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Speaker 1: What's stroking out my all of Europe because of because

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Speaker 1: of the heat and the lack of air conditioning and

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Speaker 1: the houses built to retain heat and the climate change.

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Speaker 1: How you doing Europe? Everybody? Okay? Are you talking about?

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Speaker 1: Are you talking about the fun way that literally melted? Literally, Sophie,

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Speaker 1: it's forty c over there, which in real people numbers

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Speaker 1: is like a lot. Miles, do you know, Celsius? Do

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Speaker 1: you understand Celsius and co host of the Daily Zeitgeist Miles?

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Speaker 1: Why why do why do they use different numbers over

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Speaker 1: there for the temperature? We all know, man, they just

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Speaker 1: want to lord that ship over us because we kicked

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Speaker 1: England's ass. We fucking owned their ascids and then we

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Speaker 1: owned the only other country in Europe, Germany. Yeah that's right,

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Speaker 1: So that's right, that's the thing. We got the pane

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Speaker 1: stones for kicking Miles. We both know how terrible the

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Speaker 1: United States is. What is why do we have Why

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Speaker 1: is there such joy as an American and making fun

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Speaker 1: of Europe? What is it? What is that about us?

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Speaker 1: I think because we know that we have no history,

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Speaker 1: so that really it's like, you know, it's like when

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Speaker 1: you have like a dumb sports argument and like there's

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Speaker 1: that one thing someone can say about your team that's

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Speaker 1: so fucking true and it just upsets you and you

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Speaker 1: can't do anything about it. That's like when like Europeans

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Speaker 1: are like, but you have no history here is everything

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Speaker 1: is new like McDonald's and you're like, fuck you man,

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Speaker 1: and you're like, not true, that's true because it's all

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Speaker 1: stolen and built over. I have dranken a bar in

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Speaker 1: Dublin that is like was has been an operation since

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Speaker 1: before Columbus was a war criminal. Like, it's right, but

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Speaker 1: now you guys are toasty, so they're hold that. But

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Speaker 1: what's funny is too Like in Spain they know better.

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Speaker 1: In Spain, they're like, Yo, you're out in the middle

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Speaker 1: of the day, stupid. They're they're like, look, we we

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Speaker 1: we have yielded to capitalism in many ways, but we're

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Speaker 1: not giving up our naps in the four hours in

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Speaker 1: the middle. Jealous, it's forty, it's forty two. It's real

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Speaker 1: people numbers. That's like, what's seventy Jesus, I don't know,

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Speaker 1: I don't know. Nobody knows. You know what everyone does

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Speaker 1: knows that Clarence Thomas is a real piece of shit, Oh,

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Speaker 1: I can't wait a real he's he's a real one.

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Speaker 1: And we started this episode with some good old fashioned

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Speaker 1: American chauvinism, because most of this episode is going to

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Speaker 1: be talking about a number of things that are terrible

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Speaker 1: in our nation's history. Because the history of Supreme Court

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Speaker 1: Justice Clarence Thomas, the man who probably did more than

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Speaker 1: any other single government official to end rov Wade and

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Speaker 1: doing his best to end a number of other civil

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Speaker 1: rights UM is also the story of like everything that's

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Speaker 1: terrible about this country and its history. Like amazing how

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Speaker 1: much ship is packed into this guy's life and how

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Speaker 1: much like fucked up stuff. I mean, number one, you're

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Speaker 1: gonna be pretty sympathetic to this dude for the early

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Speaker 1: part of this UM. And I have to say one

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Speaker 1: of the things, like I want to start this, I

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Speaker 1: guess with like an admission for me, I think he's

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Speaker 1: probably the bastards pod subject. I've been wrongest about UM

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Speaker 1: because for a long time I've never even thought of

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Speaker 1: doing him until pretty recently. Not that I didn't think

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Speaker 1: he sucked, but like his years of like he's you know,

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Speaker 1: number one, for a very long time he was viewed

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Speaker 1: as like Justice Scalia's sidekick basically, um, and people who

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Speaker 1: knew anything about the Supreme Court were generally aware that

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Speaker 1: that was not fair. But I'm not a Supreme Court nowhere, Miles.

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Speaker 1: That's not my that's not my my strength. Um. But

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Speaker 1: even so, he's got years of like I knew he

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Speaker 1: had all these like cruel things he'd written into sense

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Speaker 1: and all this like regressive ship that he championed, So like,

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Speaker 1: I never doubted that he was a bastard. But again,

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Speaker 1: there's a reason why we don't cover everyone who just

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Speaker 1: sucks on this show, and it's because, like, also, they

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Speaker 1: need to be interesting, because this is entertainment to right,

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Speaker 1: And I kind of thought, like, well, he's just like

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Speaker 1: a shitty guy who became a judge. How much could

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Speaker 1: there possibly be in that fucking life story? And now

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Speaker 1: we're going to do a four partner on him? So holy,

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Speaker 1: I was very wrong about this guy. So let me

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Speaker 1: start by admitting that, Okay, this is like we're getting

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Speaker 1: a true we're getting the origin story, yeah, of the villain,

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Speaker 1: and a lot of weird shitty stuff spoilers. We're gonna

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Speaker 1: be talking about pubic hair. No, yeah, I don't remember

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Speaker 1: that weren't now. I don't know if you remember this part, Miles,

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Speaker 1: I forgot where I was, where I learned about all

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Speaker 1: the things I didn't know. I didn't want to know

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Speaker 1: that was that was a horrendously evil laugh, and I

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Speaker 1: didn't have been working on it. I've been working on it,

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Speaker 1: thank you. I'm sorry. I went to I went to

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Speaker 1: a class hosted by the Riddler this weekend about unleashing

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Speaker 1: your inner batman villain, And uh, I don't know. I

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Speaker 1: don't want to like. I don't want to like. I

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Speaker 1: don't want to like toot my own horn because I'm

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Speaker 1: early in the process. But I did just kidnap a

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Speaker 1: billionaire's son. So a little bit of applause, a little

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Speaker 1: bit of applause. I'm working on it's gonna be good. So, Miles,

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Speaker 1: if you casually read about Clarence Thomas the way most

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Speaker 1: people do, because who's got the time to really know

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Speaker 1: that much about the Supreme Court? While we all do

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Speaker 1: now because it's an immediate threat to all of our futures. Um.

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Speaker 1: But if you, if you read these like real casual

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Speaker 1: breakdowns of him, you'll learn a couple of things. He's

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Speaker 1: very conservative, he never talks during oral arguments. He's been

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Speaker 1: known as the silent Justice for that reason. Um, although

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Speaker 1: that's changed kind of recently, and he got his start

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Speaker 1: as justice school, he's like he was kind of his

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Speaker 1: Licks Bill, right, he would vote the same way Scooley

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Speaker 1: at it all the time. That's at least when people

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Speaker 1: would say about him. And then of course there's the

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Speaker 1: fact that he's sexually harassed Anita Hill, who was questioned

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Speaker 1: by Congress and ultimately ignored when Thomas was voted in

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Speaker 1: on the narrowest margin in Supreme Court history. That's like

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Speaker 1: the the baseball card, you know, version of Clarence Thomas's

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Speaker 1: history stats, the stats, right, all of that is technically true, um,

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Speaker 1: with the exception of him being Justice kalias lick Spill.

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Speaker 1: We'll talk about that later, um. But it turns out

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Speaker 1: it's also also incomplete that I now feel not going

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Speaker 1: into detail about the life and beliefs of Clarence Thomas

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Speaker 1: is kind of a disservice, So here we go. Clarence

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Speaker 1: Thomas was born on June twenty three, nineteen forty eight,

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Speaker 1: in an unpowered wooden shack on the edge of a

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Speaker 1: title swamp near the small town of pinpoint Georgia. Um,

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Speaker 1: as you might have guessed from everything in that last sentence,

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Speaker 1: he was born into the kind of poverty that most

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Speaker 1: of us who are capable of listening to podcasts can

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Speaker 1: only dimly comprehend. Very few, even as bad as poverty

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Speaker 1: is in the very few people exist in that kind

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Speaker 1: of poverty in the United States. This day, right um,

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Speaker 1: like it is he is he is living, this is night.

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Speaker 1: He's living with access to like eighteen forties technology. For

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Speaker 1: the most part, right like that is this kid's childhood.

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Speaker 1: That's this kid's like the world he comes into. Um.

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Speaker 1: His great great grandmother had been born into slavery and

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Speaker 1: emancipated at age nine because of there's his war um Um.

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Speaker 1: She had a son, uh and that her son had

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Speaker 1: several young kids and then abandoned those kids, leaving her

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Speaker 1: to take care of them. So that's his grandmother. Uh.

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Speaker 1: Now one of his grandmother's son's kids who gets abandoned

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Speaker 1: by her son is a guy named Myers Anderson, who

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Speaker 1: is Clarence's grandfather on his mother's side. Um. Myers refused

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Speaker 1: to ever speak about his own father, but he also

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Speaker 1: would follow in his footsteps. So Myers has a daughter,

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Speaker 1: Leola Williams Um, who is Clarence's mom. Um and Leola

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Speaker 1: is born out of wedlock. Her mother, myers partner dies

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Speaker 1: in a subsequent childbirth when she's three. Uh. Now, Myers

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Speaker 1: is not the kind of guy who wants to have daughters.

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Speaker 1: He thinks that's kind of a waste of time. So

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Speaker 1: he decides he's not going to raise his daughter, and

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Speaker 1: he sends her to Pinpoint, Georgia, where she's raised by

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Speaker 1: his sister, her aunt. Um. Her her aunt is not

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Speaker 1: a nurturing kind of person. It's a very strict upbringing,

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Speaker 1: and there's never any belief that like Leola is going

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Speaker 1: to have a future right like, she does not have prospects. Um.

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Speaker 1: Aunt Annie was illiterate. UM, so Leola doesn't really learn

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Speaker 1: how to read as a little girl. UM and Aunt

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Speaker 1: Annie keeps her kind of ward whatever you wanna call her,

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Speaker 1: from playing with other children. She doesn't want to let

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Speaker 1: her socialize. She wants to keep strict control over her

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Speaker 1: so she doesn't get pregnant young like it tends to happen.

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Speaker 1: Leola was so desperate for some kind of childhood that

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Speaker 1: she made dolls for herself out of clumps of weed,

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Speaker 1: washing the roots to simulate hair. So like again when

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Speaker 1: we're talking about how poor these people are, Clarence's mom

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Speaker 1: is making dolls out of clumps of weed, like weeds,

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Speaker 1: Like that is yeah, that's like a level yeah right,

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Speaker 1: And like when you always talk about parenting, it's like

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Speaker 1: we're all just trying to break cycles. Yeah, like what

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Speaker 1: our grandparents did, what they did. So that's where we're

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Speaker 1: starting here, Like you're saying, like centuries past, you've got

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Speaker 1: centuries of slavery and families being forcibly broken up. And

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Speaker 1: then a pretty bad pattern gets started by um by

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Speaker 1: myers father who leaves the family. And Myers doesn't abandon

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Speaker 1: his kids because he has a relationship with him, but

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Speaker 1: he also doesn't want to take care of daughters, so

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Speaker 1: he just kind of shuffles them off to whatever the

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Speaker 1: oldest member of his family is, right, and that person

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Speaker 1: is like, well, if you have any kind of freedom,

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Speaker 1: you're clearly going to have even more kids before you're

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Speaker 1: ready for him. So I'm going to basically make you

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Speaker 1: live in a prison. So that's how Leola grows up. Um,

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Speaker 1: when she's sixteen, she gets pregnant anyway with Clarence's older

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Speaker 1: sister mmam ay and she drops out of school. Um.

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Speaker 1: Leola was still a teenager when she had Clarence. A

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Speaker 1: little bit after she has m m a uh. The

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Speaker 1: shock that they lived in was insulated with newspaper and

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Speaker 1: talked with library A repaced that was again like that's

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Speaker 1: what they have access to, right, like where are things free?

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Speaker 1: What is it that you can get your hands on

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Speaker 1: in order to like fill holes in your house? Just

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Speaker 1: just about as desperate as it gets. Um. Clarence's younger

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Speaker 1: brother was born a little more than a year after him.

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Speaker 1: Now you will notice that I have not talked a

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Speaker 1: lot about their father. Clarence Thomas's dad is known as M. C.

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Speaker 1: Thomas UM. And the reason he doesn't show up in

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Speaker 1: this story much is that because as soon as he

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Speaker 1: has three kids with Leola, he abandons her and his

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Speaker 1: family because he's gotten someone else pregnant and her dad

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Speaker 1: threatened to shoot him if he didn't marry her. So

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Speaker 1: this is a rough start, right, I think it's okay.

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Speaker 1: So it's the worst parts of everything go on this.

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Speaker 1: It is like one of those if you were if

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Speaker 1: you were like writing this background for like a fictional character.

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Speaker 1: People would be like, all right, well, maybe pick like

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Speaker 1: one of these things. Yeah. An editor would be like,

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Speaker 1: it feels like you're putting a hat on top of hat. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and that's how vivid this the history of suffering is. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it is. It is deeply difficult. Um. And it's worth

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Speaker 1: noting the community and Pinpoint. This kind of upbringing is

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Speaker 1: not common for other people who live in Pinpoint, which

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Speaker 1: is a black community. Um. It is a very traditional community.

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Speaker 1: It is very uncommon there for a father to leave

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Speaker 1: his family or for children to be born outside of wedlock.

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Speaker 1: Everyone is extremely religious here. So from the start, Clarence

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Speaker 1: doesn't just grow up with all of this going on

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Speaker 1: in his family, which is tremendously difficult. He's also ostracized.

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Speaker 1: It is made clear to him by other people in

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Speaker 1: the area that his upbringing is fundamentally different and like

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Speaker 1: fucked up right, yeah, um right, So yeah, it's this

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Speaker 1: is fucking spooking me out, man, because it's so we

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Speaker 1: we constantly look at figures like this, like especially especially

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Speaker 1: the Supreme Court, where you're looking at this idea that

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Speaker 1: you know, on a whim, they can con curtail all

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Speaker 1: these human rights and We're just like, how the fuck

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Speaker 1: what's going on with you that you think it's all good?

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Speaker 1: And to hear this story even started for this early on,

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Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, fuck, this sounds again. It sounds like

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Speaker 1: centuries of like compounded negativity suffering coming together to form

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Speaker 1: like this human being. And you're like, oh my god,

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Speaker 1: of course, like it's you can't fathom it. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: it's I mean, this is probably why it's a bad

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Speaker 1: idea to just like pick nine random people, uh and

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Speaker 1: be like you you are our god kings. Now, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's because all sorts of ship might have gone on

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Speaker 1: in their backgrounds that make them do real wild ship

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Speaker 1: and maybe yeah, that's not good. Um, I don't know,

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Speaker 1: Like you don't have to have had this background to

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Speaker 1: wind up trapped in them. Nearly everybody winds up kind

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Speaker 1: of trapped in the past to extent. You know, maybe

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Speaker 1: you just love the music of the nineteen nineties, but everybody,

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Speaker 1: everybody like winds up growing up with something that you

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Speaker 1: never quite moved past. Right, which is why one of

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Speaker 1: the many reasons why people shouldn't be able to hold

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Speaker 1: too much power over each other, because we develop all

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Speaker 1: these weird fucking hang ups, and it's best to just

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Speaker 1: kind of minimize the damage that can do, is my attitude. UM.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, we've covered some desperate origin show stories on

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Speaker 1: this show, but I have to say, like Clarence Thomas's

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Speaker 1: early childhood is like it's up there, you know. Um,

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Speaker 1: that is that is rough. His dad, you know again,

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Speaker 1: leaves as soon as he gets another woman pregnant. It's

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Speaker 1: possible that Clarence's dad was bigumous lee married. Um. The

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Speaker 1: legalities here are very unclear, but none of his kids

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Speaker 1: were planned. In general, that was not super common um

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Speaker 1: with his family. His mother later told interviewers, quote, we

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Speaker 1: didn't know anything about birth control or where babies came

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Speaker 1: from when you got pregnant. You just had it. So yeah, Um,

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Speaker 1: as I said at earlier, Clarence grows up aware that

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Speaker 1: he's not living with the kind of family that most

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Speaker 1: kids have. You know, everyone is extremely pinpoint, Like money

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Speaker 1: isn't a thing anybody has. But most kids have fairly

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Speaker 1: stable family networks, um, and you know are born kind

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Speaker 1: of with at least that in their lives. Clarence is

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Speaker 1: aware that he's missing something. A black journalist who knew

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Speaker 1: Thomas when he was growing Up told Jane Mayor and

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Speaker 1: Jill Abrams and the journalist I believe is anonymous for

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Speaker 1: understandable reasons. Jane Mayor and Jill Abrams, authors of the

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Speaker 1: book Strange Justice, quote, he starts out as a little

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Speaker 1: black boy, not accepted in the black world. He has

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Speaker 1: no money, no family. This puts him at the bottom

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Speaker 1: of the pecking order amongst Southern blacks, a community that

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Speaker 1: is far more closed minded and rigid than many whites. Imagine,

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Speaker 1: as soon as he was born, he was just out

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Speaker 1: there a floater. So that's one attitude at least on

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Speaker 1: his background, right, that's a single person's opinion. Um. Now,

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Speaker 1: once his dad leaves, his mom was forced to move

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Speaker 1: in with the aunt who had raised her miserably. Um.

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Speaker 1: And she le was her kids with the aunt who

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Speaker 1: had raised her, this very strict woman who like has

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Speaker 1: had a life I can't even imagine in terms of difficulty.

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Speaker 1: And Clarence's mom moves to Savannah, fifteen miles away, which

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Speaker 1: is a lot further back than to work as a

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Speaker 1: live in servant for a rich white family so that

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Speaker 1: she could send money back home. She made fourteen dollars

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Speaker 1: a day when she visited her kids, they would regularly

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Speaker 1: ask about their father, um, and you know, she would

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Speaker 1: didn't really have a good answer for where he was um.

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Speaker 1: And this was made more miserable that by the fact

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Speaker 1: that their father's father, their grandfather on their dad's side,

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Speaker 1: was the town bus driver, so that they had to

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Speaker 1: see their grandpa every day without like having a relationship

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Speaker 1: with them because like their dad was just gone. Yeah. Rough,

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Speaker 1: So life in Pinpoint was extremely difficult for Again, the

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Speaker 1: poverty here is very intense. Leola, like most local women,

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Speaker 1: took the job that you could get as a woman

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Speaker 1: in Pinpoint, which was working at a crab and shrimp factory. Uh.

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Speaker 1: This is the kind of thing that most women who

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Speaker 1: grew up there spent their entire lives picking crab and

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Speaker 1: shrimp out of shells from dawn until dusk. Leola started

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Speaker 1: when she was nine, which was very common. Um. This

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Speaker 1: is how people spend their whole lives and fucking pen um.

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Speaker 1: It was illegal for her to start work at nine,

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Speaker 1: but the plant owner didn't care, and neither did the

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Speaker 1: government of Georgia. And this is not a place where

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Speaker 1: government inspectors come. Right, nobody's showing up in Pinpoint to

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Speaker 1: check on these people because they are poor and black. Um,

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Speaker 1: So the government doesn't give a ship what happens as

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Speaker 1: his life begins. Clarence seemed destined to a similar life path.

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Speaker 1: This is what happened to most people in pinpoint Um.

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Speaker 1: Education did exist technically, but it had to be done

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Speaker 1: in between brutal workshifts because you have to help your

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Speaker 1: family survives, so like learning and stuff come secondary um.

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Speaker 1: And of course you can't continue school once you have

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Speaker 1: kids of your own, which often happens at like fifteen

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Speaker 1: or sixteen. A lot of folks around him are alliterate. Again,

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Speaker 1: it's not it's looking like this is more or less

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Speaker 1: the path he's going to wind up on, just because

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Speaker 1: there's not a lot of options because set of segregation.

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Speaker 1: People in pinpoint we're not allowed to use the local beaches,

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Speaker 1: the libraries, or the parks um. All of those were

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Speaker 1: outside of pinpoint Um. And even if they'd been able

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Speaker 1: to afford traveling to such luxuries, again, there was segregation.

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Speaker 1: The constitution technically guaranteed them the right to vote, but

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Speaker 1: there were poll taxes and literacy tests in Georgia that

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Speaker 1: made it basically impossible. In the rare occasions where a

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Speaker 1: Pinpoint resident would wind it in the same court as

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Speaker 1: a white person. They were made to swear on separate bibles. Um.

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Speaker 1: This is like as Jim Crow as it gets. Um. Now,

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Speaker 1: this is not the kind of upbringing that you would

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Speaker 1: expect somebody to be able to like get a law

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Speaker 1: degree and become a Supreme Court justice from And it

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Speaker 1: did not happen too many kids in Pinpoint. Um. But

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Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty five, when Thomas was six, his life

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Speaker 1: changed to his intense and lasting fortune. He and his

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Speaker 1: brother accidentally lit their curtains on fire with a wood

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Speaker 1: stove and burnt their family house to the ground. Uh.

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Speaker 1: This put their eight aunt. She was no longer able

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Speaker 1: to take care of them, right because like they were

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Speaker 1: in her house now, so her mom, their mom takes

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Speaker 1: them in at first, but she is living in servants quarters,

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Speaker 1: which is like this filthy tenement in Savannah. Um that's

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Speaker 1: like built by rich people to be as small as

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Speaker 1: possible so their servants just have a place to live. Um.

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Speaker 1: It is a single bedroom with an outdoor toilet. Um.

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Speaker 1: And it's not a kind of thing that you can

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Speaker 1: really raise. Two boys in Leola begged their father for help. Um,

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Speaker 1: he wasn't willing to do anything. So she started to

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Speaker 1: beg her father, Myers Anderson, who had abandoned her, for help. Um,

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Speaker 1: and Myers eventually agrees to help because again, they're boys, right,

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Speaker 1: he didn't really care about raising girls, but these are boys. Um.

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Speaker 1: Now I'm gonna quote again from Strange Justice to talk

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Speaker 1: about how Clarence would later relate what he said had happened. Quote.

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Speaker 1: Thomas's recollection of how Myers Anderson came to intercede is

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Speaker 1: somewhat different. He has told a number of people over

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Speaker 1: the years that at about this that time, his mother

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Speaker 1: became romantically involved with a man who had interest in

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Speaker 1: taking on her children. As his friend Michael Middleton remembers it,

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Speaker 1: Thomas told me his mother dumped him and his brother

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Speaker 1: on the grandfather because she'd met some man. So, by

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Speaker 1: the age of seven, Clarence Thomas had been abandoned by

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Speaker 1: both parents. Now that could be true. She could have

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Speaker 1: liked decided to abandon them, but it seems more likely

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Speaker 1: that she was just in a desperate situation and did

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Speaker 1: it help from her grandfather. Clarence hates his mom. Um.

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Speaker 1: He is like will be mean to her his entire life.

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Speaker 1: You can have whatever opinion on that you want. I

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Speaker 1: think he might have made that up. He makes a

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Speaker 1: lot of stuff about his back story up. Oh interesting, Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean because that absolutely when you describe, you know,

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Speaker 1: her living situation, How could how could anyone think like

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Speaker 1: that that was going to be the place where, yeah,

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Speaker 1: she could have her kids grow up. Well. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: Myers is kind of like if you're if you're Leola,

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Speaker 1: Myers is a great person to give your kids to because,

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Speaker 1: unlike everyone else you know in your life, he has money.

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Speaker 1: He gets out of pinpoint. We're talking about this in

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Speaker 1: a bit, but he is doing well financially. So it's

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Speaker 1: not just like, well, you're a man in my family

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Speaker 1: and I need help with these kids. It's well, you

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Speaker 1: have fucking resources, and I've literally never met another single

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Speaker 1: person who has resources. Um. So yeah, Myers is not

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Speaker 1: thrilled to take on new kids. Uh. He yells at

380
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Speaker 1: Leola and he refuses it first, but then his wife

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Speaker 1: threatens to leave him. Uh, and so he agrees to

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Speaker 1: take in both boys. Uh. Now Clarence has an older

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Speaker 1: sister too, m m A. Myers. Anderson still refuses to

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Speaker 1: help with her, he's only going to raise the boys.

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Speaker 1: Oh my god, it's it's yeah, the worst fucking messages

386
00:20:41,200 --> 00:20:44,359
Speaker 1: are constantly being reinforced. This person as like a child

387
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Speaker 1: and you're my god, like you're seeing it all start

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Speaker 1: forming like so early, where it's like, no, Um, I

389
00:20:50,960 --> 00:20:54,200
Speaker 1: have value because I'm boy. Yeah, I have value because

390
00:20:54,240 --> 00:20:56,639
Speaker 1: I am boy, and like I am being now separated

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Speaker 1: from my community and given an opportunity no one else's

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Speaker 1: and um, yeah, a whole bunch of ship is going

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Speaker 1: to to result from this. Um so m m A.

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Speaker 1: His sister remains living in poverty with her aunt, um

395
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Speaker 1: living with like family because their house got burnt down. Um. Now,

396
00:21:12,320 --> 00:21:14,440
Speaker 1: while up to this point, again Clarence and his brother

397
00:21:14,480 --> 00:21:17,000
Speaker 1: had been as poor as it gets, once they move

398
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Speaker 1: in with Myers, there suddenly middle class instantly his life Obviously,

399
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Speaker 1: this is a fucking man who grows up in the

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Speaker 1: late eighteen hundreds in Georgia a black man. His life

401
00:21:27,840 --> 00:21:31,000
Speaker 1: was grueling and tremendously difficult. Um. He had never gotten

402
00:21:31,040 --> 00:21:33,760
Speaker 1: beyond a third grade education, but he had turned a

403
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Speaker 1: pushcart business into a coal ice, uh and oil delivery business.

404
00:21:38,280 --> 00:21:41,840
Speaker 1: Like he's delivering fuel to local businesses and stuff. Um,

405
00:21:41,880 --> 00:21:44,120
Speaker 1: and his business has done well enough that he's bought

406
00:21:44,160 --> 00:21:47,320
Speaker 1: rental properties and a small farm. Like he is extremely

407
00:21:47,400 --> 00:21:50,840
Speaker 1: successful and a very intelligent man. Um. He had attempted

408
00:21:50,880 --> 00:21:54,399
Speaker 1: to expand into contracting, like helping with like construction of

409
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Speaker 1: houses in Savannah, but he had been denied a permit

410
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Speaker 1: to make cement because of racism. Um, so he is

411
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Speaker 1: he has hit Basically, Myers has hit the height of

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Speaker 1: success that you're allowed to achieve as a black man

413
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Speaker 1: in Georgia in this period of time. And it's also

414
00:22:08,960 --> 00:22:11,000
Speaker 1: been made very clear of him that you're not allowed

415
00:22:11,040 --> 00:22:15,480
Speaker 1: to get do better than this, you know. Yeah, so yeah,

416
00:22:16,400 --> 00:22:18,880
Speaker 1: that said, obviously, his situation is still light years beyond

417
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Speaker 1: what Thomas had enjoyed before. And once they're living with

418
00:22:21,880 --> 00:22:25,239
Speaker 1: their grandpa, Clarence and his brother have electricity, uh, they

419
00:22:25,280 --> 00:22:28,600
Speaker 1: have indoor plumbing, and most importantly, they have access to

420
00:22:28,720 --> 00:22:34,159
Speaker 1: good private schools right. Um. Now, in return, they have

421
00:22:34,280 --> 00:22:36,960
Speaker 1: to deal with Myers Anderson and this section from a

422
00:22:37,000 --> 00:22:39,240
Speaker 1: write up in The Atlantic gives an idea of what

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00:22:39,280 --> 00:22:42,679
Speaker 1: he was like to live under. Quote. Anderson wouldn't let

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Speaker 1: Thomas or his brother wear work gloves on the family

425
00:22:45,000 --> 00:22:48,280
Speaker 1: farm as they cut sugarcane or helped butcher livestock. He

426
00:22:48,359 --> 00:22:51,320
Speaker 1: never praised the boys or showed them affection. He feared

427
00:22:51,320 --> 00:22:55,400
Speaker 1: the evil consequences of idleness. Thomas wrote in My Grandfather's Son,

428
00:22:55,760 --> 00:22:57,679
Speaker 1: and so made sure that we were too busy to

429
00:22:57,680 --> 00:23:00,600
Speaker 1: suffer them. In his presence, there was no play, no fun,

430
00:23:00,720 --> 00:23:05,240
Speaker 1: and little laughter. So that's good. That's all My all

431
00:23:05,240 --> 00:23:09,040
Speaker 1: my favorite homies grew up like that, good and normal

432
00:23:09,119 --> 00:23:14,200
Speaker 1: guy to raise some kids. Hates women, never smiles, makes

433
00:23:14,240 --> 00:23:18,919
Speaker 1: you hurt yourself, and your book is still my grand

434
00:23:19,280 --> 00:23:23,280
Speaker 1: grandpa's my grandfather's son or whatever. Well, when Clarence gets older,

435
00:23:23,320 --> 00:23:25,199
Speaker 1: we'll talk about this. But he decides the fact that

436
00:23:25,240 --> 00:23:28,920
Speaker 1: his grandpa because his grandpa is like the right wing

437
00:23:29,080 --> 00:23:33,480
Speaker 1: platonic ideal of like a grandfather, Right, he's this horrid

438
00:23:33,600 --> 00:23:36,919
Speaker 1: of working man who like doesn't cry, doesn't smile, you know,

439
00:23:37,320 --> 00:23:41,240
Speaker 1: strict discipline, um and and even though he doesn't really

440
00:23:41,240 --> 00:23:44,160
Speaker 1: get along with his grandpa in real life, once he's

441
00:23:44,920 --> 00:23:48,640
Speaker 1: in politics, he recognizes that his grandpa is like, that's

442
00:23:48,640 --> 00:23:51,240
Speaker 1: a money making endeavor, right, you can sell that to

443
00:23:51,280 --> 00:23:53,879
Speaker 1: these white Republicans like that that you had this this

444
00:23:54,000 --> 00:23:56,680
Speaker 1: strict background. And because he was so strict. We got

445
00:23:56,720 --> 00:23:59,520
Speaker 1: so far. You know, I wasn't able to be too

446
00:23:59,560 --> 00:24:03,480
Speaker 1: black because I was my My grandfather made sure there

447
00:24:03,520 --> 00:24:07,800
Speaker 1: was no riff raffian stuff happening, like it's it's really God,

448
00:24:07,880 --> 00:24:11,440
Speaker 1: it's so fucking again. With every fucking layer you add

449
00:24:11,520 --> 00:24:15,880
Speaker 1: to this ship, you start understanding his resentment of all

450
00:24:15,960 --> 00:24:20,160
Speaker 1: kinds of people, of women, whatever, and you're like, it's

451
00:24:20,200 --> 00:24:23,800
Speaker 1: and it's wrapped in such trauma that like you can

452
00:24:23,880 --> 00:24:28,000
Speaker 1: see how that manifests into somebody with a fucking like

453
00:24:28,960 --> 00:24:33,120
Speaker 1: demonic agenda like this. Yeah, it's not going to be

454
00:24:33,200 --> 00:24:37,119
Speaker 1: surprising that the ends he reaches, like some of them

455
00:24:37,119 --> 00:24:39,159
Speaker 1: will be surprising, I guess, but like a lot of

456
00:24:39,200 --> 00:24:42,639
Speaker 1: this does make sense. So Thomas would later write that

457
00:24:42,680 --> 00:24:45,439
Speaker 1: his grandfather made sure that both boys knew that they

458
00:24:45,480 --> 00:24:47,600
Speaker 1: had to quote work twice as hard to get half

459
00:24:47,600 --> 00:24:51,119
Speaker 1: as far um, and that like, yeah, that was just

460
00:24:51,200 --> 00:24:53,520
Speaker 1: the way ship worked in the United States, which could

461
00:24:53,520 --> 00:24:55,879
Speaker 1: be fair. Did Yeah, Yeah, I mean that's I think

462
00:24:55,920 --> 00:24:58,679
Speaker 1: a lot not just him, a lot of people all.

463
00:24:58,760 --> 00:25:00,359
Speaker 1: I was told that too, but it was it was

464
00:25:00,440 --> 00:25:03,080
Speaker 1: twice as hard for half the pay. Yeah, yeah, that

465
00:25:03,280 --> 00:25:05,880
Speaker 1: is like, yes, I and I have again we've talked

466
00:25:05,880 --> 00:25:08,760
Speaker 1: about like, he's not an entirely credible narrator about his

467
00:25:08,800 --> 00:25:11,480
Speaker 1: best I have absolutely know whether or not his grandfather

468
00:25:11,600 --> 00:25:14,119
Speaker 1: said those exact words. I have no doubt that he

469
00:25:14,480 --> 00:25:19,159
Speaker 1: wanted to get that across to those kids. That's sucking true. Um. So,

470
00:25:19,240 --> 00:25:22,640
Speaker 1: while Myers clearly wanted both boys to be successful, that

471
00:25:22,800 --> 00:25:25,359
Speaker 1: was kind of where his concern with them ended. He

472
00:25:25,440 --> 00:25:29,720
Speaker 1: wanted them to be able to make like money and

473
00:25:29,800 --> 00:25:34,000
Speaker 1: be successful in society. Um. He seemed to have not

474
00:25:34,080 --> 00:25:35,800
Speaker 1: even money as much as he wanted them to have

475
00:25:35,840 --> 00:25:38,119
Speaker 1: like a position, right, Like he wanted them to have

476
00:25:38,320 --> 00:25:42,160
Speaker 1: like do make status? Yeah, exactly, status. He did not

477
00:25:42,520 --> 00:25:45,400
Speaker 1: really seem to care about them as human beings. Um.

478
00:25:45,400 --> 00:25:48,840
Speaker 1: Thomas later told colleagues in government that Myers rarely spoke

479
00:25:48,840 --> 00:25:51,240
Speaker 1: to him except to order him to do chores. A

480
00:25:51,359 --> 00:25:54,200
Speaker 1: Yale law school colleague claims that Clarence told him a

481
00:25:54,240 --> 00:25:57,720
Speaker 1: physical frequent physical punishments for misbehavior. If he or his

482
00:25:57,760 --> 00:26:02,320
Speaker 1: brother overslept, quote, they'd have the ship beaten out of them. Um.

483
00:26:02,359 --> 00:26:05,320
Speaker 1: And the book Strange Justice goes into even more detail. Quote.

484
00:26:05,720 --> 00:26:08,040
Speaker 1: So Thomas and his brother were made to rise before

485
00:26:08,119 --> 00:26:10,600
Speaker 1: dawn and help their grandfather deliver coal and oil, and

486
00:26:10,640 --> 00:26:13,600
Speaker 1: spent their holidays and weekends doing heavy farm work for him.

487
00:26:13,640 --> 00:26:15,359
Speaker 1: There seemed to be a tinge of cruelty in some

488
00:26:15,400 --> 00:26:19,240
Speaker 1: of Anderson's weekends and some of Anderson's actions. Thomas, for instance,

489
00:26:19,240 --> 00:26:21,679
Speaker 1: recalled that his grandfather had removed the heater from the

490
00:26:21,680 --> 00:26:24,640
Speaker 1: fuel delivery truck because he felt that even on freezing

491
00:26:24,640 --> 00:26:27,760
Speaker 1: winter mornings, heat was not conducive to good work habits.

492
00:26:28,000 --> 00:26:30,520
Speaker 1: In the old fashioned way of make. Of many such families,

493
00:26:30,600 --> 00:26:34,040
Speaker 1: challenges to authority were met with frequent and humiliating corporal punishment.

494
00:26:34,240 --> 00:26:37,800
Speaker 1: A particular torture was the front hall coat closet, where,

495
00:26:37,960 --> 00:26:40,760
Speaker 1: according to Leola Williams, Anderson used to lock the boys

496
00:26:40,760 --> 00:26:43,800
Speaker 1: when they misbehaved. My daddy was hard. The kids couldn't

497
00:26:43,840 --> 00:26:46,880
Speaker 1: get away with nothing, she recalled. Sometimes, when her father

498
00:26:46,960 --> 00:26:49,040
Speaker 1: was too tired or busy to beat the boys himself,

499
00:26:49,160 --> 00:26:51,840
Speaker 1: Leola said he would call her to whip them for him,

500
00:26:52,040 --> 00:26:53,959
Speaker 1: but the little boys soon got too fast for her

501
00:26:54,000 --> 00:26:56,600
Speaker 1: to catch, so instead, she said, I would have to

502
00:26:56,640 --> 00:26:58,960
Speaker 1: throw my shoes at their heads to catch them at all.

503
00:26:59,400 --> 00:27:02,919
Speaker 1: So harsh, So harsh was the physical punishment. According to Armstrong,

504
00:27:02,960 --> 00:27:05,159
Speaker 1: Williams later Thomas's aide at the E E O C.

505
00:27:05,680 --> 00:27:07,959
Speaker 1: But Thomas still bears a thin scar from a whipping

506
00:27:08,000 --> 00:27:12,879
Speaker 1: his grandfather administered with an electrical cord. So like, yeah,

507
00:27:13,040 --> 00:27:16,919
Speaker 1: that's not maybe don't do that kids every lay I

508
00:27:16,960 --> 00:27:19,920
Speaker 1: mean yeah, I mean, I mean that kind of ship

509
00:27:20,080 --> 00:27:22,520
Speaker 1: is so common man. Yeah, and the the whole later

510
00:27:22,640 --> 00:27:25,840
Speaker 1: generations too. It's like there's the common stuff and then

511
00:27:25,880 --> 00:27:28,760
Speaker 1: there's the I've removed the heater from the truck because

512
00:27:29,200 --> 00:27:34,280
Speaker 1: because being warm will make you work badly. Like, yeah,

513
00:27:34,320 --> 00:27:38,399
Speaker 1: he's he's got again every every layer because it's like

514
00:27:38,600 --> 00:27:41,000
Speaker 1: not a single thing was like good except for the

515
00:27:41,200 --> 00:27:45,399
Speaker 1: like his access to like fire society. Essentially he has

516
00:27:45,480 --> 00:27:49,080
Speaker 1: access to money, but like none to affection. And again,

517
00:27:49,119 --> 00:27:52,159
Speaker 1: I think the actual the physical punishments described there, that

518
00:27:52,320 --> 00:27:55,320
Speaker 1: is just the norm across certainly the South, right, and

519
00:27:55,320 --> 00:27:58,240
Speaker 1: and not just the South in the unit that's everywhere right,

520
00:27:58,280 --> 00:28:02,720
Speaker 1: Like that is that is incredibly common. Those attitudes that like, yeah,

521
00:28:02,720 --> 00:28:04,399
Speaker 1: you're gonna whip them with a fucking cord if they

522
00:28:04,440 --> 00:28:06,119
Speaker 1: don't do something right, you pop a kid in the

523
00:28:06,160 --> 00:28:09,719
Speaker 1: fucking face, you know, Like that is like my in Oklahoma,

524
00:28:09,760 --> 00:28:12,000
Speaker 1: my public fucking school spanked us and ship and that

525
00:28:12,080 --> 00:28:16,960
Speaker 1: was in the nineties. Like the attitudes, particularly in rural areas,

526
00:28:17,000 --> 00:28:20,360
Speaker 1: of like physical punishment towards kids are not at all

527
00:28:20,480 --> 00:28:24,280
Speaker 1: uncommon in this period. It's the weird. You have to

528
00:28:24,400 --> 00:28:28,280
Speaker 1: be miserable. You can't let yourself relax, you can't let

529
00:28:28,320 --> 00:28:32,159
Speaker 1: yourself like feel good for a moment when you're working,

530
00:28:32,200 --> 00:28:34,600
Speaker 1: because that will make you lazy, and that's dangerous. That

531
00:28:34,680 --> 00:28:36,919
Speaker 1: I think is the thing that is actually really different

532
00:28:36,960 --> 00:28:43,760
Speaker 1: about his upbringing, right right, yeah, yeah, just if it's

533
00:28:43,760 --> 00:28:47,680
Speaker 1: again is it freaks me out even more every single

534
00:28:47,800 --> 00:28:51,440
Speaker 1: thing like it adds to someone being even more rigid,

535
00:28:52,160 --> 00:28:56,160
Speaker 1: unable to see the good in anything, and acts out

536
00:28:56,200 --> 00:29:00,560
Speaker 1: like their powerlessness in youth in a way to feel

537
00:29:00,600 --> 00:29:04,880
Speaker 1: like omnipotent even it's through if it's through destruction. But

538
00:29:04,960 --> 00:29:10,040
Speaker 1: you know who is omnipotent through their destruction. Miles Um,

539
00:29:10,160 --> 00:29:14,440
Speaker 1: which which aeronautics company the products and services and support

540
00:29:14,720 --> 00:29:18,520
Speaker 1: Miles are primary sponsor in this podcast, is the corporation

541
00:29:18,880 --> 00:29:21,560
Speaker 1: you probably know from one of their many delicious beverages,

542
00:29:21,800 --> 00:29:24,600
Speaker 1: but who is also building a laser to end all

543
00:29:24,640 --> 00:29:30,080
Speaker 1: life on earth. See has realized that capitalism can't continue

544
00:29:30,120 --> 00:29:34,640
Speaker 1: to expand indefinitely. But what can expand indefinitely is the

545
00:29:34,680 --> 00:29:37,760
Speaker 1: circle of debris when we blow up the Earth. So

546
00:29:38,160 --> 00:29:41,160
Speaker 1: by a fund the space laser that will end all life.

547
00:29:41,640 --> 00:29:44,800
Speaker 1: That's our that's our motto promo code kill us all

548
00:29:45,200 --> 00:29:55,240
Speaker 1: go ah, We're back. So Meyer sends the boys to

549
00:29:55,280 --> 00:29:58,600
Speaker 1: a Catholic school, Um, which is he is also he's

550
00:29:58,600 --> 00:30:04,280
Speaker 1: a Catholic convert to which matters to Catholics, Um, but whatever, um,

551
00:30:04,320 --> 00:30:06,520
Speaker 1: And he's primarily it seems like he kind of converts

552
00:30:06,560 --> 00:30:11,080
Speaker 1: to Catholicism because that offers more opportunities. If you are

553
00:30:11,120 --> 00:30:13,000
Speaker 1: a Catholic, you can go, you can send your kids

554
00:30:13,040 --> 00:30:16,400
Speaker 1: to Catholic school. Like, it's a good community, it provides

555
00:30:16,400 --> 00:30:20,000
Speaker 1: more support, right. Um. So the school he sends the

556
00:30:20,040 --> 00:30:22,600
Speaker 1: kids to cost about twenty bucks a year, which even

557
00:30:22,640 --> 00:30:25,200
Speaker 1: then is not expensive for a private school, right, Like

558
00:30:25,240 --> 00:30:28,600
Speaker 1: that's not a fortune back in those days. Um, but

559
00:30:28,680 --> 00:30:31,000
Speaker 1: it's still I mean, it's certainly outside the reach of

560
00:30:31,040 --> 00:30:34,400
Speaker 1: most families in PenPoint, who meant, probably never saw twenty

561
00:30:34,440 --> 00:30:38,320
Speaker 1: dollars in one place at the same time in their lives. Um.

562
00:30:38,360 --> 00:30:40,560
Speaker 1: And what to the point, Um, it's out of reach

563
00:30:40,680 --> 00:30:43,800
Speaker 1: of like a lot of black people in particularly rural

564
00:30:43,800 --> 00:30:45,720
Speaker 1: Georgia in that period. Because it is while it is

565
00:30:45,760 --> 00:30:50,000
Speaker 1: a segregated school, it's a pretty good school because it's

566
00:30:50,000 --> 00:30:52,440
Speaker 1: a Catholic school, right, so it has access to resources

567
00:30:52,440 --> 00:30:55,120
Speaker 1: that public schools often don't. Um, it's got a more

568
00:30:55,160 --> 00:30:58,280
Speaker 1: progressive background than most. It had been founded in eighteen

569
00:30:58,400 --> 00:31:02,440
Speaker 1: seventy eight uh Reconstruction by a group of white Franciscan

570
00:31:02,520 --> 00:31:05,720
Speaker 1: nuns who believed that black people could be good Catholics,

571
00:31:05,720 --> 00:31:10,480
Speaker 1: which was real controversial at one point, Like oh my,

572
00:31:11,040 --> 00:31:15,040
Speaker 1: wh yeah, well, locals in in Savannah called them the

573
00:31:15,080 --> 00:31:19,200
Speaker 1: inward Nuns like that was yeah, that's who found the

574
00:31:19,240 --> 00:31:22,080
Speaker 1: school that he goes to, and it is a good education.

575
00:31:22,120 --> 00:31:25,360
Speaker 1: The nuns clearly cared about teaching their students and doing

576
00:31:25,440 --> 00:31:28,840
Speaker 1: so well. That said, they are also Catholic nuns in

577
00:31:28,880 --> 00:31:31,880
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, so they're beating the hell out of

578
00:31:31,920 --> 00:31:34,360
Speaker 1: these You talk to anybody who goes to a Catholic

579
00:31:34,400 --> 00:31:37,240
Speaker 1: school in the fifties, they're getting the ship slapped out

580
00:31:37,280 --> 00:31:40,080
Speaker 1: of them with rulers like that is that's just how

581
00:31:40,120 --> 00:31:45,680
Speaker 1: that stuff goes, right, Yeah, Okay, so again, hey, so

582
00:31:45,760 --> 00:31:48,200
Speaker 1: how is school like pretty good teachers like kind of

583
00:31:48,240 --> 00:31:51,600
Speaker 1: forward thinking and challenge their beliefs and things. No, they

584
00:31:51,640 --> 00:31:54,080
Speaker 1: beat the fun out. Well it's even worse. It's like

585
00:31:54,320 --> 00:31:57,040
Speaker 1: they were forward thinking for the time and also reading

586
00:31:57,080 --> 00:32:01,440
Speaker 1: the funk out of actually a little bit from column.

587
00:32:02,640 --> 00:32:05,680
Speaker 1: They believed we were people, so it was important to

588
00:32:05,720 --> 00:32:10,760
Speaker 1: hit us in order to make us learn. Yeah, the

589
00:32:10,800 --> 00:32:15,720
Speaker 1: fifties man quite quite a time. Um. So, Yeah, segregation

590
00:32:15,760 --> 00:32:20,400
Speaker 1: officially ends in nineteen fifty four. Um, that doesn't mean

591
00:32:20,440 --> 00:32:23,520
Speaker 1: that kids in all white and all black schools suddenly

592
00:32:23,560 --> 00:32:26,960
Speaker 1: stopped going to those though, right, It's a process. Um.

593
00:32:27,040 --> 00:32:30,480
Speaker 1: And so it's not until nineteen sixty four, when Thomas

594
00:32:30,480 --> 00:32:34,000
Speaker 1: starts attending an elite Catholic high school that he actually

595
00:32:34,040 --> 00:32:38,840
Speaker 1: is an integrated classrooms. So fairly early on in his childhood,

596
00:32:39,000 --> 00:32:42,120
Speaker 1: segregation legally ends, but it's not until he's in high

597
00:32:42,120 --> 00:32:46,040
Speaker 1: school that he actually is in an integrated classroom. Um.

598
00:32:46,160 --> 00:32:50,840
Speaker 1: So he winds up, you know, finally going to a

599
00:32:50,880 --> 00:32:53,560
Speaker 1: school that is not like segregated based on race. And

600
00:32:53,600 --> 00:32:57,400
Speaker 1: he would later call state enforced segregation quote as close

601
00:32:57,440 --> 00:33:01,080
Speaker 1: to totalitarianism as I would like to get, um, which

602
00:33:01,120 --> 00:33:03,760
Speaker 1: is interesting because he's only it actually it ends when

603
00:33:03,800 --> 00:33:05,480
Speaker 1: he's six, right, So like right at the start of

604
00:33:05,520 --> 00:33:08,920
Speaker 1: his education is when segregation ends. Um. You might want

605
00:33:08,920 --> 00:33:11,200
Speaker 1: to look at that as like an example of him,

606
00:33:11,240 --> 00:33:13,360
Speaker 1: like kind of playing up the story. I don't think

607
00:33:13,440 --> 00:33:15,520
Speaker 1: necessarily that it is. I think it more speaks to

608
00:33:15,560 --> 00:33:18,880
Speaker 1: the fact that the legacy of segregation exists in his

609
00:33:18,960 --> 00:33:21,280
Speaker 1: life throughout his childhood, even though again it ends very

610
00:33:21,320 --> 00:33:24,600
Speaker 1: early on in his life. Um, but it doesn't end

611
00:33:24,800 --> 00:33:31,400
Speaker 1: because it's not a clean break like we often like praticum. Yeah, Um,

612
00:33:31,440 --> 00:33:34,160
Speaker 1: So Clarence, his father remains close to a complete, not

613
00:33:34,400 --> 00:33:37,200
Speaker 1: non entity for the rest of his childhood. Years later,

614
00:33:37,280 --> 00:33:40,040
Speaker 1: during a speech at Pepperdine University, Clarence would give a

615
00:33:40,040 --> 00:33:42,720
Speaker 1: bit of detail into one of the only interactions he

616
00:33:42,760 --> 00:33:45,600
Speaker 1: ever has with his dad. Quote, I saw him only

617
00:33:45,640 --> 00:33:47,480
Speaker 1: twice when I was young. The first time was when

618
00:33:47,480 --> 00:33:49,760
Speaker 1: my mother called her parents with whom my brother, Myers,

619
00:33:49,800 --> 00:33:51,800
Speaker 1: and I then lived, and told them that someone at

620
00:33:51,800 --> 00:33:53,920
Speaker 1: her place wanted to see us. They called a cab

621
00:33:54,000 --> 00:33:56,200
Speaker 1: and then sent us to our housing project department, where

622
00:33:56,240 --> 00:33:58,760
Speaker 1: my father was waiting. I am your daddy, he told us,

623
00:33:58,760 --> 00:34:01,000
Speaker 1: in a firm, shameless voice that carried no hint of

624
00:34:01,000 --> 00:34:04,160
Speaker 1: remorse for his inexplicable absence from our lives. He said

625
00:34:04,160 --> 00:34:06,120
Speaker 1: nothing about loving or missing us, and we didn't say

626
00:34:06,200 --> 00:34:08,080
Speaker 1: much in return. It was as though we were meeting

627
00:34:08,080 --> 00:34:10,640
Speaker 1: a total stranger. But he treated us politely enough, and

628
00:34:10,680 --> 00:34:12,960
Speaker 1: even promised to send us a pair of Elgin watches

629
00:34:13,000 --> 00:34:15,960
Speaker 1: with flexible bands, which were popular at the time that

630
00:34:16,080 --> 00:34:18,400
Speaker 1: we watched them all the mail every day. The watches

631
00:34:18,480 --> 00:34:20,520
Speaker 1: never came, and when a year or so had gone by,

632
00:34:20,800 --> 00:34:23,760
Speaker 1: my grandparents bought us for them, bought them for us instead.

633
00:34:24,160 --> 00:34:26,319
Speaker 1: My father had broken the only promise he ever made

634
00:34:26,320 --> 00:34:28,600
Speaker 1: to us. After that, we heard nothing more from him,

635
00:34:28,680 --> 00:34:31,120
Speaker 1: not even a Christmas or Birthday card. For years, my

636
00:34:31,160 --> 00:34:33,160
Speaker 1: brother and I would ask ourselves how a man could

637
00:34:33,200 --> 00:34:35,960
Speaker 1: show no interest in his own children. I still wonder.

638
00:34:38,719 --> 00:34:41,440
Speaker 1: I do feel like that's overwhelmingly the reaction to these

639
00:34:41,520 --> 00:34:46,160
Speaker 1: at attempts, like God, damn, they're so fucked up. You're like,

640
00:34:46,560 --> 00:34:51,200
Speaker 1: you couldn't you couldn't construct someone who has been through

641
00:34:51,239 --> 00:34:54,440
Speaker 1: all this kind of like shit, that would make you

642
00:34:54,960 --> 00:34:59,960
Speaker 1: fucking this guy anyway. One of two things to one

643
00:35:00,120 --> 00:35:02,640
Speaker 1: with that anecdote with his grandparents and the watches says

644
00:35:02,680 --> 00:35:05,239
Speaker 1: that they've got them. The watches is one of two

645
00:35:05,239 --> 00:35:07,200
Speaker 1: things is true either well, I guess one of three

646
00:35:07,200 --> 00:35:09,919
Speaker 1: things is to either maybe he played up how hard

647
00:35:10,000 --> 00:35:13,279
Speaker 1: his grandfather was and there was actually more softness in

648
00:35:13,360 --> 00:35:15,279
Speaker 1: that relationship than he wanted to admit and this is

649
00:35:15,320 --> 00:35:18,640
Speaker 1: an example of it. Or his dad was just so

650
00:35:18,800 --> 00:35:21,839
Speaker 1: shitty that even his fucking grandfather was like, all right,

651
00:35:21,960 --> 00:35:24,600
Speaker 1: like I gotta get these kids the fucking watches like

652
00:35:24,719 --> 00:35:28,040
Speaker 1: this is just too bad. Or it's grandma right, or

653
00:35:28,120 --> 00:35:30,799
Speaker 1: grandma was was the one that that happened. I mean,

654
00:35:30,840 --> 00:35:34,000
Speaker 1: either way, I think even if you even if you're lying,

655
00:35:34,320 --> 00:35:36,960
Speaker 1: but that's what you want. That's who you want people

656
00:35:37,000 --> 00:35:39,960
Speaker 1: to think you are. Yeah, that's also pretty instructive, Like

657
00:35:40,120 --> 00:35:43,440
Speaker 1: at every level, many things can be true. He is.

658
00:35:43,560 --> 00:35:47,399
Speaker 1: There's a lot to think about here. Um So when

659
00:35:47,400 --> 00:35:49,600
Speaker 1: he starts high school, he is a member of the

660
00:35:49,640 --> 00:35:53,239
Speaker 1: first generation of his family to enjoy any kind of quality. Again,

661
00:35:53,280 --> 00:35:56,759
Speaker 1: his grandfather has a third grade education, not uncommon at

662
00:35:56,760 --> 00:36:00,160
Speaker 1: the time. Um And yeah, so he is he is

663
00:36:00,200 --> 00:36:03,319
Speaker 1: the first male member of his family, he and his

664
00:36:03,360 --> 00:36:05,440
Speaker 1: brother because they're about the same age to go to

665
00:36:05,520 --> 00:36:08,480
Speaker 1: a good high school. Um. As the book Strange Justice

666
00:36:08,480 --> 00:36:11,799
Speaker 1: makes clear, a good deal of his opportunity here came

667
00:36:11,840 --> 00:36:14,480
Speaker 1: as a result of the successes of the civil rights movement. Right,

668
00:36:14,640 --> 00:36:17,520
Speaker 1: it's not just his grandfather's success. It is the fact

669
00:36:17,600 --> 00:36:20,319
Speaker 1: that a lot his people have been fighting for him

670
00:36:20,360 --> 00:36:23,640
Speaker 1: to have this opportunity. Quote and Thomas's first year of life.

671
00:36:23,640 --> 00:36:26,200
Speaker 1: President Harry Truman, in a controversial State of the Union

672
00:36:26,239 --> 00:36:29,320
Speaker 1: addressed called for more extensive civil rights laws, including the

673
00:36:29,440 --> 00:36:32,880
Speaker 1: establishment of some sort of fair employment practices program, the

674
00:36:32,920 --> 00:36:35,279
Speaker 1: butt of the idea that eventually grew into the e

675
00:36:35,360 --> 00:36:38,799
Speaker 1: O C. The speech touched off such furious opposition in

676
00:36:38,800 --> 00:36:42,040
Speaker 1: Georgia that Senator Richard B. Russell proposed to export, exporting

677
00:36:42,080 --> 00:36:45,120
Speaker 1: the state's black population to the north. Leading the fight

678
00:36:45,160 --> 00:36:49,480
Speaker 1: against such racial progress was the staunch segregationist Jay Strom Thurmond,

679
00:36:49,760 --> 00:36:52,400
Speaker 1: the same man who would champion Thomas's nomination to the

680
00:36:52,400 --> 00:36:55,920
Speaker 1: Supreme Court some four decades later. On May seventeenth, nineteen

681
00:36:55,960 --> 00:36:58,879
Speaker 1: fifty four, when Thomas was five, the Supreme Court handed

682
00:36:58,880 --> 00:37:02,319
Speaker 1: down its unanimous dei ordering the end of public school segregation.

683
00:37:02,600 --> 00:37:05,000
Speaker 1: The lead attorney was Third Good Marshall, then the head

684
00:37:05,040 --> 00:37:08,120
Speaker 1: of the in a CPS legal defense fund. Marshall is

685
00:37:08,120 --> 00:37:10,680
Speaker 1: who Clarence Thomas is going to replace. On the spring

686
00:37:12,000 --> 00:37:15,359
Speaker 1: so Grandpa Myers would have agreed with the fact that

687
00:37:15,400 --> 00:37:18,640
Speaker 1: like his son's or his grandson's opportunities were a result

688
00:37:18,680 --> 00:37:20,760
Speaker 1: of both his hard work and all of the civil

689
00:37:20,840 --> 00:37:24,440
Speaker 1: rights fighting. Because Myers Anderson was a dedicated member of

690
00:37:24,440 --> 00:37:27,480
Speaker 1: the Double A CP, he earned he earned the nickname

691
00:37:27,520 --> 00:37:30,600
Speaker 1: in town Sharpshooter for the skill with which he targeted

692
00:37:30,640 --> 00:37:35,319
Speaker 1: Boycott's against racist white businesses. Um. He is. Again, he's

693
00:37:35,360 --> 00:37:37,480
Speaker 1: like a hard dude, but he also with the feeling

694
00:37:37,520 --> 00:37:39,640
Speaker 1: that if you're fighting on like you want this motherfucker

695
00:37:39,680 --> 00:37:42,120
Speaker 1: on your side and a fight like he's he's good.

696
00:37:43,840 --> 00:37:47,640
Speaker 1: I mean, he's the worst fucking grandparents. It's a shitty grandpa.

697
00:37:47,719 --> 00:37:54,200
Speaker 1: But uh, he provided the a CP chapter with free

698
00:37:54,239 --> 00:37:58,040
Speaker 1: heating fuel in the winter at the expense of his business. Um.

699
00:37:58,200 --> 00:38:00,440
Speaker 1: One friend of the so clearly he did think that

700
00:38:00,480 --> 00:38:02,319
Speaker 1: it was bad for them to have heating. I don't know,

701
00:38:02,760 --> 00:38:06,200
Speaker 1: I don't know how to parts that all apt. Everything's

702
00:38:06,280 --> 00:38:09,839
Speaker 1: very conditional. Yeah. Yeah. One friend of the family at

703
00:38:09,840 --> 00:38:12,439
Speaker 1: the time noted that Clarence attended a few in Double

704
00:38:12,480 --> 00:38:14,680
Speaker 1: A CP and meetings as a boy, but he was

705
00:38:14,719 --> 00:38:17,520
Speaker 1: at boarding school for a lot of the time, right, Um,

706
00:38:17,600 --> 00:38:20,640
Speaker 1: and a number of like folks who grew like grew

707
00:38:20,719 --> 00:38:22,920
Speaker 1: up with him and report on this time will say that, like,

708
00:38:23,000 --> 00:38:25,239
Speaker 1: while they were doing in double A CP stuff, he

709
00:38:25,280 --> 00:38:29,480
Speaker 1: was at boarding school quotes surrounded by whites. Um. Clarence

710
00:38:29,520 --> 00:38:32,800
Speaker 1: recalls his school differently. He describes it as an entirely

711
00:38:32,840 --> 00:38:36,920
Speaker 1: black environment, and both of his schools were a majority black. Um.

712
00:38:36,960 --> 00:38:40,319
Speaker 1: It's again, we're not ever getting objective when we're talking

713
00:38:40,360 --> 00:38:42,600
Speaker 1: about the people who knew him or him. This is

714
00:38:42,880 --> 00:38:45,719
Speaker 1: everything's filtered through decades of memory because this is all

715
00:38:45,719 --> 00:38:48,239
Speaker 1: a long time later, and everyone's feelings on the matter too.

716
00:38:48,239 --> 00:38:50,799
Speaker 1: So I don't want to like put one side or

717
00:38:50,840 --> 00:38:54,959
Speaker 1: the other as like right about what was going on here? Yeah,

718
00:38:55,040 --> 00:38:57,560
Speaker 1: you want to do both sides, well, at least, like

719
00:38:57,719 --> 00:39:00,160
Speaker 1: I don't know, I wasn't Actually I'm not. I'm up

720
00:39:00,160 --> 00:39:05,759
Speaker 1: growing up in fucking Savannah, Georgia in nineteen fifties. Um,

721
00:39:05,760 --> 00:39:07,880
Speaker 1: but it is it is worth noting that, like, he

722
00:39:08,080 --> 00:39:10,799
Speaker 1: benefits from the civil rights struggle, but his grandpa has

723
00:39:10,800 --> 00:39:12,880
Speaker 1: also put him in a situation where he's not taking

724
00:39:12,880 --> 00:39:17,880
Speaker 1: part in it, you know. Yeah, yeah, exactly, He's already

725
00:39:17,880 --> 00:39:22,800
Speaker 1: has gigantic chips on both shoulders. Yeah, and at least

726
00:39:23,080 --> 00:39:24,920
Speaker 1: at this point it seems to be kind of it

727
00:39:24,960 --> 00:39:27,160
Speaker 1: won't be later, but that is he does have that

728
00:39:27,200 --> 00:39:31,160
Speaker 1: ability as a child that it is kind of abstract. Um.

729
00:39:31,200 --> 00:39:32,839
Speaker 1: So this is one of those areas where we get

730
00:39:32,840 --> 00:39:36,040
Speaker 1: into the inconsistencies between how other people described Thomas as

731
00:39:36,080 --> 00:39:38,640
Speaker 1: youth and how he has described it since once he

732
00:39:38,680 --> 00:39:41,560
Speaker 1: became a conservative political figure, and this happens before he's

733
00:39:41,560 --> 00:39:45,120
Speaker 1: a Supreme Court justice. He's lobbying for years. Thomas made

734
00:39:45,120 --> 00:39:47,520
Speaker 1: a point of claiming in speeches that he would give

735
00:39:47,560 --> 00:39:50,160
Speaker 1: for things like the Federalist Society and all these colleges.

736
00:39:50,840 --> 00:39:52,880
Speaker 1: He would always make the claim that he had succeeded

737
00:39:52,920 --> 00:39:57,560
Speaker 1: in spite of a low quality education. Right. In one speech,

738
00:39:57,600 --> 00:39:59,880
Speaker 1: he told an audience quote, I don't understand how it

739
00:39:59,920 --> 00:40:02,200
Speaker 1: is that people today are getting worse educations than I

740
00:40:02,280 --> 00:40:05,920
Speaker 1: received in the segregated schools of Savannah. Now we already

741
00:40:05,920 --> 00:40:08,560
Speaker 1: know that, Like that's not a hundred percent accurate, right,

742
00:40:08,600 --> 00:40:11,319
Speaker 1: Like just based on his actual background, because he went

743
00:40:11,400 --> 00:40:16,120
Speaker 1: to a very high quality series of private schools. Um. Now, obviously,

744
00:40:16,560 --> 00:40:19,239
Speaker 1: like there's a lot to say about that, but it's

745
00:40:19,239 --> 00:40:21,200
Speaker 1: just not true. Like the things that he would claim

746
00:40:21,239 --> 00:40:24,480
Speaker 1: about his education. Um, and he's obviously as a right winger,

747
00:40:24,560 --> 00:40:26,239
Speaker 1: he's claiming that in order to be like, look, the

748
00:40:26,239 --> 00:40:28,799
Speaker 1: schools don't need more money. The poor schools that I

749
00:40:28,880 --> 00:40:31,160
Speaker 1: went to did a better job than modern schools. There's

750
00:40:31,160 --> 00:40:33,719
Speaker 1: some cultural thing that's making the schools bad where it's like, no, man,

751
00:40:34,040 --> 00:40:35,879
Speaker 1: your grandpa paid for you to go to a great

752
00:40:35,920 --> 00:40:39,880
Speaker 1: private school. Dude, Like, yeah, he's playing. Yeah, he's Mr.

753
00:40:40,000 --> 00:40:43,840
Speaker 1: Ultimate Bootstraps. Yeah, and it's fine, Like it's good that

754
00:40:43,920 --> 00:40:46,520
Speaker 1: your grandpa did that for you, but like, don't pretend

755
00:40:46,719 --> 00:40:49,840
Speaker 1: that you like had a hard, scrubble scrabble public school

756
00:40:49,920 --> 00:40:52,080
Speaker 1: education because you didn't. Well. I think that's like the thing,

757
00:40:52,200 --> 00:40:54,120
Speaker 1: right because if if there's a fork in the road

758
00:40:54,160 --> 00:40:57,680
Speaker 1: of your like choose your own myth making adventure, you

759
00:40:57,719 --> 00:41:01,879
Speaker 1: want to choose the against all odds, right, because that's

760
00:41:01,880 --> 00:41:04,880
Speaker 1: part of especially in with America, like every most people

761
00:41:04,920 --> 00:41:07,200
Speaker 1: want to obscure the fact that like you know, they're

762
00:41:07,239 --> 00:41:10,800
Speaker 1: like a generational uh, they were generationally admitted to like

763
00:41:10,840 --> 00:41:12,759
Speaker 1: an Ivy League school and like, no, man, like it

764
00:41:12,800 --> 00:41:15,560
Speaker 1: was all hard graft, came from the nowhere. And I

765
00:41:15,560 --> 00:41:18,280
Speaker 1: think for him too, that really helps for like multiple

766
00:41:18,360 --> 00:41:20,600
Speaker 1: levels to be like, yeah, I went to a shitty school.

767
00:41:20,640 --> 00:41:23,920
Speaker 1: That's why they don't need anything. And also look what

768
00:41:24,000 --> 00:41:27,319
Speaker 1: I did, folks, lifted myself out. It's fucked up because like,

769
00:41:27,320 --> 00:41:30,279
Speaker 1: obviously there's a funckload of kids and family members of

770
00:41:30,320 --> 00:41:32,680
Speaker 1: his who grew up in Pinpoint who could have gone

771
00:41:32,719 --> 00:41:34,759
Speaker 1: as far as he did, or at least like got

772
00:41:34,800 --> 00:41:36,680
Speaker 1: a hell of a lot further than they did in

773
00:41:36,719 --> 00:41:39,440
Speaker 1: the capitalist sense of the word, but didn't because they

774
00:41:39,440 --> 00:41:42,279
Speaker 1: had to grow up in Pinpoint picking fish out of

775
00:41:42,360 --> 00:41:45,319
Speaker 1: like shells and stuff, because that was the only opportunity

776
00:41:45,320 --> 00:41:49,839
Speaker 1: they got. He gets thankfully, um, like luckily, I should say,

777
00:41:50,239 --> 00:41:52,560
Speaker 1: he gets an opportunity because of his who you know,

778
00:41:52,600 --> 00:41:55,759
Speaker 1: who his grandfather is. Um, but he doesn't like to

779
00:41:55,800 --> 00:41:59,120
Speaker 1: acknowledge that in the future, except for like when he

780
00:41:59,280 --> 00:42:01,400
Speaker 1: does he has to. He does acknowledge his grandfather, but

781
00:42:01,400 --> 00:42:05,720
Speaker 1: always in the way his hardness shaped him as opposed

782
00:42:05,760 --> 00:42:09,200
Speaker 1: to the way his resources provided opportunities. And I think

783
00:42:09,239 --> 00:42:15,759
Speaker 1: that's really interesting. Um, So this just like the wow,

784
00:42:15,960 --> 00:42:18,279
Speaker 1: Yeah that is thways, I was just carved out of

785
00:42:18,320 --> 00:42:24,120
Speaker 1: my grandpa's sternness. Yeah, I mean it makes sense that

786
00:42:24,160 --> 00:42:26,600
Speaker 1: this is like the way he's going to claim it. Um,

787
00:42:26,800 --> 00:42:29,080
Speaker 1: So this next bit gets into some territory that is

788
00:42:29,400 --> 00:42:33,279
Speaker 1: definitely uncomfortable and difficult for me to parse out. Well, Um,

789
00:42:33,360 --> 00:42:36,400
Speaker 1: but we're gonna talk about the specific kind of racism

790
00:42:36,480 --> 00:42:39,600
Speaker 1: that Clarence dealt with in his youth. Um, And a

791
00:42:39,640 --> 00:42:41,680
Speaker 1: lot of it did not come from where I think,

792
00:42:42,239 --> 00:42:45,520
Speaker 1: at least where I would have expected, being a fucking

793
00:42:45,600 --> 00:42:48,120
Speaker 1: white dude who did not grow up in Savannah, Georgia. Uh.

794
00:42:48,160 --> 00:42:49,480
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna quote from a ride up in the

795
00:42:49,480 --> 00:42:51,680
Speaker 1: New Yorker here. His nickname in the schoolyard in the

796
00:42:51,680 --> 00:42:56,400
Speaker 1: streets was ABC, America's blackest child. If he were any blacker,

797
00:42:56,480 --> 00:43:00,120
Speaker 1: his classmates jeered, he'd be blue. Color was code for class.

798
00:43:00,160 --> 00:43:03,440
Speaker 1: The darkness of Thomas's skin, along with the Gulagchi dialect

799
00:43:03,480 --> 00:43:06,160
Speaker 1: he retained from Pinpoint, was a sign of his lowly

800
00:43:06,239 --> 00:43:10,239
Speaker 1: status in origin. For Thomas, these cruelties are a lifelong hurt.

801
00:43:10,520 --> 00:43:13,200
Speaker 1: People love to talk about conflicts inter racially, he told

802
00:43:13,239 --> 00:43:16,000
Speaker 1: the reporter Kin Foskett, who published a biography of Thomas

803
00:43:16,080 --> 00:43:19,040
Speaker 1: Judging Thomas in two thousand four. They never talk about

804
00:43:19,040 --> 00:43:22,080
Speaker 1: the conflicts intentions intro racially. From a young age, the

805
00:43:22,080 --> 00:43:24,719
Speaker 1: primary divide Thomas had to confront came from the privileges

806
00:43:24,719 --> 00:43:27,880
Speaker 1: associated with black wealth and light skin. You had the

807
00:43:27,920 --> 00:43:30,720
Speaker 1: black elite, the school teachers, the light skinned people, the dentist,

808
00:43:30,800 --> 00:43:33,600
Speaker 1: the doctors. Thomas has said, my grandfather was down at

809
00:43:33,600 --> 00:43:35,759
Speaker 1: the bottom. They would look down on him. Everybody tries

810
00:43:35,800 --> 00:43:38,200
Speaker 1: to gloss over that now, but it was the reality.

811
00:43:38,680 --> 00:43:41,800
Speaker 1: And you know that is Thomas's and again other folks,

812
00:43:42,080 --> 00:43:44,160
Speaker 1: you know, have different recollections, but this is what he

813
00:43:44,200 --> 00:43:46,919
Speaker 1: recalls of, like what he deals with as a kid.

814
00:43:47,320 --> 00:43:50,480
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, at every turn, and get right that

815
00:43:50,560 --> 00:43:55,319
Speaker 1: there's he grew up having already feeling inferior as like

816
00:43:55,360 --> 00:43:57,600
Speaker 1: a black kid because the community he grew up in,

817
00:43:57,640 --> 00:43:59,719
Speaker 1: and then on top of that the colorism ship comes

818
00:43:59,719 --> 00:44:05,839
Speaker 1: into it as well and makes him even more his resentment.

819
00:44:06,360 --> 00:44:10,439
Speaker 1: It becomes like, oh my god, one of the things

820
00:44:10,520 --> 00:44:13,960
Speaker 1: every again, at every fucking level. Yeah, there's no he

821
00:44:14,000 --> 00:44:18,759
Speaker 1: has no he doesn't belong anywhere or and feels like

822
00:44:18,840 --> 00:44:20,920
Speaker 1: he has a bone to pick with everything. And you

823
00:44:20,960 --> 00:44:24,200
Speaker 1: see how that leads to the man he becomes in

824
00:44:24,239 --> 00:44:29,200
Speaker 1: this like this ideology of self reliance, which is a fantasy,

825
00:44:29,239 --> 00:44:31,320
Speaker 1: but like you get how someone who comes who grows

826
00:44:31,400 --> 00:44:35,000
Speaker 1: up feeling like they don't have a place anywhere, grows

827
00:44:35,080 --> 00:44:37,759
Speaker 1: up with this attitude towards self reliance. Now, of course,

828
00:44:37,760 --> 00:44:40,279
Speaker 1: the reality is we've talked about is that like he

829
00:44:40,560 --> 00:44:44,239
Speaker 1: benefited tremendously from a community that fought for his his rights,

830
00:44:44,239 --> 00:44:46,840
Speaker 1: even though it does seem like maybe that it didn't

831
00:44:46,880 --> 00:44:48,960
Speaker 1: feel that way to him, but like that was what

832
00:44:49,040 --> 00:44:52,080
Speaker 1: was going on. His grandfather was a part of that. Um,

833
00:44:52,120 --> 00:44:56,200
Speaker 1: it's very bleak that this is kind of a lot

834
00:44:56,239 --> 00:44:58,040
Speaker 1: of what he seems to take out of the period.

835
00:44:58,719 --> 00:45:02,800
Speaker 1: And again for of his like right wing white supporters,

836
00:45:03,080 --> 00:45:06,879
Speaker 1: he's the version of blackness that they wished every other

837
00:45:06,920 --> 00:45:10,279
Speaker 1: black person. Where's like it wasn't really an issue. Actually,

838
00:45:10,680 --> 00:45:14,680
Speaker 1: if there's racism, it's between black people exactly, and that

839
00:45:14,800 --> 00:45:19,640
Speaker 1: his narrative doesn't offend anyone or take notice of the

840
00:45:19,680 --> 00:45:23,440
Speaker 1: struggle that pretty much every other black person in the

841
00:45:23,440 --> 00:45:27,680
Speaker 1: country had to. Yeah, it's it's again a lot going

842
00:45:27,719 --> 00:45:32,000
Speaker 1: on here. Yeah, um yeah, everything is now five D

843
00:45:32,360 --> 00:45:36,880
Speaker 1: six D nine chest. Now after high school, Clarence enters

844
00:45:36,880 --> 00:45:40,120
Speaker 1: the seminary. His grandpa wanted him to be a Catholic priest.

845
00:45:40,280 --> 00:45:43,800
Speaker 1: He's really really approving of this mood move. It's probably

846
00:45:43,840 --> 00:45:46,759
Speaker 1: one of the few things that like Clarence gets like

847
00:45:46,960 --> 00:45:49,840
Speaker 1: some kind of like expression of pride from his grandfather

848
00:45:49,960 --> 00:45:52,640
Speaker 1: for doing because that's like, man, if you're a fucking

849
00:45:52,680 --> 00:45:56,640
Speaker 1: Catholic priest, you're that's like, at least for Catholics, about

850
00:45:56,680 --> 00:46:01,440
Speaker 1: the height of like respectability, you know. Man. Um, So

851
00:46:01,480 --> 00:46:04,440
Speaker 1: he gets admitted to a pre study program because being

852
00:46:04,480 --> 00:46:07,600
Speaker 1: a priest is kind of like being a doctor. Um

853
00:46:07,719 --> 00:46:10,239
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty four, this is the year that co

854
00:46:10,320 --> 00:46:13,000
Speaker 1: would you rather have operate on you? Robert a priest?

855
00:46:13,040 --> 00:46:15,879
Speaker 1: Of course? Uh, because the doctors are just gonna put

856
00:46:15,920 --> 00:46:19,120
Speaker 1: that fucking Bill Gates chip in me. Miles. That's right,

857
00:46:19,360 --> 00:46:22,319
Speaker 1: that Bill Gates chip, you know, the one I'm talking about. Yeah,

858
00:46:22,320 --> 00:46:25,600
Speaker 1: I'm glading for over that pro science bullshit. Well, I

859
00:46:25,600 --> 00:46:28,120
Speaker 1: I don't know, you see, Miles, I don't believe in

860
00:46:28,160 --> 00:46:30,640
Speaker 1: the Bill Gates chip in the vaccine. I believe that

861
00:46:30,680 --> 00:46:32,920
Speaker 1: Bill Gates is putting chips inside of all of us

862
00:46:33,000 --> 00:46:35,680
Speaker 1: that allows him to control when we orgasm. And that's

863
00:46:35,719 --> 00:46:38,799
Speaker 1: why you can't go to the doctor. Stay away from

864
00:46:38,840 --> 00:46:41,960
Speaker 1: the doctor. Okay, I didn't think I didn't hear about this. Yep,

865
00:46:42,080 --> 00:46:45,120
Speaker 1: the Bill gateship. Look it up. Go to Bill Gates,

866
00:46:45,719 --> 00:46:49,279
Speaker 1: come ship chip or ship that's a different thing that

867
00:46:49,400 --> 00:46:53,040
Speaker 1: he does have a come ship. Go to reddit dot

868
00:46:53,080 --> 00:46:56,239
Speaker 1: com and type of Bill Gates, come chip or Bill

869
00:46:56,280 --> 00:46:59,640
Speaker 1: Gates come ship. Yeah, and you'll get hill ship is

870
00:46:59,800 --> 00:47:02,719
Speaker 1: very interesting. Yeah, there's a lot going on with the combship.

871
00:47:04,520 --> 00:47:08,760
Speaker 1: So anyway, we digress, We digress to our ads because Miles,

872
00:47:08,960 --> 00:47:13,400
Speaker 1: this podcast is sponsored by Bill Gates, Comeship and come chips.

873
00:47:14,520 --> 00:47:18,280
Speaker 1: Let Bill Gates be your one stop shop for semen

874
00:47:18,400 --> 00:47:29,720
Speaker 1: for the makers of Uh, We're back. So nineteen sixty

875
00:47:29,800 --> 00:47:32,040
Speaker 1: four the year he gets admitted to his pre study

876
00:47:32,080 --> 00:47:37,279
Speaker 1: program for for seminary again Semen Come Perfect. That's the

877
00:47:37,360 --> 00:47:40,440
Speaker 1: year also that Congress debates the Civil Rights Act. The

878
00:47:40,600 --> 00:47:43,759
Speaker 1: rector of the seminary, he goes to, William Coleman, is

879
00:47:43,760 --> 00:47:46,960
Speaker 1: a progressive uh, and he chose to offer Clarence and

880
00:47:47,040 --> 00:47:50,160
Speaker 1: one other black students scholarships in order to make sure

881
00:47:50,200 --> 00:47:52,839
Speaker 1: that there wouldn't just be white priests, right like, that's

882
00:47:53,000 --> 00:47:55,640
Speaker 1: it's kind of an affirmative action program, you know. Um

883
00:47:55,680 --> 00:47:58,160
Speaker 1: and he and his brother are the or he and

884
00:47:58,200 --> 00:48:01,360
Speaker 1: the this other student are the first black people admitted

885
00:48:01,400 --> 00:48:05,320
Speaker 1: to this particular seminary um. Prior to starting priest school,

886
00:48:05,320 --> 00:48:08,800
Speaker 1: Clarence had been awkward and uncomfortable around women. Uh friends

887
00:48:08,840 --> 00:48:10,799
Speaker 1: noted that he seemed to nurse a deep well of

888
00:48:10,840 --> 00:48:15,520
Speaker 1: resentment towards his mother, and becoming or learning doing the

889
00:48:15,600 --> 00:48:18,279
Speaker 1: pre study for becoming a Catholic priest did not help

890
00:48:18,360 --> 00:48:21,440
Speaker 1: with this part of his life. From strange justice quote,

891
00:48:21,800 --> 00:48:24,839
Speaker 1: if Thomas was unsophisticated about girl, certainly the nuns had

892
00:48:24,840 --> 00:48:27,480
Speaker 1: done little to change that. The only sex education the

893
00:48:27,520 --> 00:48:31,000
Speaker 1: youngsters at St. Benedict's and St. Pious X received, recalled Johnson,

894
00:48:31,320 --> 00:48:34,280
Speaker 1: was from their own parents, which Thomas lacked. After sixth grade,

895
00:48:34,320 --> 00:48:37,640
Speaker 1: boys and girls were separated in class, and Johnson is

896
00:48:37,680 --> 00:48:40,040
Speaker 1: one of the other students there recalls we were lectured

897
00:48:40,080 --> 00:48:42,600
Speaker 1: about sin all the time. The nuns view of women

898
00:48:42,640 --> 00:48:44,839
Speaker 1: at that time, according to Carol Delaney, who was taught

899
00:48:44,880 --> 00:48:47,440
Speaker 1: by them in Savannah, was that we should become wives

900
00:48:47,440 --> 00:48:50,520
Speaker 1: and mothers and submit completely to male authority. The husband

901
00:48:50,560 --> 00:48:52,120
Speaker 1: was the head of the wife, as Christ was the

902
00:48:52,120 --> 00:48:55,160
Speaker 1: head of the church. Women were associated with sin through Eve.

903
00:48:55,880 --> 00:48:58,960
Speaker 1: So again this is the good I mean, this is

904
00:48:58,960 --> 00:49:02,719
Speaker 1: now seminary. Yeah, so this is what he's learning Um,

905
00:49:03,120 --> 00:49:06,640
Speaker 1: you're the main character in a religious video game where

906
00:49:06,640 --> 00:49:09,520
Speaker 1: you have to fight the evil women, and but you're

907
00:49:10,160 --> 00:49:15,360
Speaker 1: in cell pretending your vole cell. Yeah. Um, And it's

908
00:49:15,400 --> 00:49:17,440
Speaker 1: there's a lot to be said by someone who is

909
00:49:17,480 --> 00:49:19,560
Speaker 1: better at an analyzing these things than me, of like

910
00:49:20,280 --> 00:49:23,600
Speaker 1: the similarities between his grandpa's attitude towards like, well, I'm

911
00:49:23,640 --> 00:49:26,319
Speaker 1: not going to raise a girl that's not worth it

912
00:49:26,680 --> 00:49:30,200
Speaker 1: to what these priests and nuns are teaching him about women, right,

913
00:49:30,760 --> 00:49:35,720
Speaker 1: I wouldn't. And I'm bad too, so hard I'm actually

914
00:49:35,719 --> 00:49:43,400
Speaker 1: get the I'm a serpent. Um, why am I here?

915
00:49:43,480 --> 00:49:47,399
Speaker 1: I gotta go? I'm bad. So according to him, he's

916
00:49:47,400 --> 00:49:49,720
Speaker 1: a pretty good student at seminary, but he is also

917
00:49:50,280 --> 00:49:53,840
Speaker 1: kind of becomes in this point constantly infuriated by the

918
00:49:53,920 --> 00:49:56,640
Speaker 1: racism he encounters from the other students, because again, it's

919
00:49:56,640 --> 00:49:58,920
Speaker 1: just him and one other black student. Everybody else is

920
00:49:58,960 --> 00:50:02,080
Speaker 1: white as hell. Um. He later recalled one night when

921
00:50:02,120 --> 00:50:04,880
Speaker 1: the lights were turned off and a classmate said, quote,

922
00:50:04,960 --> 00:50:09,440
Speaker 1: smile Clarence, so we can see you. Yeah. Um. He

923
00:50:09,520 --> 00:50:12,239
Speaker 1: was particularly bothered, he says, later, not by the fact

924
00:50:12,280 --> 00:50:14,680
Speaker 1: that people laughed, but by the fact that nobody came

925
00:50:14,719 --> 00:50:17,120
Speaker 1: to his defense. Right, he has like these friends and

926
00:50:17,120 --> 00:50:20,960
Speaker 1: they won't stick up for him. Um, which, yep, I

927
00:50:21,000 --> 00:50:23,840
Speaker 1: don't have any trouble believing that. Um. He reached a

928
00:50:23,880 --> 00:50:26,600
Speaker 1: snapping point in nineteen sixty eight during his first year

929
00:50:26,640 --> 00:50:28,600
Speaker 1: at the actual seminary, right because he has to do

930
00:50:28,719 --> 00:50:32,200
Speaker 1: preschool for priests prea come. Yeah, he's got a free

931
00:50:32,200 --> 00:50:35,040
Speaker 1: come before he can get to be So when he

932
00:50:35,120 --> 00:50:38,520
Speaker 1: when he joins that big come shot, um, he learns,

933
00:50:38,640 --> 00:50:41,040
Speaker 1: oh boy, no, that's not a good way to lead

934
00:50:41,080 --> 00:50:44,680
Speaker 1: into that line. Um. So, during his first year at

935
00:50:44,719 --> 00:50:48,279
Speaker 1: the actual seminary, Um, you know, it's sixty eight, which

936
00:50:48,320 --> 00:50:51,920
Speaker 1: is the year that Martin Luther King Jr. Is assassinated. Um.

937
00:50:51,960 --> 00:50:55,400
Speaker 1: And when that happens, he recalls a classmate says to him, good,

938
00:50:55,560 --> 00:50:57,920
Speaker 1: I hope the s ob dies, I think because there

939
00:50:58,000 --> 00:51:02,399
Speaker 1: was lag time in between him being shot. Yeah. Um

940
00:51:02,440 --> 00:51:05,600
Speaker 1: So Clarence says that racism is why he ultimately quits

941
00:51:05,600 --> 00:51:11,520
Speaker 1: the seminary. His grandfather is fucking furious at this, right, Like, obviously,

942
00:51:11,560 --> 00:51:14,000
Speaker 1: if you know anything about Myers Anderson, the fact that

943
00:51:14,000 --> 00:51:16,799
Speaker 1: you encountered racism in seminary is not an excuse to

944
00:51:16,840 --> 00:51:22,160
Speaker 1: not become a priest. To that guy, right, racism. Yeah,

945
00:51:22,360 --> 00:51:26,960
Speaker 1: let me tell you about racism. Um. Yeah, so this

946
00:51:27,000 --> 00:51:29,520
Speaker 1: doesn't go over well. His grandfather throws him out of

947
00:51:29,560 --> 00:51:32,319
Speaker 1: the house, and his memoir, Thomas would later write, He'd

948
00:51:32,360 --> 00:51:34,960
Speaker 1: never accepted any of my excuses for failure, and he

949
00:51:35,000 --> 00:51:38,080
Speaker 1: wasn't going to start. Now you've let me down, he said.

950
00:51:38,360 --> 00:51:41,800
Speaker 1: For years, the two remained estranged, and Myers Anderson refused

951
00:51:41,800 --> 00:51:49,160
Speaker 1: to attend his grandson's graduations or wedding. Oh is that

952
00:51:49,200 --> 00:51:51,759
Speaker 1: according to Thomas or that's according to someone That is

953
00:51:51,800 --> 00:51:55,080
Speaker 1: according to Thomas. I have not heard any counter to

954
00:51:55,200 --> 00:51:58,799
Speaker 1: that story though. Okay, but yeah, Now there's a couple

955
00:51:58,800 --> 00:52:00,279
Speaker 1: of things that are left at One of them is

956
00:52:00,320 --> 00:52:02,680
Speaker 1: that A big part of why Myers becomes angry is

957
00:52:02,760 --> 00:52:04,640
Speaker 1: that when his son, because he's going to go on

958
00:52:04,680 --> 00:52:07,279
Speaker 1: to become a lawyer, and he's going to justify it

959
00:52:07,280 --> 00:52:09,040
Speaker 1: because when he drops out of pre school, he's like, well,

960
00:52:09,040 --> 00:52:10,920
Speaker 1: I've decided I want to become a lawyer so that

961
00:52:10,960 --> 00:52:13,080
Speaker 1: I can help the community rights, that I can fight

962
00:52:13,120 --> 00:52:16,040
Speaker 1: for civil rights. And he never does this. So a

963
00:52:16,160 --> 00:52:18,120
Speaker 1: thing that is left out of this people will claim

964
00:52:18,120 --> 00:52:20,000
Speaker 1: who knew the family the time, is that Myers was

965
00:52:20,040 --> 00:52:22,640
Speaker 1: also angry that he doesn't do that part of it.

966
00:52:22,760 --> 00:52:27,680
Speaker 1: So right again, we all tell stories about our pasts.

967
00:52:27,920 --> 00:52:31,000
Speaker 1: Um so one of the nuns, who ever tell you

968
00:52:31,040 --> 00:52:34,640
Speaker 1: about that helicopter I was in the show? No, maybe

969
00:52:34,640 --> 00:52:36,640
Speaker 1: you can have Okay, so you're not gonna you're not

970
00:52:36,680 --> 00:52:38,400
Speaker 1: gonna give us the helicopter story right now. You're just

971
00:52:38,440 --> 00:52:40,680
Speaker 1: bringing that enough, just teasing that. I'm just saying I

972
00:52:40,719 --> 00:52:42,919
Speaker 1: was with a lot of brave men and women that day. Well,

973
00:52:43,200 --> 00:52:46,480
Speaker 1: I was in a helicopter once with with William Gates. Uh,

974
00:52:46,640 --> 00:52:49,839
Speaker 1: we're heading towards an island friend of ours, buddy named

975
00:52:49,880 --> 00:52:54,040
Speaker 1: Jeff owned, um little island just out in the anyway. Um,

976
00:52:56,440 --> 00:52:58,560
Speaker 1: So you don't think that's a good You don't think

977
00:52:58,640 --> 00:53:01,759
Speaker 1: that's a good bit. I've a terrible bit. You don't

978
00:53:01,760 --> 00:53:04,800
Speaker 1: think the hung out on Epstein's Island bit has legs.

979
00:53:07,200 --> 00:53:09,600
Speaker 1: I don't know why we've gotten into this territory. Why

980
00:53:09,640 --> 00:53:12,160
Speaker 1: are you doing this? It doesn't make you look very

981
00:53:12,200 --> 00:53:15,879
Speaker 1: good or cool. It's because the words semen is kind

982
00:53:15,920 --> 00:53:19,360
Speaker 1: of in seminary, and in seminary that's also kind of funny.

983
00:53:19,360 --> 00:53:23,839
Speaker 1: Then there's like are always is That's why I mean,

984
00:53:23,840 --> 00:53:25,520
Speaker 1: like this is not a good This is not a

985
00:53:25,520 --> 00:53:27,879
Speaker 1: good bit. No, this is, and I'm not a good

986
00:53:27,880 --> 00:53:31,000
Speaker 1: guest to have for serious things, you know, yeah, probably.

987
00:53:31,040 --> 00:53:33,280
Speaker 1: I don't know why you're going back to your middle

988
00:53:33,280 --> 00:53:36,040
Speaker 1: school humor for this episode, Robert. It's it's kind of

989
00:53:36,840 --> 00:53:39,400
Speaker 1: you know, it's not your thing, it is my thing, Sovie.

990
00:53:39,520 --> 00:53:44,799
Speaker 1: It's always been my thing, is my thing? Any more

991
00:53:44,840 --> 00:53:48,799
Speaker 1: times years ago? So it's the middle schooler. Yeah. So

992
00:53:49,040 --> 00:53:51,799
Speaker 1: I'm gonna teach everybody how many times I can say

993
00:53:51,840 --> 00:53:55,440
Speaker 1: come in a four part series about Clarence Thomas. It's

994
00:53:55,480 --> 00:53:58,520
Speaker 1: actually very appropriate given some weird things that he does

995
00:53:58,560 --> 00:54:01,000
Speaker 1: to all of his co workers. Any Way, we'll talk

996
00:54:01,000 --> 00:54:05,040
Speaker 1: about that later. Um So, one of the nuns who

997
00:54:05,080 --> 00:54:07,280
Speaker 1: likes him, right because he decides to quit, and apparently

998
00:54:07,280 --> 00:54:09,719
Speaker 1: one of his nuns is like, hey, if you're not

999
00:54:09,760 --> 00:54:11,920
Speaker 1: going to be a priest, why don't you go to

1000
00:54:12,080 --> 00:54:15,200
Speaker 1: Holy Cross, which is a Catholic college in Wooster. I

1001
00:54:15,239 --> 00:54:19,279
Speaker 1: think it's pronounced Wooster, Massachusetts. It is spelled Worcester. I'm

1002
00:54:19,640 --> 00:54:23,400
Speaker 1: so angry Wooster fucking nonsense. Um So, this is a

1003
00:54:23,400 --> 00:54:26,319
Speaker 1: white liberal college, which you might expect to have been

1004
00:54:26,360 --> 00:54:29,640
Speaker 1: better than the seminary in Savannah. Georgia, Uh, it is

1005
00:54:29,680 --> 00:54:32,480
Speaker 1: not UM. After nineteen sixty eight, it had decided to

1006
00:54:32,560 --> 00:54:36,000
Speaker 1: actually try and recruit black students UM, and in order

1007
00:54:36,040 --> 00:54:39,399
Speaker 1: to do that, they set up a scholarship fund named

1008
00:54:39,400 --> 00:54:42,360
Speaker 1: after Martin Luther King UM. And Thomas receives one of

1009
00:54:42,360 --> 00:54:44,239
Speaker 1: these scholarships to go to the school that he would

1010
00:54:44,280 --> 00:54:46,160
Speaker 1: not have been able to afford otherwise, which is again

1011
00:54:46,200 --> 00:54:48,680
Speaker 1: the second time that he's he's benefited from an affirmative

1012
00:54:48,680 --> 00:54:51,839
Speaker 1: action program. To summarize his time in college, I want

1013
00:54:51,840 --> 00:54:54,360
Speaker 1: to quote from the book The Enigma of Clarence Thomas

1014
00:54:54,600 --> 00:54:57,680
Speaker 1: quote moving to a white institution in the North repeated

1015
00:54:57,719 --> 00:55:00,239
Speaker 1: the trauma of moving to a white seminary in this out,

1016
00:55:00,400 --> 00:55:02,840
Speaker 1: which Thomas described in an interview with The Crisis, the

1017
00:55:02,880 --> 00:55:06,239
Speaker 1: magazine of the Double A c. P. Thus quote, So

1018
00:55:06,280 --> 00:55:08,439
Speaker 1: you leave that all black environment and you go into

1019
00:55:08,440 --> 00:55:10,239
Speaker 1: an environment where you are the only black, and you

1020
00:55:10,280 --> 00:55:12,400
Speaker 1: are sitting where you live day in day out, and

1021
00:55:12,440 --> 00:55:14,680
Speaker 1: attend to classes, and the only blacks you see are

1022
00:55:14,680 --> 00:55:16,680
Speaker 1: the two women who work in the kitchen, and the

1023
00:55:16,719 --> 00:55:19,799
Speaker 1: rest are white people. You go through some changes. Going

1024
00:55:19,800 --> 00:55:22,400
Speaker 1: through those changes in the charged context of an integrating

1025
00:55:22,440 --> 00:55:25,279
Speaker 1: Northern college campus surrounded by the tenants and texts of

1026
00:55:25,320 --> 00:55:29,080
Speaker 1: black nationalism transformed him. It was a special time in

1027
00:55:29,120 --> 00:55:31,920
Speaker 1: my life, he says. In later years, Thomas would downplay

1028
00:55:31,960 --> 00:55:34,880
Speaker 1: the presence of black nationalism and his mature thinking, hotly

1029
00:55:34,920 --> 00:55:38,399
Speaker 1: declaring I'm not a nationalist. Yet he never disavowed its

1030
00:55:38,480 --> 00:55:40,760
Speaker 1: role in his development, going so far as to invoke

1031
00:55:40,840 --> 00:55:44,239
Speaker 1: Malcolm X as an analog for precedent or precedent in

1032
00:55:44,280 --> 00:55:46,839
Speaker 1: his biography. I have been angry enough in my life,

1033
00:55:46,840 --> 00:55:48,719
Speaker 1: and there are some points where I'm sure my attitudes

1034
00:55:48,719 --> 00:55:51,440
Speaker 1: approached black nationalism. I'm certain you could say the same

1035
00:55:51,440 --> 00:55:54,719
Speaker 1: thing about Malcolm X. In college, Thomas's black friends love

1036
00:55:54,800 --> 00:55:56,920
Speaker 1: to tease him about the fervor of his commitment and

1037
00:55:56,920 --> 00:55:59,640
Speaker 1: the seriousness of his study. What woman would want this

1038
00:55:59,680 --> 00:56:02,520
Speaker 1: man in anyway? He's into books and black power. But

1039
00:56:02,560 --> 00:56:04,759
Speaker 1: even as a Supreme Court justice, looking back on his

1040
00:56:04,800 --> 00:56:07,920
Speaker 1: youthful development, Thomas refused to mock the moment I was

1041
00:56:07,960 --> 00:56:10,160
Speaker 1: an angry black man, he wrote in his memoir, The

1042
00:56:10,200 --> 00:56:12,480
Speaker 1: more I read about the Black power movement, the more

1043
00:56:12,520 --> 00:56:14,239
Speaker 1: I wanted to be a part of it. I used

1044
00:56:14,239 --> 00:56:18,920
Speaker 1: to be an angry black man. Yeah you were. I mean,

1045
00:56:18,920 --> 00:56:21,720
Speaker 1: that's one way to describe you really getting in touch

1046
00:56:21,800 --> 00:56:25,960
Speaker 1: with the impression. Yeah, and he does have this brief

1047
00:56:26,000 --> 00:56:29,040
Speaker 1: period of being not just in touch with oppression, but

1048
00:56:29,120 --> 00:56:32,160
Speaker 1: like actually committed to doing something about it. Um. He

1049
00:56:32,320 --> 00:56:34,880
Speaker 1: is like he is a combat boots and Black Panther

1050
00:56:35,000 --> 00:56:38,919
Speaker 1: beret type activist. Are there pictures of him? Like then,

1051
00:56:39,080 --> 00:56:41,640
Speaker 1: I don't know, I haven't found any. Um, that's like

1052
00:56:41,719 --> 00:56:44,160
Speaker 1: the Oh my god, that's the most fucked up picture.

1053
00:56:44,320 --> 00:56:48,080
Speaker 1: Like look, I probably yeah, boy. Um. And his his

1054
00:56:48,120 --> 00:56:50,359
Speaker 1: first trip to Washington, d C. The very first time

1055
00:56:50,400 --> 00:56:52,480
Speaker 1: he ever goes is a march on the Pentagon against

1056
00:56:52,480 --> 00:56:55,719
Speaker 1: the Vietnam War. Um. The last protest he ever goes

1057
00:56:55,760 --> 00:56:58,760
Speaker 1: to turns into a massive street brawl where two thousand

1058
00:56:58,840 --> 00:57:02,120
Speaker 1: cops assault three thou and protesters demanding the release of

1059
00:57:02,160 --> 00:57:05,719
Speaker 1: Black Panther co founder Bobby Seal and a prominent leading

1060
00:57:05,719 --> 00:57:09,919
Speaker 1: Panther Erica Huggins. Um. Years later, Thomas would assist quote,

1061
00:57:09,920 --> 00:57:13,000
Speaker 1: I was never a liberal. I was a radical and

1062
00:57:13,000 --> 00:57:16,200
Speaker 1: and this seems to be true. He organizes a free

1063
00:57:16,200 --> 00:57:19,160
Speaker 1: breakfast program for kids and Wooster patterned off from what

1064
00:57:19,200 --> 00:57:22,480
Speaker 1: the Black Panthers had done. Um. He supports Communist Party

1065
00:57:22,520 --> 00:57:25,280
Speaker 1: member Angela Davis in her flight from the US government,

1066
00:57:25,680 --> 00:57:28,640
Speaker 1: he helps organize a black student union at his college,

1067
00:57:29,240 --> 00:57:32,840
Speaker 1: uh and he also publishes a manifesto in that magazine

1068
00:57:32,840 --> 00:57:36,400
Speaker 1: that is extremely black nationalist, with lines like quote, the

1069
00:57:36,440 --> 00:57:39,000
Speaker 1: black man does not want or need the white woman.

1070
00:57:39,240 --> 00:57:41,440
Speaker 1: The black man's history shows that the white woman is

1071
00:57:41,440 --> 00:57:43,680
Speaker 1: the cause of his failure to be the true black man.

1072
00:57:46,640 --> 00:57:50,360
Speaker 1: I know, right, Clarence Thomas, I don't think that's a

1073
00:57:51,120 --> 00:57:54,439
Speaker 1: not gonna be a twist. A lot of people say,

1074
00:57:54,520 --> 00:57:58,560
Speaker 1: coming um, so then like if it's like a cheesy

1075
00:57:58,720 --> 00:58:01,600
Speaker 1: narrative like he has, who I wonder what the moment

1076
00:58:01,680 --> 00:58:04,080
Speaker 1: is that he goes to the dark side, like if

1077
00:58:04,120 --> 00:58:08,000
Speaker 1: he was a Jedi. I think, even like inverts, he

1078
00:58:08,160 --> 00:58:10,880
Speaker 1: is always even when he is on this radical side,

1079
00:58:11,160 --> 00:58:14,120
Speaker 1: he's fundamentally rooted in some pretty regressive things. As we're

1080
00:58:14,120 --> 00:58:16,880
Speaker 1: going to cover, A big part of what he believes

1081
00:58:16,920 --> 00:58:19,840
Speaker 1: in as a radical in this period is also the

1082
00:58:19,920 --> 00:58:22,959
Speaker 1: subjugation of women by men, which a lot of left

1083
00:58:23,000 --> 00:58:26,240
Speaker 1: wing sixties radicals. Number one, There's been a great deal

1084
00:58:26,280 --> 00:58:31,080
Speaker 1: written and a lot by female panthers about sexism they

1085
00:58:31,160 --> 00:58:33,280
Speaker 1: encountered from these guys who were otherwise heroes of the

1086
00:58:33,320 --> 00:58:36,080
Speaker 1: black Panther movement, because again, there was a lot of

1087
00:58:36,120 --> 00:58:39,760
Speaker 1: misogyny in the Panthers. And then there's guys like Stokey Carmichael,

1088
00:58:39,840 --> 00:58:42,120
Speaker 1: right of Students for a Democratic Society, who had a

1089
00:58:42,200 --> 00:58:44,560
Speaker 1: quote that was something like, what is the purpose of

1090
00:58:44,600 --> 00:58:46,680
Speaker 1: like a woman in the sts? And he's like, well,

1091
00:58:46,720 --> 00:58:49,520
Speaker 1: it's for us to fuck right, Like that was again,

1092
00:58:49,840 --> 00:58:55,120
Speaker 1: it is still the sixties. There are still limits to

1093
00:58:55,280 --> 00:58:59,240
Speaker 1: what we are capable of thinking about. Yeah, even for him,

1094
00:58:59,320 --> 00:59:02,920
Speaker 1: he's like, man, like I'm still he's like white women

1095
00:59:03,360 --> 00:59:07,560
Speaker 1: are the devil. Yeah. And it's also like you can

1096
00:59:07,560 --> 00:59:09,920
Speaker 1: talk about misogyny within a lot of these left wing

1097
00:59:10,000 --> 00:59:13,200
Speaker 1: circles and black nationalist circles in the same way that like, yeah, man,

1098
00:59:13,240 --> 00:59:15,120
Speaker 1: if you went to fucking Woodstock about it around a

1099
00:59:15,160 --> 00:59:17,520
Speaker 1: bunch of open minded hippies and like we're a man

1100
00:59:17,640 --> 00:59:20,640
Speaker 1: and kissed another man, you would probably get beaten within

1101
00:59:20,680 --> 00:59:24,240
Speaker 1: an inch of your life because like they're still pretty homophobic,

1102
00:59:24,400 --> 00:59:32,560
Speaker 1: you know, like it was nineteen sixty nine. Yeah, optimistic miles.

1103
00:59:34,240 --> 00:59:36,520
Speaker 1: Um So, I want to quote next from a write

1104
00:59:36,560 --> 00:59:39,400
Speaker 1: up by The New Yorker. Quote, after the BSU learned

1105
00:59:39,440 --> 00:59:42,360
Speaker 1: that a member was dating a white woman, the student convened,

1106
00:59:42,440 --> 00:59:45,120
Speaker 1: The group convened, a mock trial, found him guilty, and

1107
00:59:45,160 --> 00:59:49,320
Speaker 1: broke his afro comas punishment. Thomas took the role more seriously,

1108
00:59:49,440 --> 00:59:52,960
Speaker 1: particularly after meeting Cathy Ambush, a black woman who whom

1109
00:59:53,000 --> 00:59:55,560
Speaker 1: he would marry in nineteen seventy one and divorce in

1110
00:59:55,640 --> 00:59:58,320
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four. In a poem he called is You

1111
00:59:58,560 --> 01:00:00,880
Speaker 1: Is or is You Ain't a Breath, he set out

1112
01:00:00,920 --> 01:00:03,520
Speaker 1: the obligations of black men to black women. Even in

1113
01:00:03,560 --> 01:00:06,280
Speaker 1: that milieu. Kevin Moritta and Michael Fletcher reported in their

1114
01:00:06,280 --> 01:00:11,120
Speaker 1: two thousand seven biography Supreme Discomfort, Thomas's edgy race consciousness

1115
01:00:11,200 --> 01:00:14,680
Speaker 1: stood out when he saw an interracial couple strolling on campus.

1116
01:00:14,720 --> 01:00:17,320
Speaker 1: He'd loudly demand, do I see a black woman with

1117
01:00:17,360 --> 01:00:20,920
Speaker 1: a white man? How could that be? Until six, when

1118
01:00:20,920 --> 01:00:23,160
Speaker 1: Thomas met Virginia lamp who was white and who had

1119
01:00:23,160 --> 01:00:26,880
Speaker 1: become his second wife, he opposed interracial marriage and sex.

1120
01:00:27,160 --> 01:00:30,480
Speaker 1: What he's a real like there's a lot going on

1121
01:00:30,560 --> 01:00:39,760
Speaker 1: in this guy. Wow? Yeah, Wow. It makes me uh,

1122
01:00:40,240 --> 01:00:42,840
Speaker 1: it makes first of all, makes my brain hurt. I

1123
01:00:42,880 --> 01:00:45,680
Speaker 1: mean I think about how if he really was like

1124
01:00:45,760 --> 01:00:49,400
Speaker 1: trying to reverse like the loving decision. That's like him

1125
01:00:49,400 --> 01:00:51,840
Speaker 1: being like, no, I really feel this way and I'm

1126
01:00:51,840 --> 01:00:54,560
Speaker 1: going to live that, and I'm I'm regressing to this

1127
01:00:54,720 --> 01:00:58,200
Speaker 1: very bizarre intersection of my beliefs, and you're like, what

1128
01:00:59,200 --> 01:01:02,760
Speaker 1: where are you? You also see it's interesting because you

1129
01:01:02,760 --> 01:01:05,200
Speaker 1: can see, Number one, there's a lot of consistency in

1130
01:01:05,280 --> 01:01:08,280
Speaker 1: his belief towards women and what rights women should have,

1131
01:01:08,800 --> 01:01:12,560
Speaker 1: and also and a certain flexibility when he wants something

1132
01:01:12,800 --> 01:01:14,440
Speaker 1: right because he meets a white woman that he likes

1133
01:01:14,480 --> 01:01:17,640
Speaker 1: and he's like, Okay, well now I'm not against interracial marriage, right,

1134
01:01:18,760 --> 01:01:23,360
Speaker 1: not all white women. Yeah, exactly, wrote that rap song. Yeah,

1135
01:01:23,720 --> 01:01:25,200
Speaker 1: I mean, and this is I guess this is all

1136
01:01:25,240 --> 01:01:27,120
Speaker 1: This is number one, a very human thing. But also

1137
01:01:27,200 --> 01:01:29,400
Speaker 1: it's like a very conservative thing. Like you think about

1138
01:01:29,440 --> 01:01:32,680
Speaker 1: John McCain being like the only Republican being like, we

1139
01:01:32,680 --> 01:01:36,280
Speaker 1: shouldn't torture people. Why, Well, because I got tortured, so

1140
01:01:36,320 --> 01:01:39,600
Speaker 1: I know it's bad, all right, Why don't you brag

1141
01:01:39,640 --> 01:01:44,920
Speaker 1: about it? Yeah? Um, I don't know. People are complicated

1142
01:01:45,120 --> 01:01:50,040
Speaker 1: and generally hypocrites. Um, but you know who's not a hypocrite, Miles?

1143
01:01:50,640 --> 01:01:54,880
Speaker 1: You when you plug your products or pot whatever. Miles

1144
01:01:55,080 --> 01:01:57,240
Speaker 1: at the end of the episode say some things that

1145
01:01:57,280 --> 01:01:59,480
Speaker 1: people can find you at. Oh, you can find me

1146
01:01:59,640 --> 01:02:03,200
Speaker 1: just Miles of Gray on Twitter and Instagram. And if

1147
01:02:03,200 --> 01:02:06,040
Speaker 1: you like, uh, you know, I do a daily show

1148
01:02:06,080 --> 01:02:08,520
Speaker 1: about news and politics and stuff called Dailies. Like guys

1149
01:02:08,560 --> 01:02:10,720
Speaker 1: even listening to that every day? Or if you like

1150
01:02:11,080 --> 01:02:14,360
Speaker 1: trash reality TV because that's what I do to avoid

1151
01:02:14,480 --> 01:02:17,919
Speaker 1: thinking about our crumbling earth. Check me out on four

1152
01:02:17,960 --> 01:02:20,480
Speaker 1: twenty Day Fiance, where I get high and talk about

1153
01:02:20,600 --> 01:02:23,840
Speaker 1: ninety day fiance. Check out the alexand Miles on the

1154
01:02:23,920 --> 01:02:29,120
Speaker 1: Daily Sitgeist on Fiance. Play both at the same time

1155
01:02:29,240 --> 01:02:32,880
Speaker 1: from different devices. Um they sync up in a way

1156
01:02:32,920 --> 01:02:36,240
Speaker 1: that will reveal secrets to you about how to gain

1157
01:02:36,320 --> 01:02:38,840
Speaker 1: special powers exactly. And you can even listen to I

1158
01:02:38,840 --> 01:02:42,120
Speaker 1: have a third show because I can't stop talking, called

1159
01:02:42,160 --> 01:02:44,640
Speaker 1: Miles and Jack Got Mad boost These where I'm just

1160
01:02:44,680 --> 01:02:47,640
Speaker 1: talking about basketball, so a lot of you can get

1161
01:02:47,680 --> 01:02:51,320
Speaker 1: your serious or your frivolous. Have you seen that Adam

1162
01:02:51,360 --> 01:02:54,440
Speaker 1: Sandler basketball movie at Miles Hustle, Yeah, I thought I

1163
01:02:54,440 --> 01:02:57,120
Speaker 1: thought it was pretty good. I thought it was pretty good. Somebody.

1164
01:02:57,240 --> 01:02:59,760
Speaker 1: There's like a million scenes in that where, like, I know,

1165
01:02:59,840 --> 01:03:02,720
Speaker 1: a famous basketball player just walked on scene and I'm

1166
01:03:02,720 --> 01:03:04,680
Speaker 1: supposed to be like, oh my god, it's that guy.

1167
01:03:05,280 --> 01:03:08,400
Speaker 1: But I can't tell if they're actors are not, because

1168
01:03:08,400 --> 01:03:11,080
Speaker 1: to me, it's just like, Wow, everyone's very tall in

1169
01:03:11,160 --> 01:03:17,320
Speaker 1: this movie except James Goldstein is even has a cameo.

1170
01:03:17,400 --> 01:03:19,400
Speaker 1: I don't know who that is. That's how like, there's

1171
01:03:19,440 --> 01:03:22,000
Speaker 1: these like deep cut basketball people in it. I didn't

1172
01:03:22,000 --> 01:03:26,000
Speaker 1: realize the Spanish guy who's the second main character is

1173
01:03:26,040 --> 01:03:30,760
Speaker 1: an actual basketballer, a basketball's man exactly, thank you. Speaking

1174
01:03:30,760 --> 01:03:36,680
Speaker 1: of balls, the episodes over we did It Guys, boom