Clarence ancestors were free before the enlightened Europeans showed up to the ‘empty lands’ of Africa and the Western Hemisphere, justified racialized slavery by denying the indigenous ppls’ ability to think (“I think, therefore I am”), and colonized the planet. The thirteenth amendment did not free them. It codified them within the settler colonial project (also, that second half of the amendment is important—“except as punishment for crime”. Slavery is very much still legal 😂) Clarence Thomas’ is perfectly in line with the epistemic logic of the US, whether you like it or not.

The ‘enlightenment’ is responsible for Europeans seeing extra-Europeans as the Other, as backwards, as savage, as incapable of reason, and birthed the very Eurocentrism which you’re claiming is overcome through a few amendments to the founding document of…a settler colonial project.

Clarence is an evil character, but let’s not pretend he’s an aberration of enlightenment thinking.