THE ENIGMA OF CLARENCE THOMAS

Most people can tell you two things about Clarence Thomas: Anita Hill accused him of sexual harassment, and he almost never speaks from the bench. Here are some things they don't know: Until Thomas went to law school, he was a black nationalist. In college he memorized the speeches of Malcolm X. He believes white people are incurably racist.

In the first analysis of its kind, Corey Robin—one of the foremost analysts of the right—delves deeply into both Thomas's biography and his jurisprudence, masterfully reading his Supreme Court opinions against the backdrop of his autobiographical and political writings and speeches. The hidden source of Thomas's conservative views, Robin argues, is a profound skepticism that racism can be overcome.

There's a reason, Robin concludes, why liberals complain that Thomas doesn't speak and yet, seldom pay attention when he does. Were they to listen, they'd hear a racial pessimism shockingly similar to their own. This unacknowledged consensus about the impossibility of progress cuts across the ideological spectrum and is key to understanding today's political stalemate.

Corey Robin is the author of The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin and Fear: The History of a Political Idea. He teaches political science at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center. Robin's writing has appeared in The New York Times, Harper's, The London Review of Books, and The Nation, among other publications, and has been translated into eleven languages. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.