For my part it seems fairly unremarkable that our only living African-American Supreme Court justice might occasionally draw readers’ attention to the history of racism. (One especially amusing example is his oblique reference in a later gun control opinion to John Paul Stevens’s famous dissent in Citizens United, which spoke glowingly of a 1907 piece of legislation authored by the notorious racist Sen. Benjamin Tillman of South Carolina: “Tillman’s contributions to campaign finance law have been discussed in our recent cases on that subject,” Thomas wrote. “His contributions to the culture of terrorism that grew in the wake of Cruikshank had an even more dramatic and tragic effect.”)

The idea that Thomas’s belief in the persistence of racism should strike us as revelatory or even mildly surprising tells us more about Robin and his intended audience — and, no doubt, about certain right-wing pathologies — than it does about Thomas. Surely it would be more extraordinary if he actually agreed with his fellow justices, liberal and conservative alike, that, in the words of his colleague Brett Kavanaugh, a single 1986 case “ended the widespread practice” of racial discrimination in the selection of jurors. Thomas knows better, not because he once typed up a manifesto for his Black Student Union, or even necessarily because he is black, but simply because he is honest.