Corey Robin: Clarence Thomas’s Counterrevolution: “What I think Thomas took away… are two ideas.
First, not only is racism a perdurable element of the American experience… but it is also a protean and often-hidden element of that experience… so profoundly inscribed in the white soul that you’ll never be able to remove it. You see this belief in quiet, throwaway lines in his opinions that you can easily miss if you’re reading too fast. In 1992, in one of his early cases, Georgia v. McCollum, Thomas stated:
Conscious and unconscious prejudice persists in our society. Common sense and common experience confirms this understanding.
The point was so obvious and self-evident to Thomas it didn’t need elaboration or explanation.
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