Enigma of Clarence Thomas. As some of you know the kallman center selects 15 fellows a year for a nine month term. Fellows receive an office in the Center Access to our collections and a stipend so they can focus exclusively on their work during their fellowships. The fellows are some of the very best and most promising academics independent scholars poets playwrights journalists dramatists artists and fiction writers at work today. They come here from around the country in the world to use the unparalleled collections housed at this library to write the books of tomorrow. The program was founded in 1899 and to date it has supported the work of gordon 300 fellows. The deadline for applications of next year is friday. [laughter] its free. I encourage you to come back in november for free new exhibition that will open on the third floor of this Building Made at the New York Public Library will feature more than 30 works written right here with the support of this librarys collections, the show will include books by kallman Center Fellows and others who worked here at the stephen a schwartzman building and other research were libraries of the and we ipl system. The series of conversations presents books that followup the kallman center came here to write later in the season also present conversations with novelists tae albrecht and julie orange her and conversations about the new novels that the work done during their fellowship here. Find more details on your rack cards. You will find as a table by the door copies of the enigma of Clarence Thomas for sale. Corey robin has agreed to stay after the conversation to sign them. The enigma of Clarence Thomas has already been called fascinating, brilliant and counterintuitive by book forum and in the National Review of valuable and overdue engagement with the nexus between thomass early life, his black nationalism and his political views. In the review for tomorrows New York Times jennifer aright its a provocative thesis but one of the marvels of robbins razorsharp book is how carefully he marshals his evidence, corey has not heard this review yet. [laughter] he doesnt have to resort to elaborate speculation or armchair psychology relying instead on thomass speeches interviews and Supreme Court opinions. Just as purists make ample use of the written record robin does the same. She continues, the result is rigorous yet readable, frequently startling yet eminently persuasive it is and every day a [laughter] it isnt every day that reading about ideas can be so gratifying and unsettling and robbins incisive and superbly argued book has made me think again. [applause] we are honored that corey will speak tonight with jamal bowie, columnist for the New York Times were the editorial page in the book review do not speak to each other. They really dont. Hes also political analyst for cbs news. He covers campaigns, elections, National Affairs and culture prior to the times, it he was chief Political Correspondent for slate magazine and before that he was a staff writer at the daily beast and fellowships of the american prospect and the nation magazine. Cory robin is the author of the reactionary mind, conservatism from edmund burke to donald trump hailed by the new yorker as the book that predicted trump and fear the history of political idea which won the best first book in political theory award from the american Political Science association. His writings have been translated into 13 languages. He was a fellow at the kallman center last year for 2018 to 2019. If you have questions for mr. Robin or mr. Bowie as the conversation proceeds, please feel welcome to write them down on the note cards that you have received coming in, questions not statements please. A staff member will collect them about and a half hour from now and our guests will get to as many as time allows. We are proud to present corey robin and jamal bowie. Thank you all for coming spending a monday evening talking about Supreme Court justice. Im not sure i would have done it but here we are. [laughter] corey, lets jump into it. We were talking backstage a little bit about the origins of the book. He mentioned that this was ab Clarence Thomas wasnt a person you are necessarily focused on. He did have some rising interest in trying to work through his views so how did this book come about . It began with an invitation two political scientists one of whom taught a class of yours i think he said at uva. Putting together a reader on African American political thought long anthology and there are very few of these actually in my field. The critics the initial reader said we will need something more on black conservativism. You should do something on thomas. They approached me because ive written on conservatism at some length and didnt want to do it i said no several times. I didnt have much of an interest in Clarence Thomas and felt like i was done talking about the right didnt feel like i had much more to say about it. It was strongarmed into it and i was instantaneously corey by this man. Who the way in which his Supreme Court opinions, which you read some of them, they are kind of drive fares but with him its just self that rick leaps off the page. I was really taken with the idea of trying to tell this mans story to his idea through his opinions. So i guess the central claim of the book is that to understand thomas through reference to his youth as a black nationalist someone whos swimming i think thats the verb you used swimming in this intellectual early 60s and 70s black National Black power all these things are very much in the mainstream language of African American life. I think you mentioned how liberal African American activists usually in bonds of the world were also speaking the language which is what it was the way people engaged with black politics. This is a much more foundational thing for thomas then we tend to acknowledge or even talk about in his jurisprudence. Thomas moves to the north in 1968 he goes to holy cross which is a college outside of boston and hes radicalized in part by the assassination of Martin Luther king and Bobby Kennedy like many other people. The realization he came to was nobodys going to do anything for us. But as he needs black people and nobody he really means white people. Theres a really strong foundational experience of black selfhelp, black Self Organization and black autonomous organizations. Thomas was not just a kind of intellectual drifter. He was an activist. I run into people, not often but every once in a while josc told him im writing about this and they say, i was in the new left in the 60s and we all knew about thomas in the boston area. He was a figure. He derived the foundational commitments to black autonomy, black Self Organization very foundational critique of integration and a belief in racial separatism at its heart and racial Self Organization. Whats interesting is that though he has a very strong migration to the right, he doesnt lose a lot of the foundational commitments. They are the seabed and which is conservativism grows. What is the path to that conservativism . How does he make the move. In his early life he subscribed to this highly patriarchal might even call misogynist view of women. You can make a case it still exists in the present day. The emphasis on self autonomy and nationalism can very easily become very reactionary rejection of the idea of constructional constraints of individuals. What drives thomas to the right . I think the biggest thing to remember about thomas is the moment and when he is politicized. The late 1960s and the early 1970s for many black activists that period is a moment of recognition with defeat. There is a real sense that black political possibilities are essentially either over or whittling down. Thomas really takes a measure of the and takes it quite seriously and theres a real sense of political defeatism and political pessimism that whether your model is social movements in the streets, revolutionary Self Organization or mainstream electoral politics, any of those models of politics are no longer a path. Thats one part of it that i think hangs very heavily over his right turn. The second part of it, this was something that really came as a revelation to me. On monday many black nationalist in this moment and black power activists the flipside of this political defeatism is a sense of experimentation with the institutions of capitalism. There is wonderful new scholarship thats come out in the last 5 to 10 years about all the ways in which black power activists were looking toward creating black entrepreneurs, separate black economy, blackowned business, more black higher income of the whole variety of forms but the central animating idea behind a lot of this is that the political pathways are closed so what you have to do is explore the economic pathways. I think this sort of change is our sense of a lot of black power movements which we associate with the left and socialism but as Charles Hamilton is the coauthor with strictly carmichael and black power puts it in the afterword which comes out years later he said, the logical end run of a ablack power wasnt necessarily socialism or social democracy owes what maximum acts said which was black self ownership, independent block business and things like that. Those two things the sense that politics is just closed off to black people on the one hand and that the economy and particularly a capitalist economy may offer possibility and niche for black Self Development and Self Organization i think really becomes the pincers that start moving in slowly to the right. Does other biographical questions like thomas joined the Reagan Administration and makes his way into the legal role but i think this is a good place to turn toward jurisprudence a little bit. The book you sent out thomas has two visions of the constitution black constitution and a white constitution and they both transmit very different messages but thomas reconciles his overarching vision of abi will let you describe it. [laughter] so lets talk about those visions of the constitution what is thomases black constitution, what is is what constitution, what does it mean for his jurisprudence. Am going to try to keep this not too weedy as they say and technical. Most constitutional scholars believe that there is the original constitution was ratified in 1789 and then a second constitution that was created through the struggle over emancipation and slavery. Fundamentally embody the 13th, 14th, 15th amendment what we call the reconstruction amendments. Thomas is what we call, he says it is an originalist he believes you should interpret the constitution as it was understood at the moment of its adoption. Unlike many originalists, thomas takes very seriously the second constitution that was created through the struggle to the black freedom struggle of emancipation. There is very technical aspects of that which i get into in the book but at the heart of that black constitution for thomas and this is where i think it starts reconciling with some conservatism amongst the many charters of liberties and freedoms created by the 13th and 14th and 15th amendment at the heart of those freedoms for thomas is the right to bear arms. This is essential to the experience of black construction for black freedmen. And thomas in his opinion on this question extensively quotes from herbert as tuckers book on flavor favorables. Tollbooths takes this very seriously. This experience of black arms really forms the heart of his vision of the black constitution and its not just a fetish for black arms because in that vision of black self arm he sees a vision of black manhood and black patriarchy. Black men being able to protect their families and their communities and theres a very resonant image he closes out one of his Second Amendment opinions he quotes from a memory of his son a memory from his father sometime in the 1880s remembering his father standing at the doorway with a rifle or some kind of gun holding off white supremacist terrorists. Thomas said Something Like its an emblem i cant remember the exact phrase, emblem of salvation or freedom. Once you start looking at the black radical tradition this is very foundational this idea of black men arming themselves and protecting themselves and not just being a mode of production but an emblem of freedom. Thats at the heart of his black constitution. I can now talk about his walkway constitution which is a very ultimately both are unsettling visions. His white constitution harkens back to that original constitution which is much more centered in the power of states as opposed to the National Government and at the heart of that white constitution is what we call the car sold state. Prisons, police, judges, juries, the whole apparatus that prosecutes and convicts people. This is something that whenever you say thomas is a black nationalist or has these meetings people find it hard to reconcile with his kind of ab there is no other word for it but grisly and brutal endorsement of the power of the penal state. There is no proof of it, he faces it full on. The reason i think that white penal state is so powerful to thomas, he believes it is the closest thing to creating the conditions, recreating the conditions of jim crow which he thinks are golden age of renaissance moment for black america. That was the moment in his mind when black men really rose to their full power of the most horrifying adversity and oppression which thomas does not in any way deny. He sees it like a disciplining function it forces black americans and modes of behavior. Exactly. And disciplinary tutelage really to educational brutal pedagogy what it means to be a full self. Thats what he thinks the penal state does when he goes through many ways in which he sees this happening. One of which is to create he believes it creates men, particularly men, who can be market actors who can develop habits and virtues of thrift and savings and responsibility and all the rest of it. But really this notion that adversity is essential for the full flourishing and development of black people. The minute that slackens and gets too easy to minute rights are granted becomes a moment of tremendous peril in his mind. I think thats really at the heart of his idea of the white constitution. So jurisprudence on Voting Rights there is no contradiction in opposing or allowing states to put tighter restrictions on Voting Rights. This is something that will help push africanamerican communities out the political realm hes not sure theyre ready for the kinds of responsibilities it entails and into the market. Everett know if he would say theyre not ready for the responsibility. I dont think thats the claim. But you are right, he definitely is quite hostile to Voting Rights. He doesnt really think abi think the foundation of that hostility for African Americans is that he believes that the electoral rules fear is stacked against African Americans. He gives us very famous interview to Juan Williams back in one williams was quite a serious journalist in the 1980s 1987, everyone can watch the shade. [laughter] he says, just imagine if we were to empower black people in the electoral realm and give semblance of collective rights he said just stack it up where we come out . He says we will always come out at the bottom. The only one may be worse are american indians. Lose a sense that the electoral space but to the combination of white racism the power of the white majority, the fact of the white majority means that African Americans will systemically lose and its essentially a fools aired to be investing ones hope in voting and part of this is he sees not just racism as an intractable part of American Society but that even liberal whites integrationists whites are not sincere he doesnt trust them and trust their motives. He thinks in part of experiences in the north that liberal whites there black allies are best way to describe it traps for black people that theres no real avenue of progression with those groups. I should say there is a long tradition in this and black nationalism. Marcus garvey thought the klansman was in some ways the best friend of the black men because he was honest and knew exactly where he stood. Malcom x uses, the fox and the wolf my animal imagery is not so great. Whichever the one is the sneakier one who pretends to be your friend versus the one who bears his teeth the white person who bears his teeth and reveals who he is. Its the same kind of imagery that thomas really values his working in the Reagan Administration in the 1980 he said at least they are honest and one of his favorite songs is the Smiling Faces tell lies the 1971 song he says the Reagan Administration he used to live listen to it all the time he says people in the Reagan Administration dont smile at you. I think this notion of racial candor knowing where you stand is very important. One last thing because i mentioned garvey on the vote but was also garveys idea of the vote that it was also a fools errand and something that black people should stay away from. One question i have is, how athomas is White Nationalism heavily patriarchal. Someone like garvey would say there are no alliances with whites. In that sense hes willing to make the strategic alliances with white conservatives and also his wife is a white woman. The first thing i should say is the argument in the book is not that thomas is just a black nationalist and black nationalism explains everything. Thomas is a conservative. Hes also a republican. He cant understand him without those other facets. I dont think the black nationalism some explains the whole bit. Interestingly, thomas was against interracial relationships and marriage pretty much up until the moment virginia lamb and then changed his mind on the topic. This alliance, a number of black conservatives whod been interviewed and in moments of candor will say exactly what it is they are doing and these are strategic alliances. I think thomas is in that regard enough to understand the role that conservatism. For him conservatism really if you go back to these foundational questions about politics, political pessimism, political defeatism and economic the notion of the economy being the space it would seem like that would be a Natural Force that one could turn to in his mind. I want to talk more about this black nationalism question because the thing i guess i struggle with the question i have is thomas is in this black nationalist world as a young man takes the ideas very seriously. Makes it turn to the right but in that term to the right he seems to really jettison some tenants of black nationalism thats quite important. This idea that political autonomy is important for black communities that even if electoral politics isnt an avenue for deliberation it is in avenue for aheavily carried over that much into adulthood. I think Dean Robinson and political scientist at the university of massachusetts wrote a wonderful book about 15 years ago called black nationalism in american politics. It had a big influence on me reading it and one of the key arguments he makes is that black nationalism is a tradition, political and intellectual but not hermetically sealed for everything going on around it in american culture. Every era has its own black nationalist horse version of that. The kind of romantic nationalism that season essential black culture you see in a lot of 19thcentury thought reflects larger currents in 19thcentury thought about nationalist and then change over time. The best answer i can give to you, which i dont think involves psychology as in thomas particularly on this question but reading him politically is that he is what happens to a certain black nationalism in a moment of massive conservative entrenchment. When the whole culture, not just conservatives. Liberals is a whole shift in the Democratic Party stop believing in the power of political amelioration the way they once stood between the 1930s and early 70s. A lot of politics is taken off the table in the broader culture. I would argue he is still committed to a kind of rational separatism you see in some of his opinions particularly on integration and supporting hbc you and so forth. There is an element and he says after he joins the court he says many people worship at the altar of integration i was never one of them. He does not believe in that kind of bringing together in that sense. I think you are right about the political amelioration but i think its not just peculiar to him i think its kind of what happens to a nationalist idea in a moment of massive political entrenchment that is acrosstheboard. And in the 70s as well theres a market turn in liberal parties worldwide. From his corner of the intellectual world hes making a market turn and filtering it through his White Nationalist commitments. I think thats will put. We been talking about thomas as it relates to himself but the question of how it relates to the black public because it is quite unpopular with the black public. Understatement. [laughter] the funny thing about abtheres a whole literature around the idea of racial policing that uses thomas as a paramedic example that does Clarence Thomas really count as a black person is a question that serious people argue and grapple with. To add a bit of the personal in this, funding is not the right word but whats funny about thomas to me in some ways he reminds me of very much the men in my life as a child, and from military families from a conservative family religious family one thats very committed to these institutions of black community and there are things that thomas says that ive heard almost verbatim from my father or grandfather or whomever. Yet my father the differences now and then we will shoot back in reference to racism. Which is not historically accurate. Im curious to hear what you think. This is it really the topic subject of the book from here is to hear what you think about thomass relationship, not just republicans and black republicans and booked black conservatism. Let me take the first part of your question because i think its an important one. Thomas is well aware of his standing in the black community. And has spoken about it. In the sense of personal pain he feels by the rejection of that community because he fully is and he understands exactly why black people are opposed to him. And he sees himself as a kind of jeremiah figure. And from the very start has really thought of black conservatism is a political project like Many Political projects that begins with a voice in the wilderness that needs to create its own constituency and i think thats exactly what he sees himself as doing. All evidence to the contrary on the court. I think thats really the way to understand him. It is also a personal biographical dimension to this as well which i talk about in the book and this is something that is very important to thomas going up. Thomas grew up in savannah mostly and what we call color is him that divide between lightskinned black to dark skin blacks is profound in his experience. He associates things like liberalism, all of the black professional managerial class, people like Patricia Harris who was in jimmy carters cabinet. With the lighter skinned wealthy or morally blacks in the community and he is very candid he is seen as a prophetic figure chronic trying to create something thats not there. He was quite tight with black conservatives throughout the 80s they were kind of elevated to a Media Product people like Robert Woodson at the time. Glenn lowry who has gone all over the place. Theres a group of black conservatives he was a part of Shelby Steele who became liberal at the time became more conservative. My sense is hes drifted away. I tend to focus once he gets onto the court i really focus on the opinions rather than the extra mural political activity. And thats whats interesting because if thomas is trying to create space what hes done on the course of his court is space for radical right conservatives. Looking ahead the energy in a right wing jurisprudence is what thomas and his the people his influence, kavanaugh, gorsuch, it seems as if that project, if its for black people hasnt necessarily been successful but what has been successful as providing legal architecture for a return to a kind of 19thcentury state. I think thats right. I think if you were to put the question to him in an honest moment and not sure he would flinch from that characterization because remember the 19th century for him is this golden age there is this fraternity between not just reactionary right and it a aand i think thomas would see that as a kind of familiar confirmation of a past domestic and yet he said he wants to go back he has a formulation he i want to go back in time but forwarded to the future its like time travel. I think he sees that kind of return is a kind of an opening of possibilities. In argument, he introduced in the book, really turn to at the end of the book is the idea of looking at thomas in its own right for thinking through somebody quite influential and will continue to be for quite some time but abi do that all the time. He is someone who represents whose channeling certain currents in the broader political culture and one of those is a deep racial pessimism that the problem of White Supremacy that racial inequality that these things are truly intractable and you make the case that if you believe that you may have more in common with thomass view of the world then you may recognize. I would just like you to talk about that a little bit and maybe say a little bit about what you are necessarily responding to because its not just the message aimed at the right especially aimed at the left as well. We associate the right pretrump and certainly on the court among judicial conservatives with a philosophy of colorblindness. Its a brand that the right involves beginning in the 1960s 1970s but antirace ais the position of the judicial right and colorblindness. We associate the left with much more racial conscious race consciousness being aware of racial differences. One of the things that thomas does is scramble that a little bit is the first, and that creates a puzzle. Given our sense of how things are the left and the right which is how does somebody who believes matt firmly not just in his youth but as a jurist, how to somebody like that end up on the right . And what is the political pathway . You brought up earlier the market term and liberal and democratic thinking and i think there has been a kind of winnowing of sense of what politics can do not just on the question of race but on a whole host of fronts. Think about Climate Change the idea that Political Leadership could transform this system i think seems unfathomable to many people. A lot of this i think is rooted in the defeat of the black freedom struggle in the 1960s and 70s and i think its really impossible to underestimate the impact of the loss of faith for lack of better word and political possibilities and what happens when you start losing that belief and political transformation and by that i mean whether through social movements or state action i think theres a tendency to start centralizing all forms of oppression and hierarchy not just when it comes to race but a whole bunch of matters. I think in some ways some of the discourse sometimes about race terms something that was up a political awe all say race is a social construction or politicals construction but the idea of the deconstruction of that doesnt seem possible. I think thats really my concern is that once you start losing a political analysis of race a deeply political analysis of race to say that if race was made by politics we could start on making it and i think thomas comes to this by saying that is not possible. And then when thats not possible you get an awful lot of market Oriented Solutions and all the rest of it. I think thats really where im coming at this from is a nervousness that the left has lost some tools of political analysis. The idea that the failure in the defeat of the Civil Rights Movement is this fundamental occurrence in the american political life its not something i had thought of because my mind says abit doesnt reshape how people think of things Going Forward with the sense that in the face of this remarkable Mass Movement something in a real sense is transform the constitutional understanding much like the construction the idea this could not just peter out but she a fundamental reversal kind of encourage some fatalistic thinking and i will admit it sometimes difficult for me to imagine what a post trump politics looks like. I meant the epilogue, this is our problem, this is not one group of peoples problem, this is all of our problem. I think its something to wrestle with. What i worry about is when that kind of fatalism are pessimism gets congealed and celebrated as somehow a melancholy insight into the nature of things and i think when it starts pressing up against that that i get nervous because the ramifications of that could go on for a very long time. And things can be set in motion by that kind of level of pessimism that we have no cognizance. And to say one other thing, this is just peculiar to the United States for this moment this is what happens often times to movements and defeat. Its not just that they get defeated politically, david bellas in the audience rebecca talk about france in the 1980s. When political movements get defeated its not just that they get defeated the memory of the defeat suddenly this seems to be the way things are. That loss of sense of political plasticity and possibility that then falls under the scheme of race. We have a lot of questions here. This question goes into something that we touched on thomass republicanism which is an important part of his life is up to what extent does put a window into thomass view of partisan politics. The truth is i dont know the answer to that question. I think thomas if by that you need to stoma support turn in the Republican Party that its taken . I think also answer yes. There is very little in his jurisprudence that would suggest he has much hostility to whats going on in the Republican Party. I made a deliberate decision in this book that once he got on the court the most important archive the most important pieces of evidence on the Supreme Court opinions themselves. There is such a tendency on the part of a lot of people who are liberals and democrats to just dismiss thomas his jurisprudence. The man has over 700 opinions. Its a vast archive. That to me is really the most important place to be looking at what hes actually been doing since 1991. What do you make of his more recent the two men shes very met bun on the side of letting the Trump Administration the executive go as far as possible nonpunitive questions and immigration policy on enforcement power. Do you see that as part of this larger jurisprudence or does this reflect his republicanism more than anything else . Its pretty standard Republican Party jurisprudence you see. He was a big supporter of the Bush Administration, he was further to the right then scalia on some of the Bush Administration war on terror the internal executive branch has been being else the jurisprudence of the right. I thought about getting into it that i looked at it and, certain thomas opinions pop when all of a sudden things are happening and then other times its boilerplate and those, i find them boilerplate. Like being a columnist. [laughter] i will duncan myself a little bit. How do you understand thomas is seemingly hopeless sense drawing on extreme originalist ideas, for example, the view that children are wholly uncovered by the First Amendment. Those childrens rights decisions are what blew my mind in part because he cites scholarship of people i went to graduate School Including jane kaminski. On child child rearing in colonial new england. It is really rooted in that. The way i read it, and to talk about this in the chapter on the wet constitution is that its really in the power of fathers. Sometimes talking about it as parents. Often times talking about the power of the patriarch and a vision of punishment is pedagogy. Hes absolutely committed to this vision of restoring the power of fathers and he does this in all sorts of ways but the First Amendment the speech rights of minors is really gripping stuff in a negative way. This would make conservatives mad i dont say this to do that but theres a way in which thomas in this intensely black patriarchal patriarchy is very reminiscent of louis farrakhan. Very reminiscent of this farrakhans hyper patriarchal vision of black life. Its interesting you say that. Thomas in his memoir, and elsewhere has spoken quite sympathetically about the nation of islam before anita hill happened during those hearings one of the two most explosive issues that was raised in the summer buildup to thomass confirmation this is a 1991 was the fact that i think in 1983 1984 he made two speeches praising louis farrakhan. This set off a huge battle, the reason it set off the battle it had nothing to do with black patriarchy. There was a very explosive revelation once anita hill stepped forward. Would you say your portrait of thomas eliminate black conservatism in general . E. G. Thomas or is thomas more idiosyncratic than that cannot. Thomas was probably damage thomas soul abthomas soul black economist very conservative who wrote a book called race and economics. Clarence thomas gets a call saying you got to read this book the capital missouri . Jefferson city . Is that right he drives all the way to st. Louis because thomas soul, this is 1975, thomas soul is their debate upcoming law professor by the name of Ruth Bader Ginsburg stop he goes and kind of said, this is conversion this is the role to damascus road to st. Louis. So was a huge influence on him. However, i think you cant homogenize black conservatives because there are other black conservatives who have a much stronger individualistic streak and a much stronger streak that believes in colorblindness and i dont think you see those in thomas. Hes a little more intentioned with. Is todays strain of afro pessimism analogous to those of the early 70s and to the point in similar politicaldirections im going to pass on that question, to be honest. My thoughts are too unsettled i feel like id be thinking out loud which is very dangerous thing for me to do. [indiscernable] [laughter] i think theres a potential for abi think theres a potential in the afro pessimist claims that you have to understand antiblackness is really an organizing ideology. I think theres a way in which that can be the basis for a very aggressive antiracist politics. Either path isnt guaranteed. I think its fair you can go that way. Let me Say Something about that. You just reminded me of something ive been thinking about a lot. A very important book for me was by elbert hirschman, called the rhetoric of reaction hirschman looks at three different ways that reactionary rhetoric works, one of which he calls futility. In the futility argument right wingers argue is to say in the face of a radical or reformist challenge that this is hopeless. This is pointless, this is futile and what hirschman says is that if utilitarian argument from the right sometimes bears an uncanny resemblance to arguments on the left by which he meant and i mean that the left always wants to make a structural argument. If theres individual acts of racism there not just individual personal acts of cruelty, they speak an entire systematic form of oppression but what the left always have to grapple with impeding that systemic portrait is you have to identify points of vulnerability by which you can listen to her that structure. Theres a danger, this just an isnt just about racism but any structural argument that its so deeply embedded im spitting all over the place. [laughter] so deeply embedded as to be uninsurable. I think you are right these kind of pessimistic arguments can go either way, absolutely what i think we need to be alert to is often ying and yang of left and right what is thomass relationship to the larger african ato africa is there space in the thought for Pan Africanism . Absolutely not. [laughter] thomas has very little trust with any kind of internationalism at all. He loathes its interesting because there is a tradition amongst the black panthers in particular. Of alternative constitutionalisms that break beyond the american nationstate and this is thomas absolutely not, hes very bound to the american nationstate. I would say this would make him unusual in that ab specifically because the coalition of people advocating for a separate state was highly influenced the nationalism by third world struggles that was part of that. Its interesting that thomas rejects it. Tommy shelby his philosopher at harvard has a great book we who are dark he says territorial selfdetermination obviously plays a huge role it doesnt always play as much of a role in black nationalism as we think it does. Its often leveraged in more pragmatic ways. Is thomas a market fundamentalist or what relation of his economic thinking to is black nationalism . We touched on this a little bit. I think theres an opportunity to go a little deeper. One thing i will say, depends on what you mean by market fundamentalism. Sometimes people think, when they say that they need the state doesnt do anything and thomas does not believe that. First and foremost, this is very much connected with his race consciousness he thinks market actors need to be created, they dont just happen, its not just what the market do its thing. This is where a lot of the institutions and the head of energy not just the car several state but understanding of black education in which he has spoken about at length the importance of historically black colleges and universities and the kind of skills are all very critical to him. He really values the kind of segregated school that he grew up in. And really thinks that those are the seed beds the market fundamentalism we see. How does thomas understand himself in relation to Thurgood Marshall . At his confirmation hearings in a statement he made these very warm encomiums to Thurgood Marshall. It was all kind of boilerplate pendulum. He said what had to be said. I think his relationship is very antagonistic to marshall he was quite critical of marshall during the 1980s. In many ways i think he sees himself as the throwing that jurisprudence and i think doubly so given the stature of Thurgood Marshall particularly in African American community. I think its a pretty antagonistic relationship. Despite some positive things he has said about marshall at the time of his confirmation. Marshall is sort of the embodiment of civil rights liberalism it makes sense. Absolutely and let me just say on that, thomass critique of that civil rights liberalism its what we call the rights revolution and is a threefold critique. Aside from the civil rights aspect its a critique of the reform of the transformation of criminal justice law. Its a critique of the sexual rights revolution. In that part of the jurisprudence of the court. Indyke heres a question. This relates to the Economic News and that is do you think he recognizes the ways in which a private economic power and teen and oppressive force on the black community because that seems to be the weak plan. To go with the shape and market actors but what happens if you are not shape up by Market Forces . I think he is an answer to that is surprising and more interesting than your standard conservative because he is sensitive to the impression that happens to private actors. He tends to do right overwhelmingly through a lens. For him its wide economic at yours. Fascinating if you compare Something Like booker t. Washington just how either absent or hostile he has two the whole idea of the black wage, black laborers and black workers he thinks that puts black people in a position of employment and white employers that to him seems all too reminiscent of a political subjugation he experienced so his real emblem of the market is the black entrepreneur and there has been a strong autobiographical dimension to this. A biographical dimension to this which is his grandfather raised him and his rather. His grandfather was kind of the black entrepreneur and the pillar of the black community. He sees that kind of man that lacked male entrepreneur as keystone. He is sensitive to some of those questions. Again its refreshed it through a lens. I think we have time for one more question. I say this question for last. Was thomas upset that loki do the right thing. Really it sort of touches on well let me say this. Let me say this. Thomas loves spike lee. Hes one of his favorite filmmakers any lights do the right thing and malcolm x and thats the best i can do with that answer. I think thats it. I think we are good. Thank you everyone. [applause] a reminder that toby is signing books so you should buy a book and get it signed. [inaudible conversations] host welcome susan rice to after words. Its a fascinating book and a personal tale and the chronicle of your professional life through wide array of crises but lets begin with the Current Crisis that the United States faces. As you know President Trump had a telephone call with the president of ukraine in