Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas (Hardcover)

~ (Author), Michael Fletcher (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The conservatism of the nation's second African-American Supreme Court justice has made him a pariah in the black community, an irony that centers this probing biography, expanded from the authors'Washington Post Magazine profile. Thomas's rise from disadvantaged circumstances to Yale Law School, a meteoric government career and appointment to Thurgood Marshall's Court seat, Merida and Fletcher note, seems an affirmative action success story. Yet Thomas has opposed affirmative action, prisoners' rights, abortion and other planks of the liberal agenda, leading to ubiquitous complaints—the authors cite black leaders, prison inmates, even Thomas's relatives—that he's forgotten his roots. Merida and Fletcher present a lucid, well-researched account of Thomas's controversial life and jurisprudence, including evidence supporting Anita Hill's sexual harassment allegations, and a nuanced discussion of the politics of black authenticity. They portray Thomas as a conflicted man: a committed conservative with an ethos of self-reliance, who took advantage of affirmative action only to have his achievements tarnished by his own insecurities and others' suspicions of incompetence or hypocrisy. The authors' attempts to link his convictions to his psyche—they make much of his alleged resentment of light-skinned black professional elites—don't always click, but Thomas still emerges as a fascinating and emblematic figure. (Mar. 20)
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From The Washington Post

Reviewed by Kenji Yoshino

Justice Clarence Thomas is the Supreme Court's most reclusive member, which is saying something. Deeply distrustful of the media, the justice also almost never speaks from the bench. As a powerful official who remains opaque to the public, he is a prime candidate for a careful, fair-minded biography. In delivering it, Kevin Merida and Michael A. Fletcher have done some quiet justice of their own.

Supreme Discomfort shows that two competing, racially charged narratives govern how Thomas -- like many black conservatives -- is perceived and treated. The first storyline is that of the Uncle Tom: the race-traitor who sides with whites for personal advantage. For Thomas, the consequences of being seen this way have been harsh. The book describes how the Rev. Al Sharpton led a group of picketers outside Thomas's home, how some African Americans have called for the community to stop naming its children "Clarence" and how a woman stopped Thomas and a friend in the library in his home town of Savannah in May 2001 so she could "see what a group of Uncle Toms look like."

If liberals often cast Thomas as a quisling, conservatives tend to cast him as someone who has achieved the American Dream by pulling himself up by his bootstraps. Thomas, a member of the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, seems to find this narrative more congenial, but it has its own bite. This storyline assumes a meritocratic America free of racial prejudice -- an assumption the justice certainly does not hold.

Lost between these two competing stories is the tale of an individual, and that is the one brought to life by Merida and Fletcher, journalists at The Washington Post. Their biography deftly puts paid to both conventional narratives; after all, we do not expect Uncle Toms to have engaged in radical black student activism, nor do we expect Horatio Alger heroes to believe America is irredeemably racist. But that is too faint praise for Supreme Discomfort. By the end of the book, we see the injustice that stock narratives have done to a person who can charm those predisposed against him and win the lifetime loyalty of those whose minds are less made up. We're introduced to the many Thomases we have never seen: the RV-driving Thomas, the Ayn Rand-loving Thomas, the Catholic Thomas and others.

The book's main flaw is its failure to give us more of one particular Thomas: Justice Thomas. For a biography of a jurist, Supreme Discomfort is surprisingly short on Thomas's legal decisions and philosophy. For instance, Merida and Fletcher repeatedly mention that Thomas benefited from affirmative action during his rise only to oppose it when in power. But Thomas explained that seeming inconsistency in a 2003 dissent criticizing governmental affirmative action. In Grutter v. Bollinger, he argued that affirmative action stigmatizes all blacks, who are either promoted above their abilities or subjected to the unfair suspicion that they would not be where they are absent a racial preference. Regardless of the category into which Thomas would put himself, this response suggests how even beneficiaries of affirmative action can oppose it without hypocrisy.

Merida and Fletcher also fail to grapple adequately with the justice's jurisprudential methodology. Thomas is the court's most ferocious originalist, believing that the Constitution should be interpreted strictly according to the intent of its framers. But what does it mean for Thomas to interpret the Constitution according to the intent of those who would have considered him to be chattel?

It is hard, though, to quarrel too much with a book that solves the great Thomas mystery: his legendary silence. One conventional explanation is that Thomas is still smarting from the Anita Hill scandal that occupied his confirmation hearing, an explanation that seems less plausible with every passing year. Merida and Fletcher explain his courtroom demeanor by suggesting that silence is the closest Thomas can come to opting out of the scripts that eddy around him. "If you can't be free," the poet Rita Dove writes, "be a mystery." It is a serious indictment of race relations in this country that, in 2007, the nation's most powerful African Americans are still not permitted to be individuals. And because the book makes that case -- as well as many others -- in such a personal and non-ideological way, it may be heard. This book's greatest achievement is that the "supreme discomfort" of the title initially belongs to Thomas but, in the end, becomes our own.

Copyright 2007, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday (April 24, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385510802
• ISBN-13: 978-0385510806
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #709,529 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars I would recommend this book but with reservations., July 25, 2007

By	ck_361 "ck_361" - See all my reviews

Except for a scant recollection of the Hill-Thomas Trial that aired on TV when I was a kid, I did not know anything about Clarence Thomas. My husband recommended this book after listening to a radio interview with the authors.

Firstly, I don't think this is the right book to pick up coming in with little to no knowledge of Thomas. The book is based on an accumulation of interviews, speeches and Thomas' writing and court decisions. It's interesting to note that Thomas declined to be interviewed for this book.

In a nutshell here is what I learned: Thomas is a Conservative. He benefited from affirmative action but he denies that he did, except to bring it up when it suits him, and he refuses to support it. He idolized his Grandfather. He is in the group of justices who believes his job is to interpret the Constitution as the founders would have intended, rather than adjust to the attitudes of the time. He rarely participates in oral arguments. Anita Hill really hurt him emotionally. He's sensitive. If you get on his bad side he'll hold a grudge and you'll be off his list ~ FOREVER. Most black people think he's a sellout. He's really a personable guy who would love to know you - yes YOU, who are of little significance, and once you get to know him, you actually like him! (And what's not to like? He's not off spewing hatred). He's simply a man in power armed with an opinion that goes against the majority minority, which people see is in sharp contrast from his deprived upbringing, which really wasn't that bad actually, only people tend to ignore that fact. All of this is discussed in the book and become points of contentions, and to me reading about it felt like sitting on a fence where the arguments could go either way.

Personally I think there are answers to Thomas' behavior, as sited in the book, which leave little mystery for his actions. But let's just lay it out there: he's a black man sitting on a high court, having replaced Thurgood Marshall who held very different views, and therefore his actions will be judged much harsher.

Perhaps it's because Thomas is seen as an anomaly, or perhaps the book isn't well written, but this book didn't do much for me; I came away feeling neutral about the whole "controversy." I certainly don't believe the book is a liberal attack on a conservative, just a bit jumbled with too much of the same information, and at times not all together accurate (example: the "Twinkie Defense" (312) as described in urban legend form). Some sections didn't seem to carry a point. Some paragraphs had to be picked apart because they were poorly written. A note of one small, but reoccurring annoyance, is the reintroduction of people. Take for example Thomas Sowell, a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Noting who he is once (141) is informative and expected. Twice (237), okay, it's later in the book and perhaps I forgot. Three times (291)?! Do the authors really lack that much faith in their reader's retention abilities?

I agree with the previous reviewer who remarked that they didn't think the book reached a greater point. I certainly plan on reading Thomas' autobiography when it comes out in October '07, and have selected other books to read that the authors noted in their book.

18 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars No Division in Justice Thomas, October 2, 2007

By	R. Tiedemann "Sunnye" (Bellevue, NE USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a difficult book to rate. It's easy reading -- obviously written more to entertain than to inform -- and it's highly biased against the subject yet presented in such a way as to pretend to be balanced. It is character assassination in print.

The subtitle, "The divided soul of Clarence Thomas" is not proven by the discourse. It is obvious that Thomas has a very clear idea of who he is and what the law should be. He is staunch in his beliefs and true to his conscience. There is nothing divided about him.

Justice Thomas seems to have figured out what most of his peers (and definitely the authors)haven't: That affirmative action has proved to be a double-edged sword, as harmful to blacks as it has been useful. It is obvious that Thomas simply considers himself a man, neither black nor white, as he gazes at life and law through clear glasses. To many blacks (and obviously to the authors) this is the Unforgivable Sin.

Thus they portray Justice Thomas as almost manically introspective, weak and flawed. They emphasize the pain he endured over the years from racial slurs and imply that he is almost useless on the court because he can't forget Anita Hill's attacks during his confirmation trial before Congress. I use the word trial intentionally here.

I had wondered why Justice Thomas was publishing a memoir at this time since it would necessarily bring Hill to the forefront again. This book must be the reason. He knew this would be what it is when he refused the authors access to himself and his memorabilia. He was right. The prejudice against him here is almost hysterical.

One of the points the authors belabor again and again is their contention (and yes, it has been said by others) that Thomas is a lackey to or clone of Justice Scalia because they vote the same way. I believe it was Jan Crawford Greenburg (whose new book, "Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States," is just published) who said in an interview on Book TV just last weekend that she had gone through all the records specifically to determine whether there was truth in that particular assumption. She says in most cases Thomas voted first and that it might be more accurate to say that it was Scalia who followed in Thomas's footsteps. That research should have been done by these authors.

Since their prejudice against Justice Thomas is so pronounced and their indictments of his character so repetitious I can't help but wonder what material they left out from their massive second-source research. It would not be presumptuous to assume that they were highly selective in order to prove their thesis that Thomas is so flawed that he is ineffective on the Court (something that isn't said but is strongly implied in these pages).

One of the things they object to most about him is the fact that he seldom asks questions during court sessions. They don't seem to realize that when one is talking, s/he isn't learning. Justice Thomas says someone always asks the questions he would, so he just listens until the answer surfaces. That is wisdom.

What they object to most, however, seems to be that Thomas is a Constitutional originalist. That is, he believes in the Constitution as written and is suspicious of re-creating it "to fit" contemporary times. He is less inclined to use stare decisis (respect for precedent) when considering cases and he believes strongly in the rights of states to handle most social issues. That conservatism truly irks the authors and I believe these are the reasons they have chosen to emphasize the negative and present such a biased smear.

Almost every page and certainly every chapter belabors the anger and pain that Justice Thomas presumably harbors from his growing up years (in addition to the Hill episode). He would be have to be insane if he wasn't hurt and the fact that he has risen above the destiny presumed by his birth and has served so honorably at various levels of government, including the highest court in the land, shows the mettle of the man.

Justice Clarence Thomas is a great American and a noble jurist who is doing his best. We can ask no more of anyone.

28 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Hard Book to Categorize, May 18, 2007

By	Ronald H. Clark (WASHINGTON, DC USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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What you take from this book depends largely upon why you would read a book on Justice Thomas in the first place. If you are looking for the classic judicial biography, that integrates biography with Supreme Court case analysis, this is not the book for you. Far better choices in this regard are Ken Foskett's "Judging Thomas" (also reviewed on Amazon), and Gerber"s "First Principles: The Jurisprudence of Clarence Thomas." Rather this book authored by two respected Washington Post reporters (one of whom is a lawyer) rather tries to get at Thomas as a person. While it follows generally a biographical course, it is much more focused upon what the many folks interviewed by the author -- and they had done just an enormous amount of research to support this book -- think (or thought) of "Thomas the man." The Justice did not make himself available for interviews with the authors, however.

About the first 1/3 of the book, the focus seemed to be on what African-Americans who knew Thomas at various stages of his life think or thought of him. This is quite a unique perspective, both authors being black, because it has not been so much the focus in other books on Thomas I have looked at. Then later the focus seemed to be what anybody and everybody thought of Thomas, from his fellow Justices to people he meets as he drives his motorcoach around the country on vacation. The problem with this approach are the views of all the folks whom the authors didn't interview. I found some chapters unimpressive ("Silent Justice" re his lack of questionning at oral argument) and others quite good ("Scalia's Clone?").

I think you do learn a good deal about Justice Thomas; I certainly feel a better grasp on his character and attitudes especially after having read the book. But there is only so far you can go with this approach. In any regard, the Justice's autobiography is due out shortly. I am sure this will lead to another round of Thomas examination and debate. He certainly is an interesting figure. On that there is no debate.