Here Comes the Judge
another round with our undercover brother on the supreme court
2007-10-01
By Monroe Anderson

Clarence Thomas doesn't care about black people.

Keep that in mind on this first Monday in October when the U.S. Supreme Court begins its new term and its most notorious justice robes up to rule again. Keep it in mind also as Thomas's just released autobiography, "My Grandfather's Son: A Memoir," hits the street.

Advance reviews characterize the book as angry, bitter and self-loathing. In the memoir, Thomas lashes out at liberals, the U.S. Senate and the national media for calling him on the carpet during his confirmation hearings 16 years ago. That's fine with me. As someone who knows a couple of senators, is a card-carrying liberal and works in the media, I say we can take whatever the associate justice personally dishes out.

But there are untold numbers who have suffered and will suffer as a result of Thomas's philosophical cold-bloodedness. Three important cases on this year's court docket will surely impact African Americans – rulings on cocaine sentencing, lethal injection procedures and a voter ID requirement. Odds are Thomas will remain hamstrung by his restrictive views.

This week, Thomas and the eight other justices will hear arguments on the disparate prison terms handed down to those convicted of crimes involving crack cocaine (usually black) versus the time given to those involved with powder cocaine (overwhelmingly white).

Before the term ends, the Court will hear arguments over Indiana's requirement that voters produce photo identification to cast a ballot. Voter ID laws serve as a means of preventing fraud, Republicans argue. Those laws are designed to discourage poor, minority and older voters who tend to vote Democratic, Democrats insist.

Justice Thomas will also rule on a challenge to lethal injection, the first time the Court will consider the argument that capital punishment by lethal injection violates the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Should he go against his past convictions, it could be the first time he votes compassionately in favor of inmates, a population that is disproportionately and unfairly black.

But don't expect much from our smack down justice as he takes his place on the big bench for another year of judicial deciding. While his memoirs will be commanding the media spotlight this week, there's another book out there that reveals a more biting truth about Thomas's motivations. "Supreme Discomfort, The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas," written by Washington Post reporters Kevin Merida and Michael A. Fletcher, documents how the ultra-conservative justice's political philosophy prefers to comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted. Quite a departure from Justice Thurgood Marshall, the justice Thomas replaced.

A celebrated civil rights hero, Thurgood Marshall, the nation's first black Supreme Court Justice, served as a voice for the voiceless. As a lawyer with the NAACP, Marshall masterminded the legal strategy that successfully led to the defeat of American apartheid in transportation, education, housing and employment. As a Supreme Court justice, Marshall judiciously and consistently fought to foster integration, institutionalize affirmative action and expand human rights.

Thomas is the Anti-Marshall.

Marshall's detractors, the radical white right, have enthusiastically embraced Thomas. Before he was hand-picked by President George H. W. Bush to replace the retired and ailing legend in October 1991, Thomas served as the civil rights chief in Ronald Reagan's Department of Education where he worked diligently to undermine any progress made toward school integration. After 10 months, he was promoted to chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission where, for eight years, he worked at reversing racial justice and dismantling the federal government's affirmative action initiatives. While in that job, authors Merida and Fletcher report, Thomas wrote that he thought that "preferential hiring on the basis of race or gender will increase racial divisiveness, disempower women and minorities by fostering the notion that they're permanently disabled and in need of handouts."

Under the daddy Bush administration, that kind of thinking made Thomas, who had been an appeals court judge for just 15 months, "the best qualified" to become the 106th Supreme Court justice. We've been stuck with him since, as he's bedfellowed with the court's conservatives, voting to restrict the creation of election districts intended to elevate blacks to public office and to permit public money to fund parochial schools where white students could avoid sitting next to blacks.

A few years ago, Thomas made news when he spoke out against cross burning by the KKK. He argued that cross burning was action, not protected speech and that just "as one cannot burn down someone's house to make a political point and then seek refuge in the First Amendment, those who hate cannot terrorize and intimidate to make their point."

So, on that motion I stand corrrected: Thomas did care about Black people – once.

Monroe Anderson is a political writer based in Chicago, Illinois and a regular contributor to ebonyjet.com.