Before there was
Brett Kavanaugh, there was Clarence Thomas. Many who watched or participated in
the grotesque circus that was the Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation hearings
no doubt were unaware of, or had forgotten, the ugly spectacle that was Thomas’
confirmation hearings in 1991. As a black conservative, Thomas drew (and
continues to draw) the vicious wrath of racist Democrats who reserve a special enmity
for minorities that dare stray from the leftist plantation. Then as now, the
Democrats waged their politics of personal destruction, and then as now a good
man with impeccable legal credentials was demonized by an uncorroborated allegation
of sexual harassment shored up by the full force of the leftist smear machine.
A riveting new documentary revisits
the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill controversy as part of a look at the Supreme
Court Justice’s amazing life journey. Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His
Own Words, produced by Michael Pack of Manifold Productions, aired earlier
this week on PBS, of all places, and is still available here
for free through June 2. Don’t miss it. The producers interviewed Thomas and
his wife Virginia for over 30 hours about his life, the law, and his legacy. As
the movie’s website states,
the documentary
proceeds chronologically, combining Justice Thomas’ first person account with a
rich array of historical archive material, period and original music, personal
photos, and evocative recreations. Unscripted and without narration, the
documentary takes the viewer through this complex and often painful life,
dealing with race, faith, power, jurisprudence, and personal resilience.
In his rich,
sonorous voice, Thomas, the second black American to serve on the Court and, at
28 years, the longest-serving Justice, tells his life story beginning with his
birth in tiny Pin Point, Georgia in 1948. Descended from West African slaves
and born into rock-bottom poverty, Thomas later was raised by his grandparents
in Savannah. His stern grandfather, “the greatest man I have ever known,” believed
firmly in hard work and even more firmly in the education he never had, the
lack of which he blamed for his inability to rise above his station in life. He
impressed upon his grandchildren the importance of committing themselves to school.
He told Thomas and his brother that they would go every day, even when sick,
and even if they were dead he would take their bodies to school for three more
days “to make sure we weren’t faking.”
The rest of Clarence’s
story is just as compelling: his rejection of radicalism, his graduation from
Yale Law School, his ultimate drift toward support for Ronald Reagan (thus
becoming a target for Democrats and their “Uncle Tom” smears), his
grandfather’s death, his appointment as a Circuit Court judge under President
GWH Bush, and then, of course, his nomination as a Supreme Court Justice and
the relentless attacks that followed – even before Anita Hill’s
allegation of sexual harassment ignited a firestorm. By refusing to conform to
Democrat expectations, he was the wrong kind of black man and therefore had to
be destroyed, as Thomas says in the documentary.
The film devotes
a short, amusing segment to footage of Thomas’ questioning at the hands of a
young (but just as incomprehensible as today) Joe Biden, who grills Thomas
about natural law in a way that only Biden seems to understand (and it’s not
clear that even Biden did). “One of the things you have to do in hearings,”
Thomas tells his interviewer drily in the film, “is sit there looking
attentively at people you know have no idea what they’re talking about.”
Through the
nomination process over five days in September, 1991, Thomas increasingly and
painfully grew to understand that “the real impediment” to rising above racism
in America was “the modern-day liberal, because they have the power to
caricature you.” Just when it seemed he was in the clear, then came the
Kafka-esque experience of having to address Hill’s accusations. “It felt like
the demons were loose,” Thomas’ wife Virginia says in the film, something anyone
who witnessed the demonic behavior of protesters at the Brett Kavanaugh
hearings would understand. “They were coming to destroy my husband, not just
discredit him or disagree with his point of view.” She singles out for special condemnation
Sen. Ted Kennedy “and the things I knew he had done in his life” for sitting in
judgment over her beloved husband.
Finally given a
chance to respond, Thomas forcefully denied Hill’s allegations before the
Senate and the public, denouncing the degrading proceedings, in which then-Sen.
Biden is shown to have an especially lascivious interest:
This is a circus. It's a national
disgrace. And from my standpoint, as a black American, as far as I'm concerned
it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for
themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message
that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you. You
will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate
rather than hung from a tree.
“I would have
preferred an assassin’s bullet to this kind of living hell,” Thomas concluded emotionally
at the hearing. Of course, he survived the confirmation process but the vicious
media attacks, in which he has been demonized as everything from a “lawn jockey
for the right” to a not-so-closeted Klansman – “stereotypes draped in
sanctimony,” as he calls them – have not ended to this day. But Thomas still clings
to his grandfather’s words of wisdom: “You may give out, but never give up.”
If you have not read
Thomas’ 2007 must-read autobiography My Grandfather’s Son (selections
from which Thomas reads in the documentary) – or even if you have – don’t miss Created
Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words. At nearly two hours, it still
leaves you wanting more. It is a powerful look at the life and times and
thought of, not just a conservative icon, but an American hero.
From FrontPage Mag, 5/21/20
