The Enigma of Clarence Thomas Audiobook (Free)

The Enigma of Clarence Thomas is a groundbreaking revisionist take on the Supreme Court justice everyone understands about but no-one knows.

Most people may tell you two things on the subject of Clarence Thomas: Anita Hill accused him of intimate harassment, and he almost never speaks through the bench. Here are some things they don’t know: Thomas is definitely a dark nationalist. In college he memorized the speeches of Malcolm X. He believes white people are incurably racist.

In the first examination of its kind, Corey Robin – about The Enigma of Clarence Thomas among the foremost analysts of the proper – delves deeply into both Thomas’s biography and his jurisprudence, masterfully reading his Supreme Court opinions against the background of his autobiographical and political writings and speeches. The hidden source of Thomas’s conservative views, Robin shows, is usually a deep skepticism that racism can be overcome. Thomas is convinced that any authorities action with respect to African-Americans will become tainted by racism; the most African-Americans can expect is certainly that white people will get out of their way.

There’s grounds, Robin concludes, why liberals often complain that Thomas doesn’t speak but seldom give consideration when he will. Were they to listen, they’d hear a racial pessimism that frequently sounds similar to their personal. Cutting across the ideological range, this unacknowledged consensus about the impossibility of progress is paramount to understanding today’s political stalemate.