Clarence Thomas has been serving on the U.S. Supreme Court since 1991--longer than any of his fellow justices--and yet he remains a cipher: a black man who routinely takes positions that would seem to block steps toward racial equality. In The Enigma of Clarence Thomas, Corey Robin, a self-described "longtime reader of the right from the left" and the author of The Reactionary Mind, makes a persuasive case that Thomas is actually "a black nationalist whose conservative jurisprudence rotates around an axis of black interests and concerns."
Robin's book is presented in three chunks: "Race" picks apart Thomas's skeptical attitude toward affirmative action; "Capitalism" distills his opinions that seem to place commerce above the individual; and "Constitution" parses his conservative positions regarding the Second and Eighth Amendments.
How did Thomas transform from a Malcolm X-reciting college radical into a right-winger? While The Enigma of Clarence Thomas isn't a biography, threaded throughout the wonky stuff are illuminating personal details about the man, who was raised in the segregated South without a father, came of age during the civil rights era and grew disillusioned with activism ("I marched. I protested. I asked the government to help black people.... I did all those things. But it hasn't worked"). While liberal minds likely won't come around to supporting Thomas's views, readers of Robin's book will be left with a keen understanding of "the bleakness and brutality of Thomas's racial vision," which can't help but influence his opinions. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer