‘This is going to change the rest of our lives’: New book details personal politics of race & gender

0:01 The Wall Street Journal editorial board started its Sunday editorial,

0:06 The Triumph of Clarence Thomas, with a milestone.

0:10 Congratulations.

0:11 Congratulations to Clarence Thomas, who this week will become the second

0:15 longest serving Supreme Court justice in history.

0:18 This wasn't what most legal experts expected when President George H W.

0:25 Bush elevated Judge Thomas from the D .C.

0:28 Circuit Court of Appeals at age 43 in 1991.

0:32 Clarence Thomas voted with the Republican

0:35 majority on the Supreme Court last week,

0:37 in effect repealing part of the Voting Rights Act.

0:40 As Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her dissent,

0:43 this decision renders Section 2 all but a dead letter.

0:47 In the states where that law continues to matter.

0:51 The state's still marked by residential

0:54 segregation and racially polarized voting.

0:56 Minority voters can now be cracked out of the electoral process.

1:01 The latest chapter in the majorities now

1:05 completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.

1:08 Professor Kimberley Credshaw is not surprised.

1:12 She worked to defeat Clarence Thomas nomination to the Supreme

1:15 Court as a member of Anita Hill's legal team in 1991.

1:18 In her wonderful new book, Backtalker,

1:22 an American memoir, Professor Crenshaw writes,

1:25 the hopes that several black leaders

1:27 placed in Clarence Thomas' upbringing as black and poor did little to stop him

1:32 from repeatedly ruling against black and poor people.

1:36 His deep south roots,

1:37 where for decades African-American voters had been disenfranchised and worse,

1:42 did did nothing to discourage Thomas from helping to gut the Voting Rights Act,

1:47 widely regarded as the crown jewel of the civil rights era.

1:52 His vote in Citizens United helped put our republic on a fire sale,

1:57 eventually making it possible for an autocrat to rule

2:01 over the most powerful democracy in the world.

2:04 And Professor Crenshaw writes this about what she expected

2:08 on the day Clarence Thomas was confirmed in 1991.

2:12 When at last Thomas was confirmed, I whispered,

2:16 this is going to change the rest of our lives.

2:20 Joining us now is Professor Kimberly Crenshaw.

2:23 She's distinguished professor of law and the at the then the promise Institute

2:27 chair in human rights at UCLA and professor of law at Columbia Law School.

2:32 She is the co-founder and executive

2:35 director of the African American policy forum.

2:38 Her new book is back talker an American memoir

2:41 and it is available everywhere at midnight tonight and going forward.

2:47 Kimberly So glad you're back.

2:49 So glad you're here with this book.

2:51 This is just a remarkable story.

2:53 I've always known you're remarkable.

2:56 Now I know so much more.

2:58 We're focusing on Clarence Thomas because of the Voting

3:01 Rights But there's so much more in this book,

3:03 and I hope we get to so much more in this book.

3:06 But that quote, that line of yours on the day that he was confirmed,

3:10 there was still hope.

3:11 I was working in the Senate.

3:13 You might have been hoping.

3:14 No, no, I wasn't by that time.

3:15 But working in the Senate, I know there was still hope.

3:18 Yeah.

3:19 That maybe when this guy gets on the court,

3:21 maybe he won't be like one of those REACTIONARY REPUBLICANS.

3:26 IT TURNS OUT HE'S THE LEADER OF THE PACK.

3:28 WELL, ABSOLUTELY.

3:29 ONE OF THE MOST POWERFUL SUPREME COURT JUSTICES EVER.

3:33 AND, YOU KNOW, FOLKS WERE NOT ALONE IN BEING HOPEFUL.

3:37 A LOT OF VERY Very famous and respected people believed that if

3:40 we just leave the lights on, Clarence Thomas will come home.

3:44 Maya Angelou wrote an op-ed in The New York Times around that time

3:49 saying because he was black and because he grew up poor in the south,

3:53 there's something deep inside him that he will rediscover.

3:58 The SCLC which was Martin Luther

4:00 King's organization they supported Clarence Thomas.

4:04 He had support from across the black political

4:07 spectrum and also within some of the traditional

4:11 civil rights groups because they thought

4:13 that there was something deeply embedded in him.

4:16 I.

4:17 I was not optimistic at all.

4:19 I remembered what he had done at the EEOC.

4:23 I remembered how he had slowed enforcement.

4:25 I remembered how he talked about civil rights leaders.

4:28 I remembered how he talked about his own sister.

4:30 I saw this person as a dyed-in-the-wool,

4:33 deeply conservative individual who was not going

4:37 to somehow rediscover some deep connection to communities.

4:42 And most importantly, about everything you just described.

4:44 Yes.

4:45 All policy, all an opposite,

4:47 you were opposed to his nomination before Anita Hill revelations.

4:52 Everything you just cited was before the Anita Hill All that was true.

4:56 All that was already well known.

4:58 But, you know, the line that I say

4:59 in the book that our lives are going to be changed

5:04 forever was followed by a line by the person who

5:07 ended up co-founding the African American Policy Forum with me.

5:12 And what he said is, all because we refused to believe a black woman.

5:16 So what we got from Clarence Thomas from the failure

5:20 to credit what Anita Hill had to say,

5:22 is the end of meaningful campaign finance reform.

5:26 What we got was the gutting of the Voting Rights Act.

5:29 What we got was undermining other kind of protections

5:33 that people bled for, some people died for.

5:37 He was that fifth vote that undermined

5:40 the structure of civil rights enforcement.

5:43 So it's a story about the failure to understand black women's experiences.

5:48 And I call it a huge intersectional failure.

5:51 You had anti-racist groups really responding to this high tech lynching idea.

5:58 And Anita Hill didn't have anything that she could have

6:01 said that would have rallied the forces in the same way.

6:05 So this is a memoir about much more

6:08 than just that crusade and many other crusades.

6:13 You know, one of the things that interests

6:15 me right now as a subject with people are

6:17 talking about how difficult it is coming out

6:19 of college now starting off in the world now.

6:21 What made you start in the direction you started and how did you get your start?

6:27 Oh, well, my story is one in which my family, my mother,

6:31 my father, they were called race men of the 20th century.

6:35 They were people who fought against the barriers, the obstacles,

6:39 but also thought it was important to make sure that we

6:42 were prepared to walk through those doors when they finally opened.

6:46 I was that generation that was not born into a state of freedom.

6:49 I was born before the Voting Rights Act, before the Civil Rights Act of 1964-65.

6:55 So that was just an imagination, a possibility that they were preparing us for.

7:01 But one of the ways that my family did prepare me

7:04 for that was to make sure that I had something to say,

7:07 that I wasn't just living life.

7:09 I just wasn't letting it pass me by, that I observed what my life was,

7:14 that I had something to say about it.

7:16 And I actually had to come to the dinner

7:18 table every night with something to offer to the conversation.

7:22 So I was always the person who was observing, I was asking questions.

7:27 If it didn't make sense to me, I would keep asking questions.

7:30 And that's more or less.