What do Ketanji Brown Jackson and Clarence Thomas talk about?

By Percival Duke

I have absolutely no idea. But as an American  and a man of color, I would give almost anything to be a fly on that wall.

I imagine Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson sitting across from Justice Clarence Thomas in his chambers, her face betraying at least some of what she is thinking, while he slowly sips some expensive-ass whiskey given to him by one of his billionaire friends. 

“Clarence,” she says, “I hope you remember that you are not white.” He takes another sip. “And if you don’t, then you need to take a long look in the mirror.”

Of course, I have no idea whether they have ever had such a conversation. Probably not. I suspect Supreme Court justices are considerably more civilized with one another than I would be. But I cannot stop wondering what they do talk about. How could I?

Two Black Americans. Two Supreme Court justices. Two people who reached one of the most powerful rooms in the world carrying the history of the same country on their skin — and who seem, again and again, to look at that history and see two completely different Americas.

I should admit my bias immediately. I am a Ketanji Brown Jackson fan. I admire her composure. I admire the work she did to get where she is. I admire her intelligence, her command of the law, and the fact that when I watch her, I never get the impression that she has forgotten who she is or how extraordinary it is that a Black woman is finally sitting in that chair. And I love her smile. It is real—as real as the anger I see when she has to confront injustice within the court.

Clarence Thomas? I have never trusted him.

I was 26 years old and already living in Europe when Anita Hill testified during his confirmation hearings in 1991. I watched from here in Europe as my mother watched at home in Dallas. She and I shared something besides being people of color: we were both autistic, and both extraordinarily sensitive to what we believed were lies. We watched people more than we listened to them. Their faces. Their movements. The spaces between their words.

I thought Thomas was lying his ass off. My mother was less diplomatic on the phone afterward: “That mother- – – – -r did it,” she screamed.

More than three decades later, I still sometimes think about Anita Hill. What must it be like to have told the world what happened to you, to have endured what she has had to endure for telling it, and then spend the next 35 years watching that man become one of the most powerful people in America? How must it feel simply to hear his name? Yet, I suppose the Epstein survivors know this well. … I digress. It happens.

Thomas was confirmed by the Senate 52–48. There was no jubilation. No eruption of joy. No Black women raising their hands toward heaven. No little Black children looking at television screens and suddenly seeing themselves somewhere they had rarely existed before.

When Brown Jackson was confirmed, I watched something entirely different. People celebrated. Black people celebrated. Women celebrated. Liberals celebrated. People here in Europe celebrated.

Yes, she was the first Black woman confirmed to the Supreme Court, and that alone was historic. But I have always suspected it was something more than that. People felt something about her. They felt represented. They felt that someone had entered that room who understood that getting through the door did not mean everyone else suddenly had equal access to it. Yet she entered it for THEM, and they knew it.

And sometimes I wonder whether Thomas watched all that jubilation. Did he watch Black women cry? Did he watch little Black girls staring at television screens? Did he watch people thousands of miles away celebrating her arrival? And did he ever wonder: Why didn’t they celebrate me like that?

I do not know. That is the problem with this entire piece. I have far more questions than answers.

How does a Black man born into segregation, raised in poverty, who experienced racism himself, reach the Supreme Court and become Clarence Thomas? How does a man whose own journey through America was made possible, at least in part, by generations of Black Americans fighting to open doors, arrive at one of the most powerful doors in the country and appear so willing to slam it behind him?

 “How does a man whose own journey through America was made possible, at least in part, by generations of Black Americans fighting to open doors, arrive at one of the most powerful doors in the country and appear so willing to slam it behind him?”

Thomas joined the majority that ended race-conscious admissions in American universities. Jackson dissented. Thomas dissented in a major case protecting Black voting power under the Voting Rights Act. Jackson stood on the other side. Thomas joined the majority granting presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts. Jackson dissented.

Again and again, they sit inside the same building, hear the same arguments, read the same Constitution, carry the history of the same country — and arrive somewhere completely different. What the hell do they say to each other afterward?

I imagine another conversation. Perhaps Jackson walks into Thomas’s chambers after one of those decisions and drops the opinion onto his desk.

“Have you actually read this?”

“Of course I have.”

“No, Clarence. I mean have you read it?”

Perhaps he stares at her. Perhaps she stares back. Perhaps Thurgood Marshall and Shirley Chisholm are turning in their graves, watching this s- -t and wondering what the hell happened.

Because that is what I cannot get past. I am Black. I am Native American. I am LGBTQ. I am autistic. I have spent more than 30 years living outside the United States and looking back at a country I don’t recognize at all anymore.

I understand that sharing an identity does not require sharing a political ideology. Thomas does not have to be liberal because he is Black. He does not have to agree with me. He does not have to agree with Jackson.

But does he owe Black America anything?

I believe he does. Not obedience. Not political allegiance. He owes honesty. Memory. Recognition.

Thomas was not born into an America that was waiting to welcome a Black boy from Georgia onto the Supreme Court. People fought to make his journey possible. People marched. People were beaten. People were jailed. People were killed. Lawyers fought cases they were told they could never win. Black families sent children into schools where they were hated. Black citizens stood in lines to vote while knowing there could be consequences for doing so.

And somehow, Thomas reached the highest court in the country. He was lucky. He was obviously intelligent. He worked. But millions of other Black Americans have worked just as hard and never reached anything resembling the life he has lived.

Does he remember that? Does he believe everyone who failed simply did not try hard enough? Does he look at the Black community he came from and feel any obligation to ensure that the next brilliant Black child has at least the same chance he had? Or did he reach the room and convince himself that reaching it proved the room had always been open?

I imagine Jackson sitting across from him again. This time she is not angry. She is tired.

“Clarence, do you remember anything about where you came from?”

He says nothing. Sips his ridiculously expensive whiskey.

“Do you remember who helped you get here?”

Still nothing.

Perhaps that is unfair. Perhaps Clarence Thomas has perfectly coherent answers to every one of these questions. Perhaps he genuinely believes that his decisions make America freer. Perhaps he believes history should have no bearing on how the law operates today. Perhaps he believes Black Americans are best served by a country that refuses to see the racial lines drawn long before any of us were born.

But then I look at America. I look at attacks on voting rights. I look at the erosion of LGBTQ protections. I look at the extraordinary expansion of presidential power. I look at wealthy people enjoying access to a Supreme Court justice that ordinary Americans could never dream of having. And I remain unconvinced that he cares about anything other than himself. I remain shocked. I remain angry.

Because my problem with Clarence Thomas is not simply that I disagree with him. I do not trust him. I never have.

And perhaps the strangest part is that I do not look at Ketanji Brown Jackson and see someone who owes me agreement either. But if I ever had the extraordinary opportunity to sit across from her, I know what I would ask.

I would ask her what I could do. What can I do, as a Black and Native American man, to help my people without forgetting everyone else? What can I do for women? For LGBTQ people? For immigrants? For people whose skin, language, religion, bodies or lives make them targets? How do those of us who have been fortunate enough to find a platform use it to hold the door open for someone else?

I suspect she might tell me to continue writing. As if I ever intended to stop before the day I die.

I know exactly what I would ask Clarence Thomas. And after all these years, all the anger, all the decisions, all the questions, I do not think I would ask him about affirmative action. Or voting rights. Or presidential immunity for a criminal. Or Anita Hill. Or billionaire friends.

I think I would simply look at him. A Black man looking at another Black man. And ask the question I suspect millions of Black Americans, white liberals, women, LGBTQ Americans and anyone else still trying to understand the human being behind the power might want answered.

Clarence—what the f- -k happened to you?

The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the writer and not necessarily those of the AFRO.