When Justice Clarence Thomas sat down to be interviewed in 2017 for the documentary Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in his own Words, the vicious attacks from the pro-abortion opponents from his titanic confirmation battle were still fresh in his mind. In the film, Thomas stated, “You really didn’t matter, and your life didn’t matter, what mattered was what they wanted, and what they wanted was this particular issue.”
In our new book, Justice Thomas also added, “Regardless of what I had done with my life, where I had been, where I had lived, it was all canceled out, unless I agreed two plus two equals five. You have to say it. And that makes it true. Because they want it to be true.”
Thomas has refused to say five his entire life, and thus, the Left has attacked Thomas for the past 40 years with the most vile and racist attacks in modern times. His perseverance and commitment to principle are courageous and a model for those who do not want to bow to the mob.
Thomas was born into abject poverty in 1948 in the segregated Deep South in Pin Point, Georgia, but at age 7, he went to live with his grandparents in Savannah. His grandfather, who had a total of nine months of education but ran his own fuel oil business, taught Thomas the value of hard work and perseverance. “Old Man Can’t is Dead, I helped bury him,” was one of his grandfather’s sayings.
His grandfather enrolled Clarence in St. Benedict’s, the segregated Catholic school for black people and run by the Franciscan nuns, most of whom came from Ireland. They were called the “n***** nuns,” but, as Thomas said in the interview, “They were on our side from day one. They never backed down when it came to us. And I think they wore it as a badge of honor.”
Thomas talked of how his nuns demanded much of them to get them ready for the harsh world. He recounted how many years later, he sat with Sister Virgilius, one of his nuns, and “thanked her for teaching me and making me believe that we could learn, and not letting me slip into victim status.”
Thomas turned away from his grandfather’s teaching when he went off to college and embraced black nationalism, explaining that “racism and race explained everything.” But Thomas added, “There’s a strange thing about anger. It is at once empowering, you feel like Superman, you can take on the whole world. But it also flames out pretty fast. It’s self-destructive.”
In 2017 and 2018, Justice Thomas sat down with Michael Pack for more than 25 hours of interviews over six days, discussing his remarkable journey and much more. The two-hour film, Created Equal, could only capture a small portion of what Thomas had to say.
When Pack noted the pro-abortion advocates did not want Roe overturned, Thomas replied, “Well, perhaps they wanted assurances, which is precisely what a judge shouldn’t be doing. I don’t think they believe that a judge is to be impartial.”
In turning to his views on stare decisis, Thomas was dismissive that this principle should require him to affirm erroneous Supreme Court decisions: “I fought this back when I was in school: Blacks were supposed to all have Afros, so I refused to have an Afro. Who came up with that? …. Why do I want to do what everybody says I ought to do? So I didn’t do it, and it’s the same thing now. We do it with notions like stare decisis. Oh, it has been decided, or you know, conventional wisdom is this. Well, goodbye. I’ll think on my own.”
On the Left’s continual attacks on him because of his conservative views, Thomas simply says, “For minorities, you’re not supposed to have certain thoughts. There were these set opinions that were supposed to be universal among certain groups, and to criticize these policies, particularly their effects, you were a bad person. Then license is given to others to attack you in whatever way they want to. … The criticism, as a result, has its effect. It creates a fear of being honest.”
Thomas added, “We can actually sit here and have a conversation about a perception of what I’m supposed to think because I’m black and what I actually think as a reasoning human being. It’s the most absurd thing in the world.”
Justice Thomas, who began to turn back to his grandfather’s values and principles after attending a riot at Harvard, has relied on his grandfather’s advice when Thomas asked him what he should do when he was under constant attack during his time in the Reagan administration: “You have to stand up for what you believe in.”
Near the end of the series of interviews, Thomas notes, “I keep a bust of my grandfather that my wife had made, over me and I’ve done since I’ve been at the court. One of my objectives is always to be able to say to him, ‘I lived up to my oath and did my best.’ And just the idea that he would say, ‘It’s a job well done. You do things the right way.’”
In his 30 years on the Supreme Court, Thomas has lived up to his grandfather’s teachings and principles and remained fiercely independent. He truly has done things the right way.
Mark Paoletta and Michael Pack are co-editors of the forthcoming book Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words, taken from more than 25 hours of interviews with Justice Thomas conducted for the documentary of the same name. Pack produced and directed that film, as well as over 15 other nationally broadcast documentaries. Paoletta is an attorney and worked on Justice Thomas’s confirmation.
