Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, 78, declared himself a “walking contradiction” to critics who expect black Americans to hold liberal political views, likening that pressure to “indentured servitude” in a podcast interview that dropped Monday.
Thomas, the second black justice to serve on the Supreme Court and now the second-longest-serving justice in US history, made the comments on the “Verdict with Ted Cruz” podcast hosted by Sen. Ted Cruz, 53, R-Texas. The interview was recorded at Cruz’s book release event for “Going Further: The Incomparable Clarence Thomas” on Tuesday.
“When I came to this town, one of the greatest difficulties, if you think about it, was that there were those who thought that I should think a certain way,” Thomas lamented on the podcast.
“They said, ‘Oh, you’re confused.’ Well, I’m not confused. You’re confused. You confuse me with someone who’s been in indentured servitude or something,” he continued.
“But at any rate, they think that here’s the way you’re supposed to think again … [because of] your skin color. There’s this kind of deterministic view that you’re supposed to think this because we say so.”
Cruz, a former Solicitor General of Texas who argued before the Supreme Court and Thomas in the early 2000s, authored his book after conducting roughly nine hours of one-on-one interviews with the justice. During the podcast, Thomas praised Cruz for defending him during attacks several years ago over his wife Ginni Thomas’s ties to conservative groups and gifts he received from wealthy elites. He called Cruz and Utah GOP Sen. Mike Lee “friends” who stood for him and his wife.
Thomas reflected on how family and religion shaped his conservative beliefs, recounting clashes with his grandfather over the state of America. His grandfather asked him, “What country is better than this country with all its problems?” and Thomas recalled being unable to answer that.
The justice previously described how his grandfather had no education, was raised by a freed slave, and yet never complained. Recently, he recounted that after his grandparents “died suddenly in 1983, the decision I made was to live the rest of my life as a memorial to theirs.”
During his time in law school, Thomas once bristled at receiving a copy of conservative intellectual Thomas Sowell’s book, “Black Education: Myths and Tragedies,” though he later rediscovered and warmed up to it.
The justice had been a “left-wing radical” during his youth, per Cruz’s description, attending an anti-war demonstration at Harvard Square in April 1970 that devolved into an angry riot. At the time, Thomas had been attending the College of the Holy Cross and was disillusioned with the Catholic Church, frustrated with its lack of moral clarity on racism.
But the country’s senior-most justice explained that the riot was a turning point for him.
“I think that was the Road to Damascus moment. That’s the moment where you look into the abyss, and it looks back,” Thomas said, adding that he “couldn’t answer why” he was behaving that way at the time.
“[I] walked in front of the chapel because I was exhausted but couldn’t sleep,” Thomas explained about what happened after the riot. “I faced it, the Blessed Sacrament, and I asked God to take hate out of my heart. And I said, ‘If you take a hate out of my heart, I will never hate again.'”
“And that was the moment for me, when I began to move in a more positive direction.”
In the viral moment that prompted widespread attention to Thomas’s remarks, the justice’s comparison of social pressure on black conservatives to “indentured servitude” drew immediate reaction across the political spectrum, with supporters praising his defiance of racial political expectations and critics disputing his framing. The interview marked a rare public appearance for Thomas, who has become increasingly vocal in recent years about his personal journey and the criticism he has faced throughout his career.
Cruz’s book “Going Further: The Incomparable Clarence Thomas” draws on their extensive interview sessions and was released Tuesday at an event where the two appeared together.