0:00

We made USAA insurance for

0:02

veterans like James. When he found out how

0:04

much USAA was helping members save,

0:06

he said, It's time to switch. We'll help you

0:08

find the right coverage at the right price. USAA,

0:12

what you're made of, we're made for. Restrictions

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apply.

0:17

Hey listeners, it's Joel Anderson, host

0:20

of Slow Burn Becoming Justice Thomas. I'm

0:22

here with a couple of announcements and a special

0:25

conversation. So in

0:27

case you missed it, just a week after our

0:29

last episode, the Supreme Court voted

0:31

to eliminate race-based admissions in higher

0:34

education. Clarence Thomas was part

0:36

of the majority in the 6-3 ruling and

0:38

wrote a concurrence attacking such admissions programs.

0:41

He described them as rudderless, race-based

0:43

preferences designed to ensure a

0:45

particular racial mix. If

0:47

you listen to our season, you know that Justice

0:50

Thomas benefited from affirmative action at

0:52

a few key moments in his career, yet

0:54

was convinced that it held him back. Now

0:56

that the decision is out, there's so much

0:58

more to talk about, which is why we're hosting

1:01

a live event later this month in Washington,

1:03

D.C. On Tuesday,

1:05

July 25th, I'll be joined by special

1:08

guests, including Thomas' old

1:10

college friend, Eddie Jenkins, legal

1:12

scholar and MSNBC commentator, Melissa

1:15

Murray, and at least one senator from

1:17

the Judiciary Committee. And I'll be dishing

1:19

out a few more juicy stories that we couldn't

1:21

fit in the series. There'll be music,

1:24

drinks, and great conversation. So if

1:26

you're in D.C. on Tuesday, July 25th,

1:28

please come join us. Just go to slate.com

1:31

slash slowburn live. Again,

1:34

that's slate.com slash

1:36

slowburn live. Slate Plus members

1:38

get a special discount. And

1:42

listen, if you can't make the live show, the

1:44

next best thing might be this interview I did with

1:46

Dahlia Lithwick, host of Slate's Amicus

1:49

podcast. Amicus is Slate's

1:51

podcast all about the Supreme Court.

1:53

In this episode, I talk a lot more

1:56

about how I reported this season of Slowburn,

1:58

Clarence Thomas' anger... issues and

2:00

what his mom really thinks of Jenny Thomas. I

2:03

think you'll enjoy it. So without further

2:05

ado, here's host Dalia Lithwick.

2:08

So Joel, first and foremost,

2:10

thank you for being with us.

2:13

Oh, absolutely. My pleasure. Thanks for having me on Dalia.

2:16

I guess I just have a bajillion

2:18

questions having listened to the

2:20

show, but the one that

2:22

I am sort of stuck

2:25

in, the thing that is so

2:27

interesting to me, as

2:29

somebody who, you know, I read Justice

2:31

Thomas's autobiography, I

2:34

sort of

2:35

probably know as much of

2:37

this material as a lot of people. And

2:40

yet I'm just so struck

2:42

by this sort of instability of his

2:45

identity. You know, the idea that

2:47

this is somebody who, you know, within

2:50

the span of just like a very short

2:52

handful of years went from plans to be a priest

2:55

at seminary to embracing deeply a black

2:57

nationalism to pinging

3:03

from that to reverence from

3:06

Thomas Soel and Ayn Rand.

3:08

And it just feels to me

3:11

like if I could knit together the whole

3:13

narrative of the person that

3:16

you offer Joel is just somebody who's

3:18

looking for a home. And he's

3:20

so famished for home

3:23

that he just keeps landing in these situations that

3:26

are like almost like parodies of,

3:29

you know, political movements

3:31

and intellectual movements.

3:33

Yeah. He's unmoored. When this all

3:36

got started, I kept referring to him

3:38

as a person without people.

3:40

And that's how it always

3:42

kind of felt to me, especially like as a

3:44

child, he had this very difficult

3:46

upbringing. There was not a lot of

3:49

affection or love that was shown toward him.

3:51

And so you can imagine in talking

3:53

with people that knew him, that he was desirous

3:56

of having people that appreciated him, people

3:58

that wanted to be around him. He wanted. friends. And

4:01

so it makes sense that, especially

4:03

as a child, that you do the thing that

4:05

your parents or your guardians want

4:07

you to do. So that was where the priesthood thing

4:10

comes in. Well, then he, that doesn't

4:12

work out. He goes to school. He's in

4:14

the late sixties, this time of tremendous

4:17

social upheaval. And what's

4:19

cooler than being, if you're a young

4:21

black man, what's cooler than being a black panther

4:24

at that time and the way that they talked and the way that

4:26

they dress. And that is a way to draw people toward

4:28

you. Well, that doesn't work out. He wants

4:31

to decide I want to go, you know, be straight and narrow.

4:33

And then he finds himself in company

4:36

with all of these Republicans who not only

4:38

want to associate

4:40

with him, but they also want to pay him. They also want

4:42

to elevate him. They want to give him opportunities.

4:45

And you could see how easily somebody that

4:47

is just looking for somebody to welcome him

4:49

in could be taken with that. And you

4:51

know, it, the GOP pipeline

4:53

today and certainly 40 years ago,

4:56

it's very seductive. There's a lot of money behind

4:58

it if you're the right guy. And so yeah,

5:00

I think he kind of settled on an identity, which

5:02

is not to say that he's not sincere in his beliefs,

5:04

but certainly the way into that GOP

5:07

machine was that they wanted him, they

5:09

recruited him and they cultivated him.

5:11

One of the through lines

5:13

through all of the episodes is

5:15

this laughter, this like great

5:18

booming laugh. And you

5:21

have like several people actually

5:23

try to do not

5:26

great impressions of it. It's certainly

5:28

something, you know, as somebody who watched

5:31

him on the court, it's so arresting.

5:34

And I think Lillian McEwen tells you

5:36

it's not even real. Like she thinks

5:38

it's put on former girlfriend

5:41

who really, really feels

5:44

as though by the end

5:46

when he becomes a sort of conservative

5:48

legal movement superstar, he's entirely,

5:51

I think her word is masked. But

5:53

I want you to tell me about

5:55

this interplay between this huge

5:58

laughter and this sort of like. like,

6:00

Bon Ami, you know, Hale Fellow,

6:03

Well Met, like, I love life,

6:05

Clarence Thomas. And then there's this kind

6:08

of counter programming

6:10

about his anger, his anger, his anger,

6:13

you know, most notably at his

6:15

confirmation hearing where he just

6:18

tears a strip out of the Senate. Can

6:21

you help me think about,

6:23

again, it's just such an extreme

6:26

set of, you know, performed

6:29

identities.

6:29

Is he a rage

6:32

monster or is he just like

6:34

the cuddliest, warmest, I

6:37

love my life, you know, gregarious

6:40

guy?

6:41

I mean, it's tough and I don't want to have to choose because

6:44

I actually think he's both. And

6:46

you know, as somebody that as a Supreme Court expert,

6:48

the people that know him well and has

6:51

spent time away from him, you know, out

6:53

of the robes, away from the bench, say that

6:55

he is the warmest, nicest,

6:57

kindest, funniest person that

7:00

they've met. There's a guy, it's actually funny,

7:02

in the middle of the podcast being released

7:04

last month, somebody reached out

7:06

to me via Facebook and said, I wrote

7:09

a letter to Clarence Thomas criticizing him for

7:11

his legal

7:11

opinions. And he wrote

7:13

back to me

7:15

and welcomed me to his chambers and

7:17

then helped me with my law school

7:19

references. And he was very nice. And

7:21

he's been very helpful to me in my career.

7:24

I'm not a Republican, but that's just who he is.

7:26

And I'm like, man, he shows

7:28

that side to a lot of people. But I think the

7:30

people that he presumes are enemies

7:33

or critics. That's where you get all the anger.

7:35

And I think that anger like goes

7:37

all the way back to his youth. Like I think that

7:39

anger is sincere. And it's like it's been honed

7:42

over the years and he's figured out the people that

7:44

he needs to deploy it against. But I really do

7:46

think that it's both that he's a very fun

7:48

guy that he may indeed like

7:51

hanging out in Walmart parking lots and

7:53

hanging and laughing and drinking beer with

7:55

Harlan Crow, but also think that he has

7:58

very sincere resentment of the people. that

8:00

have, in his mind, have made his life

8:02

difficult. We can say a lot of things about

8:04

Clarence Thomas. I do believe that he's

8:06

had a difficult life and that he has been

8:09

deeply wounded by the people that don't like him, that

8:11

don't respond to this warm part of

8:13

him.

8:13

So that actually leads me to another

8:16

line that was

8:18

really arresting for me. I think

8:20

in your episode three, you

8:23

know, he says about

8:25

eventually finding, you know, what you're

8:27

describing as his people, his home

8:30

in the, you know, sort of Reagan,

8:33

extreme conservative legal

8:36

movement. And he has this line where he

8:38

says, you know, at least they never smile

8:40

at me. I know exactly what I'm getting.

8:43

That he prefers the

8:46

directness, you know, even when he doesn't agree

8:48

with Reagan policies. But like

8:51

they're direct. And what he doesn't

8:53

like is falsity.

8:55

And that there's a way in which,

8:59

in the end, Joel, he kind of throws in his lot

9:01

with the people who instead

9:04

of in his view, like nodding and winking

9:07

about race and racism are just

9:10

straight up, you know, we're

9:13

going to tolerate you. Some of us

9:15

are super racist. You are

9:17

an instrumental part of the solution for

9:19

us. And he prefers that

9:22

to what he sees as falsity.

9:24

Oh, absolutely. You know what? Sincerely

9:27

to his grandfather. His grandfather,

9:30

probably by most likes, like politically,

9:32

he's a Democrat, right? Or, you

9:35

know, what you might consider mainstream black

9:37

liberal in that time. But

9:39

he has a lot of conservative beliefs. And

9:42

the other piece of this is that his grandfather

9:44

was extremely cruel to him. Just very

9:47

mean. But one example, and

9:49

it didn't make it into the podcast, is that when

9:51

his grandfather was making deliveries, his grandfather

9:54

owned his own business where he delivers fuel, coal,

9:57

oil, wood to black families

9:59

across Savannah.

9:59

and they would have to make these deliveries

10:02

early in the morning in the very cold. And his

10:04

grandfather wouldn't even allow him or his brother

10:06

to wear gloves. He said it was better if your hands

10:08

froze because they would callus and eventually

10:11

they would get used to it. And I think that's in some ways

10:13

sort of an analogy that he

10:15

thinks that the people that treat you the worst are

10:18

the people that are the least complimentary

10:20

of you, are the people that are telling you the truth. Like

10:22

he thinks that harshness is a form

10:25

of love or affection. And so you can

10:27

see how he could look at these Republicans who

10:30

a lot of people may say that they're racist, right? And he

10:32

may look at these people and say, well, you know what? At

10:34

least they're being straight up with me. Like I know that there

10:36

are liberals on the Democratic side of the aisle,

10:38

the liberal side of the aisle, but they're gonna pretend.

10:41

At least I know what I'm getting here. It reminds

10:43

me of my grandfather and that is a form of love. He's

10:46

even said that. Like my grandfather told me the

10:48

truth. And that's what he thinks about Republicans.

10:51

So you could easily see how somebody might find

10:53

a home with those people because that's what

10:55

he was used to. That's actually the way that he was raised.

10:58

So now I just have to ask you the gossipy

11:00

piece, which is like, I need you to narrate

11:02

for me meeting Clarence Thomas'

11:05

mom, which happens

11:07

before the Harlan Crow

11:10

news explodes that,

11:13

you know, Harlan Crow has purchased the house

11:15

in which his mom lives.

11:18

And I just like,

11:20

it's so amazing to

11:23

hear that part of it where

11:25

you clearly just are having this

11:28

deep, connected moment with her. And

11:30

I wonder if you could just tell our

11:32

listeners what, given

11:34

what you had thought in your head, Clarence

11:37

Thomas was all about, what that

11:39

brought to the table and what

11:42

parts of it, if any, surprised you?

11:45

Well, I mean, bottom

11:46

line, the biggest surprises that I got in the house

11:48

in the first place, right? I

11:50

don't know what the other mothers of

11:52

the Supreme Court justices are like or anything. I

11:55

doubt sincerely that you can

11:57

get into their home.

11:59

And so,

11:59

So I'm walking up to the front

12:02

door just totally expecting to knock on the door to

12:04

just get back in my car and go back away. But

12:07

I think it's sort of a testament. I think some of this is

12:09

race, class, all that other stuff. Clarence

12:12

Thomas is not a man of a lot of means.

12:14

Like he didn't grow up with money. His family doesn't have a

12:16

lot of money. And so they live in this very

12:19

modest, very regular home. And

12:21

as I'm walking there, I'm like, isn't it like,

12:23

you know, secret service? Is somebody gonna stop

12:25

me from doing this? I'm like, surely

12:28

I'm not gonna get close. And

12:30

so I get into the home and

12:32

they're just so warm. And

12:34

I think that

12:35

it really is just a surprise. I can't imagine that

12:37

very many people have ever knocked on that door or

12:39

even thought to do it. And so when I

12:41

got in there and I didn't want to lie about

12:43

who I was, you know, I thought that that might get

12:45

me in more trouble. And yeah, his

12:48

grandmother was just so warm. She reminded

12:50

me of a lot of people that I knew growing up.

12:53

You know, I

12:54

don't know how close

12:56

Clarence is to his mother. I don't get the

12:58

sense, like there was a point in our interview,

13:00

we're looking at the wall of pictures in their home

13:03

and she's pointing to her kids. And she

13:05

says, Myers, that was my boy. Myers

13:08

is his younger brother who died in 2003, I

13:11

think of a heart attack. And she

13:13

was very close to him. I don't get the sense that

13:15

she's as close to Clarence. And so she's very

13:18

unguarded. She's just talking about this. She talked

13:20

about how she was closer to

13:23

his first wife, Kathy Ambush, as opposed

13:25

to Jenny Thomas, like that sort of stuff.

13:27

There's actually another funny piece

13:29

of this is that I'm sitting in the den

13:31

with his grandmother. She's got

13:33

her recliner on one side. She's got this little end table

13:36

right next to her. And there's three pictures

13:38

on there. One of them is of Clarence.

13:40

I can't remember what the other one was. And

13:42

the other one was of Kathy.

13:44

And I'm like, wow, like

13:47

you're okay? She's like, yeah, Kathy, I talked to her

13:49

pretty regularly. She's a sweetheart. I

13:52

love her. I said, what about Jenny?

13:54

She said, I

13:55

don't know her that well. Like, I could

13:58

call her. She might not do the things I want. But

14:00

just that sort of unguardedness with

14:03

me was just shocking. I don't

14:05

know if it comes through with the interviews, but I

14:07

was over and over

14:09

again, I'm just surprised that she's making these revelations.

14:12

Again, she's a 94-year-old woman, right? But

14:15

still, I was surprised, and I think

14:17

that it was just sort of the fact that nobody has ever

14:19

come probably that often to show up at their house to

14:21

ask questions about her son. I just think that we

14:23

were all sort of taken aback by the moment, and we were

14:25

able to sort of settle in and get to know each other

14:28

really easily.

14:29

You know, it's so clear that you

14:31

see each other in a really deep way.

14:34

That's what comes across. Like,

14:36

it's incredibly powerful,

14:39

and it's such

14:41

an amazing, arresting moment

14:43

to have to really reckon with

14:46

how much she loves him and how proud she is

14:49

and how complicated it is, and your presence

14:51

in there is a proxy

14:54

for all of us. It's glorious. Time

14:57

now for a short break. And

14:59

more with Joel Anderson on becoming

15:02

Justice Thomas. I do think I

15:04

need to ask you, you know, since the arc

15:07

of the podcast and

15:09

obviously the affirmative action decision

15:12

on which the term ends,

15:15

is this arc of, you

15:18

know, and you put it, I think, the same

15:20

way really elegantly, Joel, which is

15:22

it's kind of your arc too, you know, that

15:25

there are a series of events where

15:27

he clearly benefited

15:29

from affirmative action. He insisted

15:31

he didn't. It had nothing to do with

15:34

getting into Yale Law School. It had nothing to do

15:37

with his confirmation to the DC

15:40

Circuit or the Supreme Court. And

15:42

how confounding it is

15:45

for him that as the beneficiary of

15:47

that over and over and over, each

15:49

instance of it makes him feel smaller

15:52

and more full of kind

15:54

of

15:55

shame and judgment by the world

15:57

and less and less.

15:59

judged on the merits. And I guess

16:02

that's kind of the problem you wanted

16:04

to tackle with the show. And it's something

16:07

that you toggle into and out of your

16:09

own reckoning with that. It's

16:12

awfully hard, Joel, not to hear

16:16

this entire show as just

16:18

a psychic wound that's being played

16:20

out. Like, on the biggest national

16:23

scale, every single

16:25

kid who might have been the beneficiary

16:28

of race-based affirmative action

16:29

loses that opportunity because Clarence

16:32

Thomas found it wounding. Yeah,

16:36

and it really starts,

16:38

it seems to me, at Yale Law School. I think

16:40

there was a time in his life when he

16:42

can

16:43

sort of say to himself,

16:45

I was an exceptional student. Not

16:47

many people in Savannah, Georgia, where he's

16:49

from, have ever had the academic

16:52

record that I had. I'm able to go off to seminary

16:54

and I do very well there. I go to Holy Cross.

16:57

And he gets in via sort

16:59

of an affirmative action program, but it's not explicitly

17:02

labeled as such. It's just sort of, they can

17:04

just say, I'm sort of a new program to welcome in

17:06

an underrepresented class of people. Maybe we can

17:08

just tap into this talent pool. It's not like when he gets

17:11

to Yale in 1971 and there is an explicit

17:14

program, a quota system even,

17:17

to bring in black and underrepresented

17:19

minority students. So when he

17:21

gets there and people say, hey, look, you're only

17:23

here because of that program, it totally

17:25

erases every academic accomplishment

17:28

he ever had before. And that really wounds

17:30

him. And you asked me about my piece

17:32

of this. I think that a lot

17:34

of black

17:38

students, black professionals who

17:40

come through the system, especially

17:42

in majority white spaces, you

17:44

deal with that very early on. That people, especially

17:46

like the eighties, nineties, when this is very

17:49

like a hotly debated issue,

17:51

that people are saying to me and

17:53

other people like me, you don't belong

17:55

here. Like you wouldn't have gotten here but for that.

17:57

And there's a couple of ways to go to that. One,

18:00

you could be like me, which you're like, it does hurt

18:02

a little bit, right? You're like, I'm

18:05

pretty good, I think I'm smart, I think I'm capable,

18:07

maybe I didn't get in through

18:10

all the other pathways, but I'm here,

18:12

I've excelled, I belong here, and no

18:15

matter what I do, you're never gonna

18:17

think I'm qualified. I mean, yeah, actually it's kinda funny, because I

18:19

just remember when Barack Obama was president, and

18:22

I just, he felt to

18:24

me like a brilliant person. You can think whatever

18:26

you wanna think of him as a president, right, and his

18:28

policies, whatever, but in terms of his mind,

18:31

his accomplishments, he seemed like

18:33

a very brilliant person.

18:35

I always say he could probably burn the eyebrows off your

18:37

face with his intelligence, right? And

18:40

people still thought that he wasn't smart, that he was

18:42

not qualified, that he wasn't capable, and I'm

18:44

like, well, if they can feel that way about a guy

18:46

like that, well then, who am I?

18:48

You know, so

18:50

it will never matter what I do, never matter what I accomplish,

18:53

I'm just gonna head, and I'm gonna take advantage of these

18:55

opportunities and succeed no matter what.

18:58

On the other hand, somebody like Clarence Thomas, and

19:00

he mentions it even in his concurrence,

19:04

he founded the meaning, right? He

19:06

finds this whole thing embarrassing,

19:09

and it totally makes

19:11

him question himself in a way. And

19:14

instead of getting mad at the people that

19:16

feel that way about him, he's taken

19:19

that opportunity to get mad at people

19:21

who have benefited similarly, and he just thinks

19:23

that I was actually special, you

19:25

all got in because of preferences. And

19:28

there are a lot of people like that, Clarence Thomas is certainly

19:30

not alone, but he chose,

19:32

among black people, I think, a fairly predictable

19:34

pathway. It's one of two, but

19:37

not very many offers, but he went

19:39

that direction, and Clarence Thomas

19:41

chose that second pathway, and it's

19:43

obviously gonna affect a lot of other people,

19:45

but he doesn't care about that, because he's saying, I'm

19:48

helping you, actually. I'm helping you

19:50

from suffering the slings and arrows that I suffered

19:52

through our college and going forward. So you

19:55

may not thank me for it now, but you'll thank me for

19:57

it later.

19:58

Which is his grandfather.

19:59

Right, and the gloves. I

20:03

have to do this tough love so

20:05

that you can someday stand on your own feet in

20:07

a world that is hopelessly infected

20:10

by racism. Pain,

20:11

cruelty is love in

20:13

that household, yeah. The other thing

20:15

that is unavoidable, again,

20:17

counter-programming Clarence Thomas

20:20

is just psychic pain at

20:22

this deep dignitary

20:24

injury, which is affirmative

20:27

action,

20:28

is the women in this podcast who

20:31

are narrating

20:33

their own pain and

20:35

narrating as black

20:38

women, largely, a story that's really

20:40

different from the guys who

20:42

are like, he's awesome, he's amazing, get

20:45

a load of the outfit he was wearing, oh

20:47

my God, this is what he used to do

20:50

on the Holy Cross campus in student

20:53

debate. And then you have

20:55

this really

20:56

interesting, again,

20:59

almost musical counterpoint,

21:01

which is these women who are just saying,

21:04

this is actually my pain, this is what

21:07

happened. And you frame it

21:09

really beautifully as, these

21:12

are the voices we didn't hear at the confirmation

21:14

hearing,

21:15

but it is an amazing

21:18

kind of exploding of

21:20

the idea that there is only one

21:22

person in pain in this conversation.

21:25

Yeah, Clarence

21:27

Thomas feels victimized in

21:29

a way that supersedes anybody else that

21:31

may have come across this path. And

21:33

I've tried to think about, where does this,

21:36

because it certainly seems that the conflict here

21:38

is not just women, it's with black women. And

21:41

a lot of people say, well, this goes back

21:43

to his mother who sort

21:45

of gave him up for his grandparents, and

21:47

he has a lot more respect for his grandparents than

21:49

he does his mother, right? They

21:52

were capable, they were strong, they thrived

21:54

in spite of this discrimination. They

21:56

showed me the way.

21:58

Whereas this woman, she crumbled.

21:59

under the pressure of discrimination,

22:03

racism, and she had to give me up. My

22:05

grandfather was the one that was able to do it. And I feel like

22:07

this resentment of black women

22:09

sort of bubbled, comes up over and over

22:12

again throughout his life. And he comes across

22:14

all these like talented black

22:16

attorneys in DC in the 80s. Like we talked

22:18

to Sakari Hardnet, who worked for him at the EEOC.

22:21

Very accomplished civil rights attorney in our own right.

22:23

His ex-girlfriend, Lillian McEwen, who

22:26

became some sort of a judge. All

22:28

these women who would just say,

22:29

you know what?

22:31

I had my own trials to get here,

22:33

but he couldn't recognize that

22:35

and didn't see that. And I really just think that's because

22:38

he doesn't understand women very much. And it even

22:40

goes beyond that. I think that he's a sexist. That

22:42

he fundamentally doesn't have respect for

22:45

the challenges that women has. He can't see that his

22:47

grandfather may have had opportunities and the ability

22:50

to go out and seek out his own professional opportunities

22:52

in a way that his mother may not have been. His

22:55

mother was abandoned by her husband. His

22:57

grandfather would not help his mother. It's

22:59

not like there were all these other professional avenues

23:02

available to her in the 1950s and 1940s. He

23:05

doesn't recognize that pain, that

23:08

struggle. And it's a consistent theme throughout

23:10

his life. And so yes, by the time you

23:12

get to when he is in a position

23:14

of power at the EEOC, or when he's a judge

23:17

and he's in charge of all these other women, he's just like,

23:19

look, you all serve me. I'm the great man

23:21

here. You have no idea

23:24

what I went through without any regard

23:26

or any thought about what their own challenges

23:28

may have been or the challenges he puts in their way

23:31

himself.

23:31

It's funny, Joel, I was reminded,

23:34

when you made that point, both about his mom and

23:36

his sister and his willingness to

23:38

just devalue that they didn't

23:40

start life at the same advantages,

23:43

relative advantages with

23:45

the caveat that he really, really

23:47

had a very difficult and painful

23:49

childhood. But that I was

23:52

reminded of interviewing Anita

23:54

Hill many years ago who said,

23:58

in that confirmation process,

23:59

he got race, I was left with gender.

24:02

And that is less. It

24:04

is less.

24:06

Yeah, no, that's right. That's absolutely right.

24:08

And it's actually just really insidious

24:11

because there's this belief, certainly

24:13

among a certain kind of a man, that

24:16

she wielded, that she was trying

24:18

to attack a black man, like an

24:20

ascendant black man, that she was a

24:22

tool of these white liberals to

24:25

take him down. Like without total regard,

24:28

it's not just Clarence Thomas, that there's all these other

24:30

friends and Republican supporters behind him that

24:32

say, oh, I mean, she was used.

24:35

Like maybe we don't hate her, maybe she didn't

24:37

do anything wrong, but she was used. They have no

24:40

sense of the pain that she went through. And

24:42

they don't even, like, you know, it's

24:44

funny, John Danforth, the senator who

24:47

ushered him through the process, who gave him his first job out

24:49

of college, you know, he says, I would

24:51

never believe Clarence would do that or whatever. And

24:53

so I asked him, I was like, well, do

24:55

you think that Anita Hill is just making all this up? He

24:58

says, I don't know, I don't know. And I said, well, did

25:00

you watch her testimony? He said, no. And

25:03

they were just blind to it. They didn't even care. Like

25:05

it never occurred to them to even interrogate whether

25:08

or not these allegations were true or not. And

25:10

that's just a fundamental dismissal

25:12

of women's pain.

25:13

Joel Anderson is a staff writer

25:15

at Slate. He is co-host of our

25:18

Hang Up and Listen podcast. He's also the

25:20

host of season three and six

25:22

of Slow Burn. And he has just wrapped

25:25

hosting the latest powerful,

25:27

really superb season, season

25:30

eight, Becoming Justice Thomas.

25:33

Joel, it seems kind of perfect

25:37

as we are all grappling with

25:39

what to do with the affirmative action

25:42

decision and the long, long

25:43

trail that it took

25:45

Clarence Thomas to get here talking

25:48

with you. Thank you so much both for the show

25:50

and for joining us today.

25:52

Oh, Dolly, again, I'm so glad I

25:54

could join you today. So thanks so much and for all

25:56

the work you do. Anyway, thanks, I'm happy to do

25:58

it.