, Georgia where he lived only until he was six, but in the middle- class home of his grandfather in Savannah -- to his time as the lone black at Catholic schools and one of very few at Holy Cross college, Thomas' walk has been marked by duality. And while this is true for many middle-class blacks - especially those educated at elite white institutions in the `70s and `80s - Thomas appears to never have been able to comfortably integrate his disparate experiences into one identity. Instead he continues to advance two very different identities, even now -- posturing as a kind of independent black intellectual freedom fighter (a role he plays out in dissents and concurrences in almost every race case the Court decides) -- while rabidly insisting that others not associate him with being black. In fact, Thomas seems to go out of his way to write concurrences and dissents in race cases just to provide a kind of "black" perspective. Yet an obsession of his professional life has been his insistence that he not be defined by his race. And he demands this of others as well. Indeed, according to the authors, Thomas won't hire blacks