Speaker 1: What's stroking out my all of Europe because of because
Speaker 1: of the heat and the lack of air conditioning and
Speaker 1: the houses built to retain heat and the climate change.
Speaker 1: How you doing Europe? Everybody? Okay? Are you talking about?
Speaker 1: Are you talking about the fun way that literally melted? Literally, Sophie,
Speaker 1: it's forty c over there, which in real people numbers
Speaker 1: is like a lot. Miles, do you know, Celsius? Do
Speaker 1: you understand Celsius and co host of the Daily Zeitgeist Miles?
Speaker 1: Why why do why do they use different numbers over
Speaker 1: there for the temperature? We all know, man, they just
Speaker 1: want to lord that ship over us because we kicked
Speaker 1: England's ass. We fucking owned their ascids and then we
Speaker 1: owned the only other country in Europe, Germany. Yeah that's right,
Speaker 1: So that's right, that's the thing. We got the pane
Speaker 1: stones for kicking Miles. We both know how terrible the
Speaker 1: United States is. What is why do we have Why
Speaker 1: is there such joy as an American and making fun
Speaker 1: of Europe? What is it? What is that about us?
Speaker 1: I think because we know that we have no history,
Speaker 1: so that really it's like, you know, it's like when
Speaker 1: you have like a dumb sports argument and like there's
Speaker 1: that one thing someone can say about your team that's
Speaker 1: so fucking true and it just upsets you and you
Speaker 1: can't do anything about it. That's like when like Europeans
Speaker 1: are like, but you have no history here is everything
Speaker 1: is new like McDonald's and you're like, fuck you man,
Speaker 1: and you're like, not true, that's true because it's all
Speaker 1: stolen and built over. I have dranken a bar in
Speaker 1: Dublin that is like was has been an operation since
Speaker 1: before Columbus was a war criminal. Like, it's right, but
Speaker 1: now you guys are toasty, so they're hold that. But
Speaker 1: what's funny is too Like in Spain they know better.
Speaker 1: In Spain, they're like, Yo, you're out in the middle
Speaker 1: of the day, stupid. They're they're like, look, we we
Speaker 1: we have yielded to capitalism in many ways, but we're
Speaker 1: not giving up our naps in the four hours in
Speaker 1: the middle. Jealous, it's forty, it's forty two. It's real
Speaker 1: people numbers. That's like, what's seventy Jesus, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Nobody knows. You know what everyone does
Speaker 1: knows that Clarence Thomas is a real piece of shit, Oh,
Speaker 1: I can't wait a real he's he's a real one.
Speaker 1: And we started this episode with some good old fashioned
Speaker 1: American chauvinism, because most of this episode is going to
Speaker 1: be talking about a number of things that are terrible
Speaker 1: in our nation's history. Because the history of Supreme Court
Speaker 1: Justice Clarence Thomas, the man who probably did more than
Speaker 1: any other single government official to end rov Wade and
Speaker 1: doing his best to end a number of other civil
Speaker 1: rights UM is also the story of like everything that's
Speaker 1: terrible about this country and its history. Like amazing how
Speaker 1: much ship is packed into this guy's life and how
Speaker 1: much like fucked up stuff. I mean, number one, you're
Speaker 1: gonna be pretty sympathetic to this dude for the early
Speaker 1: part of this UM. And I have to say one
Speaker 1: of the things, like I want to start this, I
Speaker 1: guess with like an admission for me, I think he's
Speaker 1: probably the bastards pod subject. I've been wrongest about UM
Speaker 1: because for a long time I've never even thought of
Speaker 1: doing him until pretty recently. Not that I didn't think
Speaker 1: he sucked, but like his years of like he's you know,
Speaker 1: number one, for a very long time he was viewed
Speaker 1: as like Justice Scalia's sidekick basically, um, and people who
Speaker 1: knew anything about the Supreme Court were generally aware that
Speaker 1: that was not fair. But I'm not a Supreme Court nowhere, Miles.
Speaker 1: That's not my that's not my my strength. Um. But
Speaker 1: even so, he's got years of like I knew he
Speaker 1: had all these like cruel things he'd written into sense
Speaker 1: and all this like regressive ship that he championed, So like,
Speaker 1: I never doubted that he was a bastard. But again,
Speaker 1: there's a reason why we don't cover everyone who just
Speaker 1: sucks on this show, and it's because, like, also, they
Speaker 1: need to be interesting, because this is entertainment to right,
Speaker 1: And I kind of thought, like, well, he's just like
Speaker 1: a shitty guy who became a judge. How much could
Speaker 1: there possibly be in that fucking life story? And now
Speaker 1: we're going to do a four partner on him? So holy,
Speaker 1: I was very wrong about this guy. So let me
Speaker 1: start by admitting that, Okay, this is like we're getting
Speaker 1: a true we're getting the origin story, yeah, of the villain,
Speaker 1: and a lot of weird shitty stuff spoilers. We're gonna
Speaker 1: be talking about pubic hair. No, yeah, I don't remember
Speaker 1: that weren't now. I don't know if you remember this part, Miles,
Speaker 1: I forgot where I was, where I learned about all
Speaker 1: the things I didn't know. I didn't want to know
Speaker 1: that was that was a horrendously evil laugh, and I
Speaker 1: didn't have been working on it. I've been working on it,
Speaker 1: thank you. I'm sorry. I went to I went to
Speaker 1: a class hosted by the Riddler this weekend about unleashing
Speaker 1: your inner batman villain, And uh, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't want to like. I don't want to like. I
Speaker 1: don't want to like toot my own horn because I'm
Speaker 1: early in the process. But I did just kidnap a
Speaker 1: billionaire's son. So a little bit of applause, a little
Speaker 1: bit of applause. I'm working on it's gonna be good. So, Miles,
Speaker 1: if you casually read about Clarence Thomas the way most
Speaker 1: people do, because who's got the time to really know
Speaker 1: that much about the Supreme Court? While we all do
Speaker 1: now because it's an immediate threat to all of our futures. Um.
Speaker 1: But if you, if you read these like real casual
Speaker 1: breakdowns of him, you'll learn a couple of things. He's
Speaker 1: very conservative, he never talks during oral arguments. He's been
Speaker 1: known as the silent Justice for that reason. Um, although
Speaker 1: that's changed kind of recently, and he got his start
Speaker 1: as justice school, he's like he was kind of his
Speaker 1: Licks Bill, right, he would vote the same way Scooley
Speaker 1: at it all the time. That's at least when people
Speaker 1: would say about him. And then of course there's the
Speaker 1: fact that he's sexually harassed Anita Hill, who was questioned
Speaker 1: by Congress and ultimately ignored when Thomas was voted in
Speaker 1: on the narrowest margin in Supreme Court history. That's like
Speaker 1: the the baseball card, you know, version of Clarence Thomas's
Speaker 1: history stats, the stats, right, all of that is technically true, um,
Speaker 1: with the exception of him being Justice kalias lick Spill.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about that later, um. But it turns out
Speaker 1: it's also also incomplete that I now feel not going
Speaker 1: into detail about the life and beliefs of Clarence Thomas
Speaker 1: is kind of a disservice, So here we go. Clarence
Speaker 1: Thomas was born on June twenty three, nineteen forty eight,
Speaker 1: in an unpowered wooden shack on the edge of a
Speaker 1: title swamp near the small town of pinpoint Georgia. Um,
Speaker 1: as you might have guessed from everything in that last sentence,
Speaker 1: he was born into the kind of poverty that most
Speaker 1: of us who are capable of listening to podcasts can
Speaker 1: only dimly comprehend. Very few, even as bad as poverty
Speaker 1: is in the very few people exist in that kind
Speaker 1: of poverty in the United States. This day, right um,
Speaker 1: like it is he is he is living, this is night.
Speaker 1: He's living with access to like eighteen forties technology. For
Speaker 1: the most part, right like that is this kid's childhood.
Speaker 1: That's this kid's like the world he comes into. Um.
Speaker 1: His great great grandmother had been born into slavery and
Speaker 1: emancipated at age nine because of there's his war um Um.
Speaker 1: She had a son, uh and that her son had
Speaker 1: several young kids and then abandoned those kids, leaving her
Speaker 1: to take care of them. So that's his grandmother. Uh.
Speaker 1: Now one of his grandmother's son's kids who gets abandoned
Speaker 1: by her son is a guy named Myers Anderson, who
Speaker 1: is Clarence's grandfather on his mother's side. Um. Myers refused
Speaker 1: to ever speak about his own father, but he also
Speaker 1: would follow in his footsteps. So Myers has a daughter,
Speaker 1: Leola Williams Um, who is Clarence's mom. Um and Leola
Speaker 1: is born out of wedlock. Her mother, myers partner dies
Speaker 1: in a subsequent childbirth when she's three. Uh. Now, Myers
Speaker 1: is not the kind of guy who wants to have daughters.
Speaker 1: He thinks that's kind of a waste of time. So
Speaker 1: he decides he's not going to raise his daughter, and
Speaker 1: he sends her to Pinpoint, Georgia, where she's raised by
Speaker 1: his sister, her aunt. Um. Her her aunt is not
Speaker 1: a nurturing kind of person. It's a very strict upbringing,
Speaker 1: and there's never any belief that like Leola is going
Speaker 1: to have a future right like, she does not have prospects. Um.
Speaker 1: Aunt Annie was illiterate. UM, so Leola doesn't really learn
Speaker 1: how to read as a little girl. UM and Aunt
Speaker 1: Annie keeps her kind of ward whatever you wanna call her,
Speaker 1: from playing with other children. She doesn't want to let
Speaker 1: her socialize. She wants to keep strict control over her
Speaker 1: so she doesn't get pregnant young like it tends to happen.
Speaker 1: Leola was so desperate for some kind of childhood that
Speaker 1: she made dolls for herself out of clumps of weed,
Speaker 1: washing the roots to simulate hair. So like again when
Speaker 1: we're talking about how poor these people are, Clarence's mom
Speaker 1: is making dolls out of clumps of weed, like weeds,
Speaker 1: Like that is yeah, that's like a level yeah right,
Speaker 1: And like when you always talk about parenting, it's like
Speaker 1: we're all just trying to break cycles. Yeah, like what
Speaker 1: our grandparents did, what they did. So that's where we're
Speaker 1: starting here, Like you're saying, like centuries past, you've got
Speaker 1: centuries of slavery and families being forcibly broken up. And
Speaker 1: then a pretty bad pattern gets started by um by
Speaker 1: myers father who leaves the family. And Myers doesn't abandon
Speaker 1: his kids because he has a relationship with him, but
Speaker 1: he also doesn't want to take care of daughters, so
Speaker 1: he just kind of shuffles them off to whatever the
Speaker 1: oldest member of his family is, right, and that person
Speaker 1: is like, well, if you have any kind of freedom,
Speaker 1: you're clearly going to have even more kids before you're
Speaker 1: ready for him. So I'm going to basically make you
Speaker 1: live in a prison. So that's how Leola grows up. Um,
Speaker 1: when she's sixteen, she gets pregnant anyway with Clarence's older
Speaker 1: sister mmam ay and she drops out of school. Um.
Speaker 1: Leola was still a teenager when she had Clarence. A
Speaker 1: little bit after she has m m a uh. The
Speaker 1: shock that they lived in was insulated with newspaper and
Speaker 1: talked with library A repaced that was again like that's
Speaker 1: what they have access to, right, like where are things free?
Speaker 1: What is it that you can get your hands on
Speaker 1: in order to like fill holes in your house? Just
Speaker 1: just about as desperate as it gets. Um. Clarence's younger
Speaker 1: brother was born a little more than a year after him.
Speaker 1: Now you will notice that I have not talked a
Speaker 1: lot about their father. Clarence Thomas's dad is known as M. C.
Speaker 1: Thomas UM. And the reason he doesn't show up in
Speaker 1: this story much is that because as soon as he
Speaker 1: has three kids with Leola, he abandons her and his
Speaker 1: family because he's gotten someone else pregnant and her dad
Speaker 1: threatened to shoot him if he didn't marry her. So
Speaker 1: this is a rough start, right, I think it's okay.
Speaker 1: So it's the worst parts of everything go on this.
Speaker 1: It is like one of those if you were if
Speaker 1: you were like writing this background for like a fictional character.
Speaker 1: People would be like, all right, well, maybe pick like
Speaker 1: one of these things. Yeah. An editor would be like,
Speaker 1: it feels like you're putting a hat on top of hat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's how vivid this the history of suffering is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is. It is deeply difficult. Um. And it's worth
Speaker 1: noting the community and Pinpoint. This kind of upbringing is
Speaker 1: not common for other people who live in Pinpoint, which
Speaker 1: is a black community. Um. It is a very traditional community.
Speaker 1: It is very uncommon there for a father to leave
Speaker 1: his family or for children to be born outside of wedlock.
Speaker 1: Everyone is extremely religious here. So from the start, Clarence
Speaker 1: doesn't just grow up with all of this going on
Speaker 1: in his family, which is tremendously difficult. He's also ostracized.
Speaker 1: It is made clear to him by other people in
Speaker 1: the area that his upbringing is fundamentally different and like
Speaker 1: fucked up right, yeah, um right, So yeah, it's this
Speaker 1: is fucking spooking me out, man, because it's so we
Speaker 1: we constantly look at figures like this, like especially especially
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court, where you're looking at this idea that
Speaker 1: you know, on a whim, they can con curtail all
Speaker 1: these human rights and We're just like, how the fuck
Speaker 1: what's going on with you that you think it's all good?
Speaker 1: And to hear this story even started for this early on,
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, fuck, this sounds again. It sounds like
Speaker 1: centuries of like compounded negativity suffering coming together to form
Speaker 1: like this human being. And you're like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: of course, like it's you can't fathom it. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's I mean, this is probably why it's a bad
Speaker 1: idea to just like pick nine random people, uh and
Speaker 1: be like you you are our god kings. Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's because all sorts of ship might have gone on
Speaker 1: in their backgrounds that make them do real wild ship
Speaker 1: and maybe yeah, that's not good. Um, I don't know,
Speaker 1: Like you don't have to have had this background to
Speaker 1: wind up trapped in them. Nearly everybody winds up kind
Speaker 1: of trapped in the past to extent. You know, maybe
Speaker 1: you just love the music of the nineteen nineties, but everybody,
Speaker 1: everybody like winds up growing up with something that you
Speaker 1: never quite moved past. Right, which is why one of
Speaker 1: the many reasons why people shouldn't be able to hold
Speaker 1: too much power over each other, because we develop all
Speaker 1: these weird fucking hang ups, and it's best to just
Speaker 1: kind of minimize the damage that can do, is my attitude. UM.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we've covered some desperate origin show stories on
Speaker 1: this show, but I have to say, like Clarence Thomas's
Speaker 1: early childhood is like it's up there, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: that is that is rough. His dad, you know again,
Speaker 1: leaves as soon as he gets another woman pregnant. It's
Speaker 1: possible that Clarence's dad was bigumous lee married. Um. The
Speaker 1: legalities here are very unclear, but none of his kids
Speaker 1: were planned. In general, that was not super common um
Speaker 1: with his family. His mother later told interviewers, quote, we
Speaker 1: didn't know anything about birth control or where babies came
Speaker 1: from when you got pregnant. You just had it. So yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: as I said at earlier, Clarence grows up aware that
Speaker 1: he's not living with the kind of family that most
Speaker 1: kids have. You know, everyone is extremely pinpoint, Like money
Speaker 1: isn't a thing anybody has. But most kids have fairly
Speaker 1: stable family networks, um, and you know are born kind
Speaker 1: of with at least that in their lives. Clarence is
Speaker 1: aware that he's missing something. A black journalist who knew
Speaker 1: Thomas when he was growing Up told Jane Mayor and
Speaker 1: Jill Abrams and the journalist I believe is anonymous for
Speaker 1: understandable reasons. Jane Mayor and Jill Abrams, authors of the
Speaker 1: book Strange Justice, quote, he starts out as a little
Speaker 1: black boy, not accepted in the black world. He has
Speaker 1: no money, no family. This puts him at the bottom
Speaker 1: of the pecking order amongst Southern blacks, a community that
Speaker 1: is far more closed minded and rigid than many whites. Imagine,
Speaker 1: as soon as he was born, he was just out
Speaker 1: there a floater. So that's one attitude at least on
Speaker 1: his background, right, that's a single person's opinion. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: once his dad leaves, his mom was forced to move
Speaker 1: in with the aunt who had raised her miserably. Um.
Speaker 1: And she le was her kids with the aunt who
Speaker 1: had raised her, this very strict woman who like has
Speaker 1: had a life I can't even imagine in terms of difficulty.
Speaker 1: And Clarence's mom moves to Savannah, fifteen miles away, which
Speaker 1: is a lot further back than to work as a
Speaker 1: live in servant for a rich white family so that
Speaker 1: she could send money back home. She made fourteen dollars
Speaker 1: a day when she visited her kids, they would regularly
Speaker 1: ask about their father, um, and you know, she would
Speaker 1: didn't really have a good answer for where he was um.
Speaker 1: And this was made more miserable that by the fact
Speaker 1: that their father's father, their grandfather on their dad's side,
Speaker 1: was the town bus driver, so that they had to
Speaker 1: see their grandpa every day without like having a relationship
Speaker 1: with them because like their dad was just gone. Yeah. Rough,
Speaker 1: So life in Pinpoint was extremely difficult for Again, the
Speaker 1: poverty here is very intense. Leola, like most local women,
Speaker 1: took the job that you could get as a woman
Speaker 1: in Pinpoint, which was working at a crab and shrimp factory. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is the kind of thing that most women who
Speaker 1: grew up there spent their entire lives picking crab and
Speaker 1: shrimp out of shells from dawn until dusk. Leola started
Speaker 1: when she was nine, which was very common. Um. This
Speaker 1: is how people spend their whole lives and fucking pen um.
Speaker 1: It was illegal for her to start work at nine,
Speaker 1: but the plant owner didn't care, and neither did the
Speaker 1: government of Georgia. And this is not a place where
Speaker 1: government inspectors come. Right, nobody's showing up in Pinpoint to
Speaker 1: check on these people because they are poor and black. Um,
Speaker 1: So the government doesn't give a ship what happens as
Speaker 1: his life begins. Clarence seemed destined to a similar life path.
Speaker 1: This is what happened to most people in pinpoint Um.
Speaker 1: Education did exist technically, but it had to be done
Speaker 1: in between brutal workshifts because you have to help your
Speaker 1: family survives, so like learning and stuff come secondary um.
Speaker 1: And of course you can't continue school once you have
Speaker 1: kids of your own, which often happens at like fifteen
Speaker 1: or sixteen. A lot of folks around him are alliterate. Again,
Speaker 1: it's not it's looking like this is more or less
Speaker 1: the path he's going to wind up on, just because
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of options because set of segregation.
Speaker 1: People in pinpoint we're not allowed to use the local beaches,
Speaker 1: the libraries, or the parks um. All of those were
Speaker 1: outside of pinpoint Um. And even if they'd been able
Speaker 1: to afford traveling to such luxuries, again, there was segregation.
Speaker 1: The constitution technically guaranteed them the right to vote, but
Speaker 1: there were poll taxes and literacy tests in Georgia that
Speaker 1: made it basically impossible. In the rare occasions where a
Speaker 1: Pinpoint resident would wind it in the same court as
Speaker 1: a white person. They were made to swear on separate bibles. Um.
Speaker 1: This is like as Jim Crow as it gets. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: this is not the kind of upbringing that you would
Speaker 1: expect somebody to be able to like get a law
Speaker 1: degree and become a Supreme Court justice from And it
Speaker 1: did not happen too many kids in Pinpoint. Um. But
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty five, when Thomas was six, his life
Speaker 1: changed to his intense and lasting fortune. He and his
Speaker 1: brother accidentally lit their curtains on fire with a wood
Speaker 1: stove and burnt their family house to the ground. Uh.
Speaker 1: This put their eight aunt. She was no longer able
Speaker 1: to take care of them, right because like they were
Speaker 1: in her house now, so her mom, their mom takes
Speaker 1: them in at first, but she is living in servants quarters,
Speaker 1: which is like this filthy tenement in Savannah. Um that's
Speaker 1: like built by rich people to be as small as
Speaker 1: possible so their servants just have a place to live. Um.
Speaker 1: It is a single bedroom with an outdoor toilet. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's not a kind of thing that you can
Speaker 1: really raise. Two boys in Leola begged their father for help. Um,
Speaker 1: he wasn't willing to do anything. So she started to
Speaker 1: beg her father, Myers Anderson, who had abandoned her, for help. Um,
Speaker 1: and Myers eventually agrees to help because again, they're boys, right,
Speaker 1: he didn't really care about raising girls, but these are boys. Um.
Speaker 1: Now I'm gonna quote again from Strange Justice to talk
Speaker 1: about how Clarence would later relate what he said had happened. Quote.
Speaker 1: Thomas's recollection of how Myers Anderson came to intercede is
Speaker 1: somewhat different. He has told a number of people over
Speaker 1: the years that at about this that time, his mother
Speaker 1: became romantically involved with a man who had interest in
Speaker 1: taking on her children. As his friend Michael Middleton remembers it,
Speaker 1: Thomas told me his mother dumped him and his brother
Speaker 1: on the grandfather because she'd met some man. So, by
Speaker 1: the age of seven, Clarence Thomas had been abandoned by
Speaker 1: both parents. Now that could be true. She could have
Speaker 1: liked decided to abandon them, but it seems more likely
Speaker 1: that she was just in a desperate situation and did
Speaker 1: it help from her grandfather. Clarence hates his mom. Um.
Speaker 1: He is like will be mean to her his entire life.
Speaker 1: You can have whatever opinion on that you want. I
Speaker 1: think he might have made that up. He makes a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff about his back story up. Oh interesting, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean because that absolutely when you describe, you know,
Speaker 1: her living situation, How could how could anyone think like
Speaker 1: that that was going to be the place where, yeah,
Speaker 1: she could have her kids grow up. Well. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: Myers is kind of like if you're if you're Leola,
Speaker 1: Myers is a great person to give your kids to because,
Speaker 1: unlike everyone else you know in your life, he has money.
Speaker 1: He gets out of pinpoint. We're talking about this in
Speaker 1: a bit, but he is doing well financially. So it's
Speaker 1: not just like, well, you're a man in my family
Speaker 1: and I need help with these kids. It's well, you
Speaker 1: have fucking resources, and I've literally never met another single
Speaker 1: person who has resources. Um. So yeah, Myers is not
Speaker 1: thrilled to take on new kids. Uh. He yells at
Speaker 1: Leola and he refuses it first, but then his wife
Speaker 1: threatens to leave him. Uh, and so he agrees to
Speaker 1: take in both boys. Uh. Now Clarence has an older
Speaker 1: sister too, m m A. Myers. Anderson still refuses to
Speaker 1: help with her, he's only going to raise the boys.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it's it's yeah, the worst fucking messages
Speaker 1: are constantly being reinforced. This person as like a child
Speaker 1: and you're my god, like you're seeing it all start
Speaker 1: forming like so early, where it's like, no, Um, I
Speaker 1: have value because I'm boy. Yeah, I have value because
Speaker 1: I am boy, and like I am being now separated
Speaker 1: from my community and given an opportunity no one else's
Speaker 1: and um, yeah, a whole bunch of ship is going
Speaker 1: to to result from this. Um so m m A.
Speaker 1: His sister remains living in poverty with her aunt, um
Speaker 1: living with like family because their house got burnt down. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: while up to this point, again Clarence and his brother
Speaker 1: had been as poor as it gets, once they move
Speaker 1: in with Myers, there suddenly middle class instantly his life Obviously,
Speaker 1: this is a fucking man who grows up in the
Speaker 1: late eighteen hundreds in Georgia a black man. His life
Speaker 1: was grueling and tremendously difficult. Um. He had never gotten
Speaker 1: beyond a third grade education, but he had turned a
Speaker 1: pushcart business into a coal ice, uh and oil delivery business.
Speaker 1: Like he's delivering fuel to local businesses and stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: and his business has done well enough that he's bought
Speaker 1: rental properties and a small farm. Like he is extremely
Speaker 1: successful and a very intelligent man. Um. He had attempted
Speaker 1: to expand into contracting, like helping with like construction of
Speaker 1: houses in Savannah, but he had been denied a permit
Speaker 1: to make cement because of racism. Um, so he is
Speaker 1: he has hit Basically, Myers has hit the height of
Speaker 1: success that you're allowed to achieve as a black man
Speaker 1: in Georgia in this period of time. And it's also
Speaker 1: been made very clear of him that you're not allowed
Speaker 1: to get do better than this, you know. Yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 1: that said, obviously, his situation is still light years beyond
Speaker 1: what Thomas had enjoyed before. And once they're living with
Speaker 1: their grandpa, Clarence and his brother have electricity, uh, they
Speaker 1: have indoor plumbing, and most importantly, they have access to
Speaker 1: good private schools right. Um. Now, in return, they have
Speaker 1: to deal with Myers Anderson and this section from a
Speaker 1: write up in The Atlantic gives an idea of what
Speaker 1: he was like to live under. Quote. Anderson wouldn't let
Speaker 1: Thomas or his brother wear work gloves on the family
Speaker 1: farm as they cut sugarcane or helped butcher livestock. He
Speaker 1: never praised the boys or showed them affection. He feared
Speaker 1: the evil consequences of idleness. Thomas wrote in My Grandfather's Son,
Speaker 1: and so made sure that we were too busy to
Speaker 1: suffer them. In his presence, there was no play, no fun,
Speaker 1: and little laughter. So that's good. That's all My all
Speaker 1: my favorite homies grew up like that, good and normal
Speaker 1: guy to raise some kids. Hates women, never smiles, makes
Speaker 1: you hurt yourself, and your book is still my grand
Speaker 1: grandpa's my grandfather's son or whatever. Well, when Clarence gets older,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about this. But he decides the fact that
Speaker 1: his grandpa because his grandpa is like the right wing
Speaker 1: platonic ideal of like a grandfather, Right, he's this horrid
Speaker 1: of working man who like doesn't cry, doesn't smile, you know,
Speaker 1: strict discipline, um and and even though he doesn't really
Speaker 1: get along with his grandpa in real life, once he's
Speaker 1: in politics, he recognizes that his grandpa is like, that's
Speaker 1: a money making endeavor, right, you can sell that to
Speaker 1: these white Republicans like that that you had this this
Speaker 1: strict background. And because he was so strict. We got
Speaker 1: so far. You know, I wasn't able to be too
Speaker 1: black because I was my My grandfather made sure there
Speaker 1: was no riff raffian stuff happening, like it's it's really God,
Speaker 1: it's so fucking again. With every fucking layer you add
Speaker 1: to this ship, you start understanding his resentment of all
Speaker 1: kinds of people, of women, whatever, and you're like, it's
Speaker 1: and it's wrapped in such trauma that like you can
Speaker 1: see how that manifests into somebody with a fucking like
Speaker 1: demonic agenda like this. Yeah, it's not going to be
Speaker 1: surprising that the ends he reaches, like some of them
Speaker 1: will be surprising, I guess, but like a lot of
Speaker 1: this does make sense. So Thomas would later write that
Speaker 1: his grandfather made sure that both boys knew that they
Speaker 1: had to quote work twice as hard to get half
Speaker 1: as far um, and that like, yeah, that was just
Speaker 1: the way ship worked in the United States, which could
Speaker 1: be fair. Did Yeah, Yeah, I mean that's I think
Speaker 1: a lot not just him, a lot of people all.
Speaker 1: I was told that too, but it was it was
Speaker 1: twice as hard for half the pay. Yeah, yeah, that
Speaker 1: is like, yes, I and I have again we've talked
Speaker 1: about like, he's not an entirely credible narrator about his
Speaker 1: best I have absolutely know whether or not his grandfather
Speaker 1: said those exact words. I have no doubt that he
Speaker 1: wanted to get that across to those kids. That's sucking true. Um. So,
Speaker 1: while Myers clearly wanted both boys to be successful, that
Speaker 1: was kind of where his concern with them ended. He
Speaker 1: wanted them to be able to make like money and
Speaker 1: be successful in society. Um. He seemed to have not
Speaker 1: even money as much as he wanted them to have
Speaker 1: like a position, right, Like he wanted them to have
Speaker 1: like do make status? Yeah, exactly, status. He did not
Speaker 1: really seem to care about them as human beings. Um.
Speaker 1: Thomas later told colleagues in government that Myers rarely spoke
Speaker 1: to him except to order him to do chores. A
Speaker 1: Yale law school colleague claims that Clarence told him a
Speaker 1: physical frequent physical punishments for misbehavior. If he or his
Speaker 1: brother overslept, quote, they'd have the ship beaten out of them. Um.
Speaker 1: And the book Strange Justice goes into even more detail. Quote.
Speaker 1: So Thomas and his brother were made to rise before
Speaker 1: dawn and help their grandfather deliver coal and oil, and
Speaker 1: spent their holidays and weekends doing heavy farm work for him.
Speaker 1: There seemed to be a tinge of cruelty in some
Speaker 1: of Anderson's weekends and some of Anderson's actions. Thomas, for instance,
Speaker 1: recalled that his grandfather had removed the heater from the
Speaker 1: fuel delivery truck because he felt that even on freezing
Speaker 1: winter mornings, heat was not conducive to good work habits.
Speaker 1: In the old fashioned way of make. Of many such families,
Speaker 1: challenges to authority were met with frequent and humiliating corporal punishment.
Speaker 1: A particular torture was the front hall coat closet, where,
Speaker 1: according to Leola Williams, Anderson used to lock the boys
Speaker 1: when they misbehaved. My daddy was hard. The kids couldn't
Speaker 1: get away with nothing, she recalled. Sometimes, when her father
Speaker 1: was too tired or busy to beat the boys himself,
Speaker 1: Leola said he would call her to whip them for him,
Speaker 1: but the little boys soon got too fast for her
Speaker 1: to catch, so instead, she said, I would have to
Speaker 1: throw my shoes at their heads to catch them at all.
Speaker 1: So harsh, So harsh was the physical punishment. According to Armstrong,
Speaker 1: Williams later Thomas's aide at the E E O C.
Speaker 1: But Thomas still bears a thin scar from a whipping
Speaker 1: his grandfather administered with an electrical cord. So like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not maybe don't do that kids every lay I
Speaker 1: mean yeah, I mean, I mean that kind of ship
Speaker 1: is so common man. Yeah, and the the whole later
Speaker 1: generations too. It's like there's the common stuff and then
Speaker 1: there's the I've removed the heater from the truck because
Speaker 1: because being warm will make you work badly. Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's he's got again every every layer because it's like
Speaker 1: not a single thing was like good except for the
Speaker 1: like his access to like fire society. Essentially he has
Speaker 1: access to money, but like none to affection. And again,
Speaker 1: I think the actual the physical punishments described there, that
Speaker 1: is just the norm across certainly the South, right, and
Speaker 1: and not just the South in the unit that's everywhere right,
Speaker 1: Like that is that is incredibly common. Those attitudes that like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're gonna whip them with a fucking cord if they
Speaker 1: don't do something right, you pop a kid in the
Speaker 1: fucking face, you know, Like that is like my in Oklahoma,
Speaker 1: my public fucking school spanked us and ship and that
Speaker 1: was in the nineties. Like the attitudes, particularly in rural areas,
Speaker 1: of like physical punishment towards kids are not at all
Speaker 1: uncommon in this period. It's the weird. You have to
Speaker 1: be miserable. You can't let yourself relax, you can't let
Speaker 1: yourself like feel good for a moment when you're working,
Speaker 1: because that will make you lazy, and that's dangerous. That
Speaker 1: I think is the thing that is actually really different
Speaker 1: about his upbringing, right right, yeah, yeah, just if it's
Speaker 1: again is it freaks me out even more every single
Speaker 1: thing like it adds to someone being even more rigid,
Speaker 1: unable to see the good in anything, and acts out
Speaker 1: like their powerlessness in youth in a way to feel
Speaker 1: like omnipotent even it's through if it's through destruction. But
Speaker 1: you know who is omnipotent through their destruction. Miles Um,
Speaker 1: which which aeronautics company the products and services and support
Speaker 1: Miles are primary sponsor in this podcast, is the corporation
Speaker 1: you probably know from one of their many delicious beverages,
Speaker 1: but who is also building a laser to end all
Speaker 1: life on earth. See has realized that capitalism can't continue
Speaker 1: to expand indefinitely. But what can expand indefinitely is the
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Speaker 1: by a fund the space laser that will end all life.
Speaker 1: That's our that's our motto promo code kill us all
Speaker 1: go ah, We're back. So Meyer sends the boys to
Speaker 1: a Catholic school, Um, which is he is also he's
Speaker 1: a Catholic convert to which matters to Catholics, Um, but whatever, um,
Speaker 1: And he's primarily it seems like he kind of converts
Speaker 1: to Catholicism because that offers more opportunities. If you are
Speaker 1: a Catholic, you can go, you can send your kids
Speaker 1: to Catholic school. Like, it's a good community, it provides
Speaker 1: more support, right. Um. So the school he sends the
Speaker 1: kids to cost about twenty bucks a year, which even
Speaker 1: then is not expensive for a private school, right, Like
Speaker 1: that's not a fortune back in those days. Um, but
Speaker 1: it's still I mean, it's certainly outside the reach of
Speaker 1: most families in PenPoint, who meant, probably never saw twenty
Speaker 1: dollars in one place at the same time in their lives. Um.
Speaker 1: And what to the point, Um, it's out of reach
Speaker 1: of like a lot of black people in particularly rural
Speaker 1: Georgia in that period. Because it is while it is
Speaker 1: a segregated school, it's a pretty good school because it's
Speaker 1: a Catholic school, right, so it has access to resources
Speaker 1: that public schools often don't. Um, it's got a more
Speaker 1: progressive background than most. It had been founded in eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy eight uh Reconstruction by a group of white Franciscan
Speaker 1: nuns who believed that black people could be good Catholics,
Speaker 1: which was real controversial at one point, Like oh my,
Speaker 1: wh yeah, well, locals in in Savannah called them the
Speaker 1: inward Nuns like that was yeah, that's who found the
Speaker 1: school that he goes to, and it is a good education.
Speaker 1: The nuns clearly cared about teaching their students and doing
Speaker 1: so well. That said, they are also Catholic nuns in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, so they're beating the hell out of
Speaker 1: these You talk to anybody who goes to a Catholic
Speaker 1: school in the fifties, they're getting the ship slapped out
Speaker 1: of them with rulers like that is that's just how
Speaker 1: that stuff goes, right, Yeah, Okay, so again, hey, so
Speaker 1: how is school like pretty good teachers like kind of
Speaker 1: forward thinking and challenge their beliefs and things. No, they
Speaker 1: beat the fun out. Well it's even worse. It's like
Speaker 1: they were forward thinking for the time and also reading
Speaker 1: the funk out of actually a little bit from column.
Speaker 1: They believed we were people, so it was important to
Speaker 1: hit us in order to make us learn. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: fifties man quite quite a time. Um. So, Yeah, segregation
Speaker 1: officially ends in nineteen fifty four. Um, that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that kids in all white and all black schools suddenly
Speaker 1: stopped going to those though, right, It's a process. Um.
Speaker 1: And so it's not until nineteen sixty four, when Thomas
Speaker 1: starts attending an elite Catholic high school that he actually
Speaker 1: is an integrated classrooms. So fairly early on in his childhood,
Speaker 1: segregation legally ends, but it's not until he's in high
Speaker 1: school that he actually is in an integrated classroom. Um.
Speaker 1: So he winds up, you know, finally going to a
Speaker 1: school that is not like segregated based on race. And
Speaker 1: he would later call state enforced segregation quote as close
Speaker 1: to totalitarianism as I would like to get, um, which
Speaker 1: is interesting because he's only it actually it ends when
Speaker 1: he's six, right, So like right at the start of
Speaker 1: his education is when segregation ends. Um. You might want
Speaker 1: to look at that as like an example of him,
Speaker 1: like kind of playing up the story. I don't think
Speaker 1: necessarily that it is. I think it more speaks to
Speaker 1: the fact that the legacy of segregation exists in his
Speaker 1: life throughout his childhood, even though again it ends very
Speaker 1: early on in his life. Um, but it doesn't end
Speaker 1: because it's not a clean break like we often like praticum. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: So Clarence, his father remains close to a complete, not
Speaker 1: non entity for the rest of his childhood. Years later,
Speaker 1: during a speech at Pepperdine University, Clarence would give a
Speaker 1: bit of detail into one of the only interactions he
Speaker 1: ever has with his dad. Quote, I saw him only
Speaker 1: twice when I was young. The first time was when
Speaker 1: my mother called her parents with whom my brother, Myers,
Speaker 1: and I then lived, and told them that someone at
Speaker 1: her place wanted to see us. They called a cab
Speaker 1: and then sent us to our housing project department, where
Speaker 1: my father was waiting. I am your daddy, he told us,
Speaker 1: in a firm, shameless voice that carried no hint of
Speaker 1: remorse for his inexplicable absence from our lives. He said
Speaker 1: nothing about loving or missing us, and we didn't say
Speaker 1: much in return. It was as though we were meeting
Speaker 1: a total stranger. But he treated us politely enough, and
Speaker 1: even promised to send us a pair of Elgin watches
Speaker 1: with flexible bands, which were popular at the time that
Speaker 1: we watched them all the mail every day. The watches
Speaker 1: never came, and when a year or so had gone by,
Speaker 1: my grandparents bought us for them, bought them for us instead.
Speaker 1: My father had broken the only promise he ever made
Speaker 1: to us. After that, we heard nothing more from him,
Speaker 1: not even a Christmas or Birthday card. For years, my
Speaker 1: brother and I would ask ourselves how a man could
Speaker 1: show no interest in his own children. I still wonder.
Speaker 1: I do feel like that's overwhelmingly the reaction to these
Speaker 1: at attempts, like God, damn, they're so fucked up. You're like,
Speaker 1: you couldn't you couldn't construct someone who has been through
Speaker 1: all this kind of like shit, that would make you
Speaker 1: fucking this guy anyway. One of two things to one
Speaker 1: with that anecdote with his grandparents and the watches says
Speaker 1: that they've got them. The watches is one of two
Speaker 1: things is true either well, I guess one of three
Speaker 1: things is to either maybe he played up how hard
Speaker 1: his grandfather was and there was actually more softness in
Speaker 1: that relationship than he wanted to admit and this is
Speaker 1: an example of it. Or his dad was just so
Speaker 1: shitty that even his fucking grandfather was like, all right,
Speaker 1: like I gotta get these kids the fucking watches like
Speaker 1: this is just too bad. Or it's grandma right, or
Speaker 1: grandma was was the one that that happened. I mean,
Speaker 1: either way, I think even if you even if you're lying,
Speaker 1: but that's what you want. That's who you want people
Speaker 1: to think you are. Yeah, that's also pretty instructive, Like
Speaker 1: at every level, many things can be true. He is.
Speaker 1: There's a lot to think about here. Um So when
Speaker 1: he starts high school, he is a member of the
Speaker 1: first generation of his family to enjoy any kind of quality. Again,
Speaker 1: his grandfather has a third grade education, not uncommon at
Speaker 1: the time. Um And yeah, so he is he is
Speaker 1: the first male member of his family, he and his
Speaker 1: brother because they're about the same age to go to
Speaker 1: a good high school. Um. As the book Strange Justice
Speaker 1: makes clear, a good deal of his opportunity here came
Speaker 1: as a result of the successes of the civil rights movement. Right,
Speaker 1: it's not just his grandfather's success. It is the fact
Speaker 1: that a lot his people have been fighting for him
Speaker 1: to have this opportunity. Quote and Thomas's first year of life.
Speaker 1: President Harry Truman, in a controversial State of the Union
Speaker 1: addressed called for more extensive civil rights laws, including the
Speaker 1: establishment of some sort of fair employment practices program, the
Speaker 1: butt of the idea that eventually grew into the e
Speaker 1: O C. The speech touched off such furious opposition in
Speaker 1: Georgia that Senator Richard B. Russell proposed to export, exporting
Speaker 1: the state's black population to the north. Leading the fight
Speaker 1: against such racial progress was the staunch segregationist Jay Strom Thurmond,
Speaker 1: the same man who would champion Thomas's nomination to the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court some four decades later. On May seventeenth, nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty four, when Thomas was five, the Supreme Court handed
Speaker 1: down its unanimous dei ordering the end of public school segregation.
Speaker 1: The lead attorney was Third Good Marshall, then the head
Speaker 1: of the in a CPS legal defense fund. Marshall is
Speaker 1: who Clarence Thomas is going to replace. On the spring
Speaker 1: so Grandpa Myers would have agreed with the fact that
Speaker 1: like his son's or his grandson's opportunities were a result
Speaker 1: of both his hard work and all of the civil
Speaker 1: rights fighting. Because Myers Anderson was a dedicated member of
Speaker 1: the Double A CP, he earned he earned the nickname
Speaker 1: in town Sharpshooter for the skill with which he targeted
Speaker 1: Boycott's against racist white businesses. Um. He is. Again, he's
Speaker 1: like a hard dude, but he also with the feeling
Speaker 1: that if you're fighting on like you want this motherfucker
Speaker 1: on your side and a fight like he's he's good.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's the worst fucking grandparents. It's a shitty grandpa.
Speaker 1: But uh, he provided the a CP chapter with free
Speaker 1: heating fuel in the winter at the expense of his business. Um.
Speaker 1: One friend of the so clearly he did think that
Speaker 1: it was bad for them to have heating. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know how to parts that all apt. Everything's
Speaker 1: very conditional. Yeah. Yeah. One friend of the family at
Speaker 1: the time noted that Clarence attended a few in Double
Speaker 1: A CP and meetings as a boy, but he was
Speaker 1: at boarding school for a lot of the time, right, Um,
Speaker 1: and a number of like folks who grew like grew
Speaker 1: up with him and report on this time will say that, like,
Speaker 1: while they were doing in double A CP stuff, he
Speaker 1: was at boarding school quotes surrounded by whites. Um. Clarence
Speaker 1: recalls his school differently. He describes it as an entirely
Speaker 1: black environment, and both of his schools were a majority black. Um.
Speaker 1: It's again, we're not ever getting objective when we're talking
Speaker 1: about the people who knew him or him. This is
Speaker 1: everything's filtered through decades of memory because this is all
Speaker 1: a long time later, and everyone's feelings on the matter too.
Speaker 1: So I don't want to like put one side or
Speaker 1: the other as like right about what was going on here? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you want to do both sides, well, at least, like
Speaker 1: I don't know, I wasn't Actually I'm not. I'm up
Speaker 1: growing up in fucking Savannah, Georgia in nineteen fifties. Um,
Speaker 1: but it is it is worth noting that, like, he
Speaker 1: benefits from the civil rights struggle, but his grandpa has
Speaker 1: also put him in a situation where he's not taking
Speaker 1: part in it, you know. Yeah, yeah, exactly, He's already
Speaker 1: has gigantic chips on both shoulders. Yeah, and at least
Speaker 1: at this point it seems to be kind of it
Speaker 1: won't be later, but that is he does have that
Speaker 1: ability as a child that it is kind of abstract. Um.
Speaker 1: So this is one of those areas where we get
Speaker 1: into the inconsistencies between how other people described Thomas as
Speaker 1: youth and how he has described it since once he
Speaker 1: became a conservative political figure, and this happens before he's
Speaker 1: a Supreme Court justice. He's lobbying for years. Thomas made
Speaker 1: a point of claiming in speeches that he would give
Speaker 1: for things like the Federalist Society and all these colleges.
Speaker 1: He would always make the claim that he had succeeded
Speaker 1: in spite of a low quality education. Right. In one speech,
Speaker 1: he told an audience quote, I don't understand how it
Speaker 1: is that people today are getting worse educations than I
Speaker 1: received in the segregated schools of Savannah. Now we already
Speaker 1: know that, Like that's not a hundred percent accurate, right,
Speaker 1: Like just based on his actual background, because he went
Speaker 1: to a very high quality series of private schools. Um. Now, obviously,
Speaker 1: like there's a lot to say about that, but it's
Speaker 1: just not true. Like the things that he would claim
Speaker 1: about his education. Um, and he's obviously as a right winger,
Speaker 1: he's claiming that in order to be like, look, the
Speaker 1: schools don't need more money. The poor schools that I
Speaker 1: went to did a better job than modern schools. There's
Speaker 1: some cultural thing that's making the schools bad where it's like, no, man,
Speaker 1: your grandpa paid for you to go to a great
Speaker 1: private school. Dude, Like, yeah, he's playing. Yeah, he's Mr.
Speaker 1: Ultimate Bootstraps. Yeah, and it's fine, Like it's good that
Speaker 1: your grandpa did that for you, but like, don't pretend
Speaker 1: that you like had a hard, scrubble scrabble public school
Speaker 1: education because you didn't. Well. I think that's like the thing,
Speaker 1: right because if if there's a fork in the road
Speaker 1: of your like choose your own myth making adventure, you
Speaker 1: want to choose the against all odds, right, because that's
Speaker 1: part of especially in with America, like every most people
Speaker 1: want to obscure the fact that like you know, they're
Speaker 1: like a generational uh, they were generationally admitted to like
Speaker 1: an Ivy League school and like, no, man, like it
Speaker 1: was all hard graft, came from the nowhere. And I
Speaker 1: think for him too, that really helps for like multiple
Speaker 1: levels to be like, yeah, I went to a shitty school.
Speaker 1: That's why they don't need anything. And also look what
Speaker 1: I did, folks, lifted myself out. It's fucked up because like,
Speaker 1: obviously there's a funckload of kids and family members of
Speaker 1: his who grew up in Pinpoint who could have gone
Speaker 1: as far as he did, or at least like got
Speaker 1: a hell of a lot further than they did in
Speaker 1: the capitalist sense of the word, but didn't because they
Speaker 1: had to grow up in Pinpoint picking fish out of
Speaker 1: like shells and stuff, because that was the only opportunity
Speaker 1: they got. He gets thankfully, um, like luckily, I should say,
Speaker 1: he gets an opportunity because of his who you know,
Speaker 1: who his grandfather is. Um, but he doesn't like to
Speaker 1: acknowledge that in the future, except for like when he
Speaker 1: does he has to. He does acknowledge his grandfather, but
Speaker 1: always in the way his hardness shaped him as opposed
Speaker 1: to the way his resources provided opportunities. And I think
Speaker 1: that's really interesting. Um, So this just like the wow,
Speaker 1: Yeah that is thways, I was just carved out of
Speaker 1: my grandpa's sternness. Yeah, I mean it makes sense that
Speaker 1: this is like the way he's going to claim it. Um,
Speaker 1: So this next bit gets into some territory that is
Speaker 1: definitely uncomfortable and difficult for me to parse out. Well, Um,
Speaker 1: but we're gonna talk about the specific kind of racism
Speaker 1: that Clarence dealt with in his youth. Um, And a
Speaker 1: lot of it did not come from where I think,
Speaker 1: at least where I would have expected, being a fucking
Speaker 1: white dude who did not grow up in Savannah, Georgia. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna quote from a ride up in the
Speaker 1: New Yorker here. His nickname in the schoolyard in the
Speaker 1: streets was ABC, America's blackest child. If he were any blacker,
Speaker 1: his classmates jeered, he'd be blue. Color was code for class.
Speaker 1: The darkness of Thomas's skin, along with the Gulagchi dialect
Speaker 1: he retained from Pinpoint, was a sign of his lowly
Speaker 1: status in origin. For Thomas, these cruelties are a lifelong hurt.
Speaker 1: People love to talk about conflicts inter racially, he told
Speaker 1: the reporter Kin Foskett, who published a biography of Thomas
Speaker 1: Judging Thomas in two thousand four. They never talk about
Speaker 1: the conflicts intentions intro racially. From a young age, the
Speaker 1: primary divide Thomas had to confront came from the privileges
Speaker 1: associated with black wealth and light skin. You had the
Speaker 1: black elite, the school teachers, the light skinned people, the dentist,
Speaker 1: the doctors. Thomas has said, my grandfather was down at
Speaker 1: the bottom. They would look down on him. Everybody tries
Speaker 1: to gloss over that now, but it was the reality.
Speaker 1: And you know that is Thomas's and again other folks,
Speaker 1: you know, have different recollections, but this is what he
Speaker 1: recalls of, like what he deals with as a kid.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, at every turn, and get right that
Speaker 1: there's he grew up having already feeling inferior as like
Speaker 1: a black kid because the community he grew up in,
Speaker 1: and then on top of that the colorism ship comes
Speaker 1: into it as well and makes him even more his resentment.
Speaker 1: It becomes like, oh my god, one of the things
Speaker 1: every again, at every fucking level. Yeah, there's no he
Speaker 1: has no he doesn't belong anywhere or and feels like
Speaker 1: he has a bone to pick with everything. And you
Speaker 1: see how that leads to the man he becomes in
Speaker 1: this like this ideology of self reliance, which is a fantasy,
Speaker 1: but like you get how someone who comes who grows
Speaker 1: up feeling like they don't have a place anywhere, grows
Speaker 1: up with this attitude towards self reliance. Now, of course,
Speaker 1: the reality is we've talked about is that like he
Speaker 1: benefited tremendously from a community that fought for his his rights,
Speaker 1: even though it does seem like maybe that it didn't
Speaker 1: feel that way to him, but like that was what
Speaker 1: was going on. His grandfather was a part of that. Um,
Speaker 1: it's very bleak that this is kind of a lot
Speaker 1: of what he seems to take out of the period.
Speaker 1: And again for of his like right wing white supporters,
Speaker 1: he's the version of blackness that they wished every other
Speaker 1: black person. Where's like it wasn't really an issue. Actually,
Speaker 1: if there's racism, it's between black people exactly, and that
Speaker 1: his narrative doesn't offend anyone or take notice of the
Speaker 1: struggle that pretty much every other black person in the
Speaker 1: country had to. Yeah, it's it's again a lot going
Speaker 1: on here. Yeah, um yeah, everything is now five D
Speaker 1: six D nine chest. Now after high school, Clarence enters
Speaker 1: the seminary. His grandpa wanted him to be a Catholic priest.
Speaker 1: He's really really approving of this mood move. It's probably
Speaker 1: one of the few things that like Clarence gets like
Speaker 1: some kind of like expression of pride from his grandfather
Speaker 1: for doing because that's like, man, if you're a fucking
Speaker 1: Catholic priest, you're that's like, at least for Catholics, about
Speaker 1: the height of like respectability, you know. Man. Um, So
Speaker 1: he gets admitted to a pre study program because being
Speaker 1: a priest is kind of like being a doctor. Um
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty four, this is the year that co
Speaker 1: would you rather have operate on you? Robert a priest?
Speaker 1: Of course? Uh, because the doctors are just gonna put
Speaker 1: that fucking Bill Gates chip in me. Miles. That's right,
Speaker 1: that Bill Gates chip, you know, the one I'm talking about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm glading for over that pro science bullshit. Well, I
Speaker 1: I don't know, you see, Miles, I don't believe in
Speaker 1: the Bill Gates chip in the vaccine. I believe that
Speaker 1: Bill Gates is putting chips inside of all of us
Speaker 1: that allows him to control when we orgasm. And that's
Speaker 1: why you can't go to the doctor. Stay away from
Speaker 1: the doctor. Okay, I didn't think I didn't hear about this. Yep,
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Speaker 1: for the makers of Uh, We're back. So nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: four the year he gets admitted to his pre study
Speaker 1: program for for seminary again Semen Come Perfect. That's the
Speaker 1: year also that Congress debates the Civil Rights Act. The
Speaker 1: rector of the seminary, he goes to, William Coleman, is
Speaker 1: a progressive uh, and he chose to offer Clarence and
Speaker 1: one other black students scholarships in order to make sure
Speaker 1: that there wouldn't just be white priests, right like, that's
Speaker 1: it's kind of an affirmative action program, you know. Um
Speaker 1: and he and his brother are the or he and
Speaker 1: the this other student are the first black people admitted
Speaker 1: to this particular seminary um. Prior to starting priest school,
Speaker 1: Clarence had been awkward and uncomfortable around women. Uh friends
Speaker 1: noted that he seemed to nurse a deep well of
Speaker 1: resentment towards his mother, and becoming or learning doing the
Speaker 1: pre study for becoming a Catholic priest did not help
Speaker 1: with this part of his life. From strange justice quote,
Speaker 1: if Thomas was unsophisticated about girl, certainly the nuns had
Speaker 1: done little to change that. The only sex education the
Speaker 1: youngsters at St. Benedict's and St. Pious X received, recalled Johnson,
Speaker 1: was from their own parents, which Thomas lacked. After sixth grade,
Speaker 1: boys and girls were separated in class, and Johnson is
Speaker 1: one of the other students there recalls we were lectured
Speaker 1: about sin all the time. The nuns view of women
Speaker 1: at that time, according to Carol Delaney, who was taught
Speaker 1: by them in Savannah, was that we should become wives
Speaker 1: and mothers and submit completely to male authority. The husband
Speaker 1: was the head of the wife, as Christ was the
Speaker 1: head of the church. Women were associated with sin through Eve.
Speaker 1: So again this is the good I mean, this is
Speaker 1: now seminary. Yeah, so this is what he's learning Um,
Speaker 1: you're the main character in a religious video game where
Speaker 1: you have to fight the evil women, and but you're
Speaker 1: in cell pretending your vole cell. Yeah. Um, And it's
Speaker 1: there's a lot to be said by someone who is
Speaker 1: better at an analyzing these things than me, of like
Speaker 1: the similarities between his grandpa's attitude towards like, well, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to raise a girl that's not worth it
Speaker 1: to what these priests and nuns are teaching him about women, right,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't. And I'm bad too, so hard I'm actually
Speaker 1: get the I'm a serpent. Um, why am I here?
Speaker 1: I gotta go? I'm bad. So according to him, he's
Speaker 1: a pretty good student at seminary, but he is also
Speaker 1: kind of becomes in this point constantly infuriated by the
Speaker 1: racism he encounters from the other students, because again, it's
Speaker 1: just him and one other black student. Everybody else is
Speaker 1: white as hell. Um. He later recalled one night when
Speaker 1: the lights were turned off and a classmate said, quote,
Speaker 1: smile Clarence, so we can see you. Yeah. Um. He
Speaker 1: was particularly bothered, he says, later, not by the fact
Speaker 1: that people laughed, but by the fact that nobody came
Speaker 1: to his defense. Right, he has like these friends and
Speaker 1: they won't stick up for him. Um, which, yep, I
Speaker 1: don't have any trouble believing that. Um. He reached a
Speaker 1: snapping point in nineteen sixty eight during his first year
Speaker 1: at the actual seminary, right because he has to do
Speaker 1: preschool for priests prea come. Yeah, he's got a free
Speaker 1: come before he can get to be So when he
Speaker 1: when he joins that big come shot, um, he learns,
Speaker 1: oh boy, no, that's not a good way to lead
Speaker 1: into that line. Um. So, during his first year at
Speaker 1: the actual seminary, Um, you know, it's sixty eight, which
Speaker 1: is the year that Martin Luther King Jr. Is assassinated. Um.
Speaker 1: And when that happens, he recalls a classmate says to him, good,
Speaker 1: I hope the s ob dies, I think because there
Speaker 1: was lag time in between him being shot. Yeah. Um
Speaker 1: So Clarence says that racism is why he ultimately quits
Speaker 1: the seminary. His grandfather is fucking furious at this, right, Like, obviously,
Speaker 1: if you know anything about Myers Anderson, the fact that
Speaker 1: you encountered racism in seminary is not an excuse to
Speaker 1: not become a priest. To that guy, right, racism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let me tell you about racism. Um. Yeah, so this
Speaker 1: doesn't go over well. His grandfather throws him out of
Speaker 1: the house, and his memoir, Thomas would later write, He'd
Speaker 1: never accepted any of my excuses for failure, and he
Speaker 1: wasn't going to start. Now you've let me down, he said.
Speaker 1: For years, the two remained estranged, and Myers Anderson refused
Speaker 1: to attend his grandson's graduations or wedding. Oh is that
Speaker 1: according to Thomas or that's according to someone That is
Speaker 1: according to Thomas. I have not heard any counter to
Speaker 1: that story though. Okay, but yeah, Now there's a couple
Speaker 1: of things that are left at One of them is
Speaker 1: that A big part of why Myers becomes angry is
Speaker 1: that when his son, because he's going to go on
Speaker 1: to become a lawyer, and he's going to justify it
Speaker 1: because when he drops out of pre school, he's like, well,
Speaker 1: I've decided I want to become a lawyer so that
Speaker 1: I can help the community rights, that I can fight
Speaker 1: for civil rights. And he never does this. So a
Speaker 1: thing that is left out of this people will claim
Speaker 1: who knew the family the time, is that Myers was
Speaker 1: also angry that he doesn't do that part of it.
Speaker 1: So right again, we all tell stories about our pasts.
Speaker 1: Um so one of the nuns, who ever tell you
Speaker 1: about that helicopter I was in the show? No, maybe
Speaker 1: you can have Okay, so you're not gonna you're not
Speaker 1: gonna give us the helicopter story right now. You're just
Speaker 1: bringing that enough, just teasing that. I'm just saying I
Speaker 1: was with a lot of brave men and women that day. Well,
Speaker 1: I was in a helicopter once with with William Gates. Uh,
Speaker 1: we're heading towards an island friend of ours, buddy named
Speaker 1: Jeff owned, um little island just out in the anyway. Um,
Speaker 1: So you don't think that's a good You don't think
Speaker 1: that's a good bit. I've a terrible bit. You don't
Speaker 1: think the hung out on Epstein's Island bit has legs.
Speaker 1: I don't know why we've gotten into this territory. Why
Speaker 1: are you doing this? It doesn't make you look very
Speaker 1: good or cool. It's because the words semen is kind
Speaker 1: of in seminary, and in seminary that's also kind of funny.
Speaker 1: Then there's like are always is That's why I mean,
Speaker 1: like this is not a good This is not a
Speaker 1: good bit. No, this is, and I'm not a good
Speaker 1: guest to have for serious things, you know, yeah, probably.
Speaker 1: I don't know why you're going back to your middle
Speaker 1: school humor for this episode, Robert. It's it's kind of
Speaker 1: you know, it's not your thing, it is my thing, Sovie.
Speaker 1: It's always been my thing, is my thing? Any more
Speaker 1: times years ago? So it's the middle schooler. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: I'm gonna teach everybody how many times I can say
Speaker 1: come in a four part series about Clarence Thomas. It's
Speaker 1: actually very appropriate given some weird things that he does
Speaker 1: to all of his co workers. Any Way, we'll talk
Speaker 1: about that later. Um So, one of the nuns who
Speaker 1: likes him, right because he decides to quit, and apparently
Speaker 1: one of his nuns is like, hey, if you're not
Speaker 1: going to be a priest, why don't you go to
Speaker 1: Holy Cross, which is a Catholic college in Wooster. I
Speaker 1: think it's pronounced Wooster, Massachusetts. It is spelled Worcester. I'm
Speaker 1: so angry Wooster fucking nonsense. Um So, this is a
Speaker 1: white liberal college, which you might expect to have been
Speaker 1: better than the seminary in Savannah. Georgia, Uh, it is
Speaker 1: not UM. After nineteen sixty eight, it had decided to
Speaker 1: actually try and recruit black students UM, and in order
Speaker 1: to do that, they set up a scholarship fund named
Speaker 1: after Martin Luther King UM. And Thomas receives one of
Speaker 1: these scholarships to go to the school that he would
Speaker 1: not have been able to afford otherwise, which is again
Speaker 1: the second time that he's he's benefited from an affirmative
Speaker 1: action program. To summarize his time in college, I want
Speaker 1: to quote from the book The Enigma of Clarence Thomas
Speaker 1: quote moving to a white institution in the North repeated
Speaker 1: the trauma of moving to a white seminary in this out,
Speaker 1: which Thomas described in an interview with The Crisis, the
Speaker 1: magazine of the Double A c. P. Thus quote, So
Speaker 1: you leave that all black environment and you go into
Speaker 1: an environment where you are the only black, and you
Speaker 1: are sitting where you live day in day out, and
Speaker 1: attend to classes, and the only blacks you see are
Speaker 1: the two women who work in the kitchen, and the
Speaker 1: rest are white people. You go through some changes. Going
Speaker 1: through those changes in the charged context of an integrating
Speaker 1: Northern college campus surrounded by the tenants and texts of
Speaker 1: black nationalism transformed him. It was a special time in
Speaker 1: my life, he says. In later years, Thomas would downplay
Speaker 1: the presence of black nationalism and his mature thinking, hotly
Speaker 1: declaring I'm not a nationalist. Yet he never disavowed its
Speaker 1: role in his development, going so far as to invoke
Speaker 1: Malcolm X as an analog for precedent or precedent in
Speaker 1: his biography. I have been angry enough in my life,
Speaker 1: and there are some points where I'm sure my attitudes
Speaker 1: approached black nationalism. I'm certain you could say the same
Speaker 1: thing about Malcolm X. In college, Thomas's black friends love
Speaker 1: to tease him about the fervor of his commitment and
Speaker 1: the seriousness of his study. What woman would want this
Speaker 1: man in anyway? He's into books and black power. But
Speaker 1: even as a Supreme Court justice, looking back on his
Speaker 1: youthful development, Thomas refused to mock the moment I was
Speaker 1: an angry black man, he wrote in his memoir, The
Speaker 1: more I read about the Black power movement, the more
Speaker 1: I wanted to be a part of it. I used
Speaker 1: to be an angry black man. Yeah you were. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's one way to describe you really getting in touch
Speaker 1: with the impression. Yeah, and he does have this brief
Speaker 1: period of being not just in touch with oppression, but
Speaker 1: like actually committed to doing something about it. Um. He
Speaker 1: is like he is a combat boots and Black Panther
Speaker 1: beret type activist. Are there pictures of him? Like then,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I haven't found any. Um, that's like
Speaker 1: the Oh my god, that's the most fucked up picture.
Speaker 1: Like look, I probably yeah, boy. Um. And his his
Speaker 1: first trip to Washington, d C. The very first time
Speaker 1: he ever goes is a march on the Pentagon against
Speaker 1: the Vietnam War. Um. The last protest he ever goes
Speaker 1: to turns into a massive street brawl where two thousand
Speaker 1: cops assault three thou and protesters demanding the release of
Speaker 1: Black Panther co founder Bobby Seal and a prominent leading
Speaker 1: Panther Erica Huggins. Um. Years later, Thomas would assist quote,
Speaker 1: I was never a liberal. I was a radical and
Speaker 1: and this seems to be true. He organizes a free
Speaker 1: breakfast program for kids and Wooster patterned off from what
Speaker 1: the Black Panthers had done. Um. He supports Communist Party
Speaker 1: member Angela Davis in her flight from the US government,
Speaker 1: he helps organize a black student union at his college,
Speaker 1: uh and he also publishes a manifesto in that magazine
Speaker 1: that is extremely black nationalist, with lines like quote, the
Speaker 1: black man does not want or need the white woman.
Speaker 1: The black man's history shows that the white woman is
Speaker 1: the cause of his failure to be the true black man.
Speaker 1: I know, right, Clarence Thomas, I don't think that's a
Speaker 1: not gonna be a twist. A lot of people say,
Speaker 1: coming um, so then like if it's like a cheesy
Speaker 1: narrative like he has, who I wonder what the moment
Speaker 1: is that he goes to the dark side, like if
Speaker 1: he was a Jedi. I think, even like inverts, he
Speaker 1: is always even when he is on this radical side,
Speaker 1: he's fundamentally rooted in some pretty regressive things. As we're
Speaker 1: going to cover, A big part of what he believes
Speaker 1: in as a radical in this period is also the
Speaker 1: subjugation of women by men, which a lot of left
Speaker 1: wing sixties radicals. Number one, There's been a great deal
Speaker 1: written and a lot by female panthers about sexism they
Speaker 1: encountered from these guys who were otherwise heroes of the
Speaker 1: black Panther movement, because again, there was a lot of
Speaker 1: misogyny in the Panthers. And then there's guys like Stokey Carmichael,
Speaker 1: right of Students for a Democratic Society, who had a
Speaker 1: quote that was something like, what is the purpose of
Speaker 1: like a woman in the sts? And he's like, well,
Speaker 1: it's for us to fuck right, Like that was again,
Speaker 1: it is still the sixties. There are still limits to
Speaker 1: what we are capable of thinking about. Yeah, even for him,
Speaker 1: he's like, man, like I'm still he's like white women
Speaker 1: are the devil. Yeah. And it's also like you can
Speaker 1: talk about misogyny within a lot of these left wing
Speaker 1: circles and black nationalist circles in the same way that like, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: if you went to fucking Woodstock about it around a
Speaker 1: bunch of open minded hippies and like we're a man
Speaker 1: and kissed another man, you would probably get beaten within
Speaker 1: an inch of your life because like they're still pretty homophobic,
Speaker 1: you know, like it was nineteen sixty nine. Yeah, optimistic miles.
Speaker 1: Um So, I want to quote next from a write
Speaker 1: up by The New Yorker. Quote, after the BSU learned
Speaker 1: that a member was dating a white woman, the student convened,
Speaker 1: The group convened, a mock trial, found him guilty, and
Speaker 1: broke his afro comas punishment. Thomas took the role more seriously,
Speaker 1: particularly after meeting Cathy Ambush, a black woman who whom
Speaker 1: he would marry in nineteen seventy one and divorce in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four. In a poem he called is You
Speaker 1: Is or is You Ain't a Breath, he set out
Speaker 1: the obligations of black men to black women. Even in
Speaker 1: that milieu. Kevin Moritta and Michael Fletcher reported in their
Speaker 1: two thousand seven biography Supreme Discomfort, Thomas's edgy race consciousness
Speaker 1: stood out when he saw an interracial couple strolling on campus.
Speaker 1: He'd loudly demand, do I see a black woman with
Speaker 1: a white man? How could that be? Until six, when
Speaker 1: Thomas met Virginia lamp who was white and who had
Speaker 1: become his second wife, he opposed interracial marriage and sex.
Speaker 1: What he's a real like there's a lot going on
Speaker 1: in this guy. Wow? Yeah, Wow. It makes me uh,
Speaker 1: it makes first of all, makes my brain hurt. I
Speaker 1: mean I think about how if he really was like
Speaker 1: trying to reverse like the loving decision. That's like him
Speaker 1: being like, no, I really feel this way and I'm
Speaker 1: going to live that, and I'm I'm regressing to this
Speaker 1: very bizarre intersection of my beliefs, and you're like, what
Speaker 1: where are you? You also see it's interesting because you
Speaker 1: can see, Number one, there's a lot of consistency in
Speaker 1: his belief towards women and what rights women should have,
Speaker 1: and also and a certain flexibility when he wants something
Speaker 1: right because he meets a white woman that he likes
Speaker 1: and he's like, Okay, well now I'm not against interracial marriage, right,
Speaker 1: not all white women. Yeah, exactly, wrote that rap song. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and this is I guess this is all
Speaker 1: This is number one, a very human thing. But also
Speaker 1: it's like a very conservative thing. Like you think about
Speaker 1: John McCain being like the only Republican being like, we
Speaker 1: shouldn't torture people. Why, Well, because I got tortured, so
Speaker 1: I know it's bad, all right, Why don't you brag
Speaker 1: about it? Yeah? Um, I don't know. People are complicated
Speaker 1: and generally hypocrites. Um, but you know who's not a hypocrite, Miles?
Speaker 1: You when you plug your products or pot whatever. Miles
Speaker 1: at the end of the episode say some things that
Speaker 1: people can find you at. Oh, you can find me
Speaker 1: just Miles of Gray on Twitter and Instagram. And if
Speaker 1: you like, uh, you know, I do a daily show
Speaker 1: about news and politics and stuff called Dailies. Like guys
Speaker 1: even listening to that every day? Or if you like
Speaker 1: trash reality TV because that's what I do to avoid
Speaker 1: thinking about our crumbling earth. Check me out on four
Speaker 1: twenty Day Fiance, where I get high and talk about
Speaker 1: ninety day fiance. Check out the alexand Miles on the
Speaker 1: Daily Sitgeist on Fiance. Play both at the same time
Speaker 1: from different devices. Um they sync up in a way
Speaker 1: that will reveal secrets to you about how to gain
Speaker 1: special powers exactly. And you can even listen to I
Speaker 1: have a third show because I can't stop talking, called
Speaker 1: Miles and Jack Got Mad boost These where I'm just
Speaker 1: talking about basketball, so a lot of you can get
Speaker 1: your serious or your frivolous. Have you seen that Adam
Speaker 1: Sandler basketball movie at Miles Hustle, Yeah, I thought I
Speaker 1: thought it was pretty good. I thought it was pretty good. Somebody.
Speaker 1: There's like a million scenes in that where, like, I know,
Speaker 1: a famous basketball player just walked on scene and I'm
Speaker 1: supposed to be like, oh my god, it's that guy.
Speaker 1: But I can't tell if they're actors are not, because
Speaker 1: to me, it's just like, Wow, everyone's very tall in
Speaker 1: this movie except James Goldstein is even has a cameo.
Speaker 1: I don't know who that is. That's how like, there's
Speaker 1: these like deep cut basketball people in it. I didn't
Speaker 1: realize the Spanish guy who's the second main character is
Speaker 1: an actual basketballer, a basketball's man exactly, thank you. Speaking
Speaker 1: of balls, the episodes over we did It Guys, boom