Since the decision to reconsider the right to abortion, the indignant pro-choicers have sounded the revolt. In their line of sight, the Supreme Court and especially, judge Clarence Thomas, hero of conservative America.
“But how is it that this guy is more applauded than me, in meetings, when I mention his name?” Just elected president, Donald Trump asks a relative about Clarence Thomas, a judge of the Supreme Court. This black magistrate does not make the headlines, but he is treated like a hero by right-wing social networks, which broadcast videos of him. His baritone laugh has become legendary, like his rides in a mobile home with his wife in the American countryside. So, in October 2018, Trump invited him to lunch at the White House.
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The judge arrives with his wife, Ginni, white, shock lobbyist and ultra-conservative. At the table, the atmosphere is relaxed. Trump, who needs to solidify his evangelical base to get re-elected, gets confirmation that his interlocutors are willing to help him. They are on the same side, speak the same language and have the same goals, including revoking the Roe v. Wade on abortion, recorded last week.
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For a long time, we underestimated Clarence Thomas. Born in 1948 in an enclave created by freed slaves in Georgia, his path should have been that of a leftist in the United States, where African Americans are supposed to be the preserve of the Democrats. But no. Unlike Obama, he experienced great poverty during his childhood. He does not even speak English, but the Gullah dialect of the blacks of the region.
His mother, a domestic worker, does not have the means to raise him: he lives with his brother in a seedy apartment in Savannah. She therefore sends him to the grandfather, Myers Anderson, illiterate, but who has a house big enough to accommodate him. Young Clarence discovers a toilet flush, which he is not used to using. Fascinated, he constantly pulls her. The grandfather, ultra-strict and religious, threatens, if he does not walk straight, to send him back to his mother, in misery. So Clarence goes straight.
The two camps clash. Facing an anti-abortion activist, a sign is brandished: “Are you pro-life only when it concerns a uterus?”
© EVA SAKELLARIDES
At the Catholic school where he was enrolled because it is the only one in the area to provide a correct education, he excels. The only black in the establishment, he knows that getting the best grades is the only way to gain respect and avoid a soap from his grandfather. The nuns in Ireland are sympathetic to him. He plans to become a priest and enters the seminary where he discovers Gregorian chant, which he adores. But it didn’t last, because of one of the co-religionists who, in 1968, rejoiced at the assassination of Martin Luther King. He changes lanes. Enough is enough. Young Clarence enters college, temporarily renounces Catholicism and veers to the left. It was the era of Black Power, to which he adhered by participating in the founding of the union of black students on campus. An incident between demonstrators and police, particularly violent, encourages him to fall into line.
He takes refuge in studies and leaves to do his law at Yale. But, leaving this prestigious university, new disappointment. He is made to understand that he benefited from the positive discrimination which then became widespread: he would have obtained his diploma because he was black. John Danforth, former Yale and Attorney General of Missouri, elected on the Republican lists, offers him a position. Thomas hesitates, because, at the time, he votes democrat; but he eventually accepts and soon realizes that he feels more comfortable on the right. In 1980, he voted for Reagan and joined his administration: his career took off. And the first accusations of treason fuse. He is called Uncle Tom, a qualifier used against blacks who are zealous to please whites. When, in his second marriage, he marries Ginni, a woman with a strong personality he met in 1986 during a conference, the accusation grows.
Clarence Thomas, the black judge Republicans adore, now wants to ban gay marriage
Clarence Thomas has the faith of converts. Named by Reagan at the head of a commission in charge of fighting against discrimination at work, he accuses the black community, strongly anti-Reagan, of “whining”. He develops a hatred against left-wing progressives and the media, which he lumps together. This is not detrimental to his career, quite the contrary. George Bush senior offered him a post as a federal judge, then the Grail: a place on the Supreme Court, whose members were appointed for life. But what should have been the consecration turns into a nightmare. His confirmation by the Senate (mostly Democrat at the time) is disturbed by a #MeToo affair before the hour: Anita Hill, a young black woman, professor of law, who was one of his collaborators in the 1980s, the accused of sexual harassment.
He denies en bloc and poses as the victim of a “high-tech” (that is to say televised) lynching on the part of the senators. Joe Biden, who is presiding over the hearings, seems embarrassed by this defense… On October 15, 1991, by a narrow majority, Thomas was confirmed as a judge of the Supreme Court. Deeply bruised, he will always resent Joe Biden, who voted against him and whom he suspects of having mounted a plot to derail his candidacy, which is too conservative for the taste of the future president. Ginni, his wife, is on the same line. Twenty years later, she will also leave Anita Hill a message on her voicemail to demand an apology…
“A third of my generation was killed by abortion”, “Human beings are not disposable”… In the midst of pro-life slogans, a pro-choice poster: “Women’s rights are part of the rights humans”…
© EVA SAKELLARIDES
Clarence Thomas reached the top of the judicial hierarchy but was silent for years: we never heard him at the hearings. He is still despised, which he attributes to a form of elitist racism. All his decisions are ultra-conservative. He opposes gay marriage, affirmative action, and Roe v. Wade, on the grounds that abortion does not appear anywhere in the US Constitution. He says he is a supporter of originalism, which stipulates that the Constitution must be interpreted in a “purist” way and be taken at face value, as at the time of its proclamation. This current of thought is beginning to develop on the right, but it is still a minority in the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, Ginni, crowned with the status of “wife of”, sees her star grow in the conservative ranks. She hates the Republican establishment and makes a deal with ultras like Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former chief strategist. Not thrilled when he shows up, she rallies when he promises that he will only appoint conservative judges to the Supreme Court, which will have the effect of reducing her husband’s isolation.
Once elected, Trump is lucky: three seats become available, which is considerable (Obama, in eight years, has only appointed two judges). Keeping his word, he brings an ultra-conservative, notorious anti-abortion, to the Supreme Court each time. But it is the appointment of the second of them, Brett Kavanaugh, which reinforces his unspoken alliance with Judge Thomas. In 2018, Kavanaugh was accused of rape by a woman. This case awakens bad memories, but Clarence Thomas is no longer alone in the Supreme Court. Ginni, she, feels growing wings: when she wants to cross the door of the Oval Office, the president has given instructions to let her pass. She promotes her candidates – very right – for the positions to be filled, and also pushes her favorite principles, such as the fight against the transsexual cause… After Trump’s defeat in November 2020, she worked behind the scenes to have Biden’s victory, sending fiery text messages to Mark Meadows, the ex-president’s chief of staff.
For him, the Constitution must be interpreted in a “purist” way
June 24, the day Roe c. Wade, the pro-abortion activists (pro-choice) gathered outside the home of Clarence and Ginni Thomas, whose home address they had posted online. The judge embodies their pet peeve, because he is the most conservative of the Supreme Court: on the sidelines of the decision to annul the constitutional right to abortion, he declared that it was also necessary to reconsider gay marriage and the right to contraception. But the demonstration did not succeed. A few dozen billboards, tired speeches… and as many journalists as activists, not to mention the police mobilized to protect the couple who live recluse in the middle of the woods, forty minutes from Washington.
Gone are the days when Judge Thomas was underestimated: the real boss of the Supreme Court is now him. “He is America’s most important living man,” said Tim Goeglein, a former George W. Bush administration and vice president of the evangelical organization Focus on the Family. Majority, he swept John Roberts, the Chief Justice (President of the Supreme Court), a Republican who, having become too moderate by current standards, tried in vain to oppose the dismissal of Roe v. Wade. Some guess in this decision a delayed revenge of Clarence Thomas against a Joe Biden who thus suffers a major defeat.
Placed on a pro-abortion book, a doll widely used by the anti. They claim it represents a 12-week fetus. At this stage, it is much smaller and measures about 10 centimeters.
© EVA SAKELLARIDES
For once, Donald Trump had a modest triumph: “It’s a decision of God,” he soberly commented on Fox News. He would be afraid, it is said, that this clap of thunder would remobilize the Democratic electorate. He would prefer that we talk more about inflation and stock shortages, subjects that are more useful, according to him, for the midterms of next November. The only certainty: by working for three decades for the dismissal of Roe v. Wade, Clarence Thomas gave him a nice present. Trump is now guaranteed to go down in the history books as one of the presidents who transformed America, though he seems doubtful that his campaign would use such an argument if he runs. in 2024.
