Dear Justice Thomas,

I write to you in desperation. I need every possible Supreme Court vote to stand against the current racial reordering of American society along apartheid lines, and I have come to the admittedly wild conclusion that yours is the most gettable among my judicial enemies.

The court is considering a number of cases stemming from Donald Trump’s attempts to rewrite the Constitution by executive fiat: revoking birthright citizenship, firing federal employees, refusing to provide funds authorized by Congress, abducting documented immigrants and sending them to concentration camps, and detaining students who speak out on behalf of Palestine. I assume you believe that Trump has the authority to do all or most of this. I also assume that you are not an idiot and can therefore see that Trump’s actions largely target people whose primary infraction is their failure to be white. Your liberal colleagues on the court oppose this racism. If you could be moved to join them in some way, your vote and voice would be a powerful, and in some cases decisive, factor against Trump’s—and Elon Musk’s—white supremacist regime.

I write to you because you are the only black person the current ruling class of whites would even consider listening to. Your long-standing opposition to the civil rights movement, or really anything else that could wean this country off of its addiction to racial oppression, has made you uniquely positioned to speak truth to these particular powers. Trump himself won’t listen to you (or your court, or the Constitution, or the rule of law), but even a simple note from you admonishing this administration for its racial animus would be noticed by what passes as the intellectual elite in the MAGA firmament.

I know all too well that you do not believe that you have any special responsibility to protect racial equality in this country, and you’ve long abandoned any concern for the advancement of colored people. You’ll note that I did not even capitalize the “b” in the word black earlier, because I know you think it’s silly. No appeal to the history of the people whose shoulders you stand on will persuade you, and I make no such appeal.

But the very worst white people this country has to offer might listen to you now, because you have helped them so much. You have given them license. You have succeeded in reshaping the law, and much of American political discourse, in your ungenerous image. You have relentlessly argued against the extension of civil rights in this country. You’ve asserted that programs meant to help black Americans overcome this country’s history of racial oppression actually hobble us. You’ve provided key votes to gut the Voting Rights Act, thereby limiting black people’s access to the very means of democratic self-government. You’ve taken similarly harsh stances against women and the LGBTQ community, and now nearly all of your most nefarious ideas have been codified in case law. You’ve set out to destroy the progress made by our ancestors, and you have largely done just that.

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Whites will likely get more credit for this victory in the annals of history than you will. Judges like the segregationist Robert Bork or the theocrat Antonin Scalia will be called the forefathers of your philosophy. Lawyers will give credit to Ed Blum, Stephen Miller, and even Chris Rufo for rewriting the definition of the word diversity. The general white supremacist public will always believe that Donald Trump was their champion and savior.

But you and I know better. For the past 30 years, you have fought, often alone on the court, on the extremist vanguard against the vaunted gains of the civil rights era. Despite your well-­documented reticence during oral arguments, you have given these white folks the language they needed to fight against these gains without using the racial slurs and crackpot eugenics they once embraced to advance their grievances. It was you who reframed the affirmative action debate as one about a “color-­blind” Constitution, and then deployed the same argument against equal access to voting rights. You have given these people aid, comfort, and, perhaps most important, cover as they seek to unmake the racial progress achieved by our ancestors. They literally could not have gotten this far without you.

You have claimed to do all this in the name of individuality and the belief that personal merit and achievement can overcome any racial barrier white folks can think to erect. You believe that no matter how racist a law is, or how much of a disparate and unfair racial impact it has, the most meritorious of us will overcome the law, as long as we are not explicitly prohibited from doing so. You strike me as a racial Darwinist: You think that the strongest and most deserving of us will survive no matter what the whites throw at us, while those who struggle should be sacrificed at the altar of white supremacy.

I have considered your arguments and find them to be full of shit. The policies you hate—like affirmative action, the Voting Rights Act, and “DEI”—are not there to help black people; they’re there to stop white people from being so racist. You might say that the law cannot change the hearts and minds of white folks, but changing minds has never been the goal of these laws. We do not require white folks to believe in or commit to racial equality and social justice in this country; we need them to keep their boots off of our necks. Whenever white people leave us the hell alone, we thrive.

But I’m not here to change your mind. I’m here to point out that the Trump-Musk administration has failed even on your racist curve. This administration regularly, as a matter of policy, denies the individual merit and excellence of black people who have indeed overcome the white man’s laws. People who have gotten to where they are because of their own merit are now being fired or denied access to all sectors of American life, including the federal government, the US military, and the higher education system, not because they have failed some test or fallen below some standard, but simply because the Trump administration deems anything “black” to be “DEI.”

I’m thinking, for starters, about Gen. C.Q. Brown Jr., the recently fired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who happens to be black. Even if you think Trump had the authority to fire him, can you reasonably say that General Brown’s skin color played no role in his firing? Or what about Gwynne Wilcox, the first black woman to serve on the National Labor Relations Board, who was also fired by Trump? Where was the discussion of individual merit in either of these cases—or for any of the peopled fired for being “DEI hires,” without any inquiry into their actual performance, as Trump and Musk take a chain saw to the federal government?

Indeed, if we now live in a world where any black person in the federal government can be summarily fired on the presumption that they got their position thanks to DEI, then what is to stop the Trump administration from refusing to follow any of your opinions, simply because you—like Brown, like Wilcox—are a “DEI hire,” in its view? If everybody black in government is suspect, then you must also be suspect.

I know this is a sore subject for you. You have written and spoken extensively about the pain of having your merit questioned and your accomplishments disregarded based on the mere whisper that you’ve gotten to where you are only because the white man extended a helping hand to a black face. I believe that your hatred of affirmative action and other diversity programs comes more from bitterness and personal resentment than the myth you sell of a “color-blind” Constitution.

I get it. I too have experienced unfounded charges that I am a diversity hire, and suffered the same pain as you have. Every single day of my career, some person who lacks my intellect or education—whom I could standardized-test into the frozen ground—has felt that the whiteness of their skin gives them the right to question my credentials. It is infuriating. But unlike you, I redirect my anger and resentment toward the white people who malign me, not the programs that they claim, without evidence, have helped me and others. I have not spent my life trying to burn a ladder others may use, simply because some white people disrespect me.

Despite our intellectual and moral divide, I believe you can see as clearly as I can that Trump is not running a “color-blind” administration, that his government is not interested in treating individual Americans according to their merit, and that Copresident Musk seeks to use his power and influence toward resegregating the federal workforce not along meritorious lines but along racial and gender lines.

I do not write to ask you to abandon your long crusade against civil rights, nor to risk the ire of your white benefactors. I write to ask only that you note this administration’s clear racial animus and bias in its executive orders and admonish it for its conduct. You could do this in the funding-freeze cases, where the administration’s racial animus is directed not merely against “DEI programs” but against literally any corporation (or law firm) that tries to hire black people. You could do this in the First Amendment cases, where the administration is rounding up people who protest for Palestine, not people who protest for Israel. You could do this in the mass deportation cases, where the administration’s refusal to honor due process results in people who “look” like noncitizens getting rounded up with the rest. Your words, even if raised in concurrence with an underlying executive authority you believe exists, could be powerful.

You and I both know that an acknowledgment from you of this administration’s racism would carry more weight with some of your Supreme Court colleagues than a similar charge levied by any other black man alive today. Chief Justice John Roberts, alleged attempted rapist Brett Kavanaugh, and Justice Amy Coney Barrett might take racism seriously, for once in their lives, if you called it out. (I suspect Samuel Alito would simply be excited by such a charge, while Neil Gorsuch thinks racism exists only against Native Americans.)

Beyond your colleagues, you have an extensive network of former clerks and current judges who won’t even consider wrestling with the racism of this administration unless you tell them they should. All of your former clerks who desperately want your job would notice if you ever drew a line in the sand. So would the cadre of black conservative academics and pundits who also take their cues from you. From John McWhorter to Stephen A. Smith, there is a group of blacks who have adopted, whole cloth, your winner-take-all, “If you can’t beat them, join them” philosophy. A mere judicial note from you would cause the mainstream media to blare the headline “Clarence Thomas Opposes ‘Racial Animus’ in Trump Executive Order.” It could make a difference, and even the smallest difference is needed right now.

In 1998, you gave a speech to the National Bar Association, the predominately black guild of practicing attorneys. You were unapologetic about your views and judicial record, and unrepentant, but you said, “It pains me deeply, and more deeply than any of you can imagine, to be perceived by so many members of my race as doing them harm. All the sacrifice, all the long hours of preparation were to help, not to hurt.”

You were deluding yourself. Your career has done nothing but hurt our race, and nothing you do now can change that. Your beloved Webster’s Dictionary will one day have a description of you as its entry for the term race traitor. But if you ever truly wanted to “help, not hurt,” you could be of aid now. You have put yourself in a position where you are the only black man the white supremacists running this joint will even consider listening to. Use your voice to help us.

May God treat you better than he did Pharaoh, and soften your heart,

Elie Mystal