Season 8 Trailer: Becoming Justice Thomas

Slow Burn

Slate Audio

Politics, Society & Culture, History, News, Documentary

4.6 • 25.2K Ratings

🗓️ 17 May 2023

⏱️ 2 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Clarence Thomas is one of the most powerful figures in America today. Nearly every issue of national consequence has his fingerprints all over it, from voting rights to gun rights and from abortion access to affirmative action. But nothing about his journey from rural Georgia to the Supreme Court was inevitable. In the eighth season of Slate’s Slow Burn, host Joel Anderson traces Justice Thomas’ surprising path from youthful radical to conservative icon. You’ll hear about why he came to despise the race-based admission policies that personally benefited him, how he credited his political rise to the Black self-sufficiency preached by Malcolm X, and what the American people didn’t hear during his explosive confirmation hearings. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	The hearing will come to order.
0:03.0	Good morning, Judge. Welcome to the blinding lights.
0:06.0	Coming soon from Sleight Podcast.
0:09.0	Members of this committee have asked, who is the real Clarence Thomas?
0:12.0	What is the real Clarence Thomas, which is the real Clarence Thomas?
0:16.0	Just as Thomas was a radical.
0:19.0	He's this almost like Shakespearean figure.
0:22.0	He was closely aligned with Malcolm X and the most liberal of ideology.
0:28.0	And that is a puzzle.
0:31.0	I don't know that I would call myself an enigma.
0:35.0	I'm just Clarence Thomas.
0:39.0	I'm Joel Anderson.
0:41.0	And on this season of Slow Burn, we'll explore how a black man from rural Georgia
0:46.0	went from being a college radical to a conservative vicar.
0:50.0	If having an experience in predominantly white spaces,
0:54.0	particularly traumatic experience, can radicalize you to the left,
0:59.0	then it certainly can radicalize you to the right.
1:02.0	You'll hear from his closest family and friends, including his political mentor.
1:07.0	We had the lights turned way down low, and he said to me,
1:11.0	Jack, you know what this is? It's a high-tech lynching.
1:15.0	And you'll hear from women who knew Thomas long before he was on the Supreme Court.
1:20.0	He would say, I'm their guy.
	...

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