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

[0:02] wall street journal editorial board started its sunday editorial the triumph of clarence thomas [0:09] with a milestone congratulations to clarence thomas who this week will become the second [0:15] longest serving supreme court justice in history this wasn't what most legal experts expected [0:23] when president george hw bush elevated judge thomas from the dc circuit court of appeals at age 43 [0:31] in 1991 clarence thomas voted with the republican majority on the supreme court last week [0:37] in effect repealing part of the voting rights act as justice elena kagan wrote in her dissent [0:44] this decision renders section two all but a dead letter in the states where that law continues to [0:51] matter the states still marked by residential segregation and racially polarized voting [0:56] minority voters can now be cracked out of the electoral process the latest chapter in the [1:03] majority's now completed demolition of the voting rights act professor kimberly crenshaw is not [1:11] surprised she worked to defeat clarence thomas nomination to the supreme court as a member of [1:17] anita hill's legal team in 1991 in her wonderful new book backtalker an american memoir professor [1:24] crenshaw writes the hopes that several black leaders placed in clarence thomas's upbringing as [1:30] black and poor did little to stop him from repeatedly ruling against black and poor people [1:36] his deep south roots where for decades african-american voters had been disenfranchised and worse [1:43] did nothing to discourage thomas from helping to gut the voting rights act widely regarded as the crown [1:50] jewel of the civil rights era his vote in citizens united helped put our republic on a fire sale eventually [1:58] making it possible for an autocrat to rule over the most powerful democracy in the world and professor [2:05] crenshaw writes this about what she expected on the day clarence thomas was confirmed in 1991 when at [2:14] last thomas was confirmed i whispered this is going to change the rest of our lives joining us now is [2:22] professor kimberly crenshaw she's distinguished professor of law and the at the then the promise [2:27] institute chair in human rights at ucla and professor of law at columbia law school she is the [2:33] co-founder and executive director of the african-american policy forum her new book is backtalker [2:41] an american memoir and it is available everywhere at midnight tonight and going forward uh kimberly so [2:48] glad you're back so glad you're here with this book this is just a remarkable story um i've always known [2:56] you're remarkable now i know so much more um we're focusing on clarence thomas because of the voting [3:01] rights act uh last week but there's so much more in this book and i and i hope we get to so much more in [3:06] this book but that quote that line of yours on the day that he was confirmed there was still hope i was [3:13] working you might have been hope no no i wasn't by that time but working in the senate i know there was [3:18] still hope yeah that maybe when this guy gets on the court maybe he won't be like like like one of [3:24] those reactionary republicans turns out he's the leader of the pack well absolutely one of the most [3:30] powerful supreme court justices ever um and you know folks were not alone in in being hopeful a lot of [3:38] very famous and respected people believe that if we just leave the lights on clarence thomas will come [3:44] home maya angelou wrote an op-ed in the new york times around that time saying you know because he [3:51] was black and because he grew up poor in the south there's something deep inside him that he will [3:57] rediscover the sclc which was martin luther king's organization they supported clarence thomas he had [4:05] support from across the black political uh spectrum and also within uh some of the traditional civil [4:12] rights groups because they thought that there was something deeply embedded in him i was not [4:18] optimistic at all i remembered what he had done at the eeoc i remembered how he had slowed enforcement [4:25] i remembered how he talked about civil rights leaders i remembered how he talked about his own sister [4:31] i saw this person as a dyed in the wool deeply conservative individual who was not going to somehow [4:38] rediscover some deep uh connection to communities and most importantly about everything you just [4:44] described yes all policy all an opposite you were opposed to his nomination before anita hill [4:51] revelations that's everything you just cited was a before all that was true all that was already [4:57] well known but you know the the line that i uh say in the book that our lives are going to be changed [5:03] forever was followed by a line by the person who ended up co-founding the african-american policy forum [5:11] with me and what he said is all because we refuse to believe a black woman so what we got from clarence [5:19] thomas from the failure to credit what anita hill had to say is the end of meaningful campaign finance [5:25] reform what we got was the gutting of the voting rights act what we got was undermining other kind [5:32] of protections that people bled for some people died for he was that fifth vote that undermined the [5:41] structure of civil rights enforcement so it's a story about the failure to understand black women's [5:48] experiences and i call it a huge intersectional failure you had anti-racist groups really responding [5:56] to this high-tech lynching idea and anita hill didn't have anything that she could have said that [6:02] would have rallied the forces in the same way so this is a memoir about much more than just that [6:10] crusade uh and many other crusades what what you know one of the things that interests me right now [6:16] is a subject for with people are talking about how difficult it is coming out of college now starting off [6:21] in the world now 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 my father they were called race men of the 20th [6:35] century they were people who fought against the barriers the obstacles but also thought it was [6:40] important to make sure that we were prepared to walk through those doors when they finally open i was [6:47] that generation that was not born into a state of freedom i was born before the voting rights act [6:52] before the civil rights act of 1964-65 so that was just an imagination a possibility that they were [7:00] preparing us for but one of the ways that my family did prepare me for that was to make sure that i had [7:07] something to say that i wasn't just living life i just wasn't letting it pass me by that i observed what my [7:13] life was that i had something to say about it and i actually had to come to the dinner table every [7:19] night with something to offer to the conversation so i was always the person who was observing i was [7:26] asking questions if it didn't make sense to me i would keep asking questions and that's more or less [7:32] what led me to some of the observations about how race was functioning in my life and then how gender was [7:38] also functioning uh to shape and and delimit some of the possibilities