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By James J. Devine
In the hallowed halls of the U.S. Supreme Court, two Black justices—Clarence Thomas and Ketanji Brown Jackson—stand as historic figures in a nation still wrestling with its racial legacy.
Behind these jurists stand two White spouses whose presence in their lives speaks volumes about America’s complex, often contradictory, relationship with race, power, and interracial love.
Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the outspoken conservative activist married to Justice Clarence Thomas, and Patrick Jackson, the quietly supportive surgeon husband of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, could not be more different in temperament and public profile.
Yet their marriages to two of the most prominent Black legal minds in the country force us to confront uncomfortable questions: What does it mean when the spouses of the only two Black Supreme Court justices are white? And what does this say about the intersection of race, privilege, and power in America today?
Ginni Thomas has long been a lightning rod. A staunch conservative, she has used her position as the wife of a Supreme Court justice to advance far-right causes, from lobbying against the Affordable Care Act to supporting the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen.
Most infamously, she pressured then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to overturn the election results, texting him that the country’s fate was at stake.
Her activism has raised ethical concerns—how much influence does she wield over her husband’s decisions?—but it also underscores a racial paradox.
Clarence Thomas, a Black man who rose from poverty in the segregated South to the highest court, is married to a white woman whose political fervor aligns with a movement often accused of suppressing Black votes and rolling back civil rights.
Their union is a microcosm of the conservative movement’s complicated racial dynamics: a Black jurist who dismantles affirmative action and voting rights protections, bolstered by a white spouse who champions the very ideologies that have historically oppressed Black Americans.
In stark contrast stands Patrick Jackson, the husband of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
A Harvard-trained surgeon, Jackson has remained largely out of the political fray, supporting his wife’s historic ascent without inserting himself into the national discourse.
Their interracial marriage—like the Thomases’—exists in a country where, despite growing acceptance, such unions still draw scrutiny, particularly when one spouse holds immense power.
But where Ginni Thomas embodies the politicization of race, Patrick Jackson represents its normalization. His low-profile presence suggests a partnership built on personal, rather than ideological, alignment.
Yet even his silence is telling: In a nation where Black women are often hyper-visible in their struggles, his whiteness affords him the privilege of blending into the background—a privilege his wife, as the first Black female justice, will never have.
Interracial marriage was only legalized nationwide in 1967 (Loving v. Virginia), the same year Clarence Thomas turned 19. Today, such unions are more common, yet they remain fraught with cultural weight—especially when they involve high-profile figures.
The Thomases and the Jacksons are not anomalies; they are symbols of a country that has nominally embraced racial integration while still grappling with its implications.
But these marriages also reveal deeper tensions. Does interracial love signify progress, or can it sometimes serve as a shield—a way for powerful figures to signal racial transcendence while upholding systems of inequality?
Clarence Thomas’s jurisprudence has often harmed Black communities, yet his marriage to a white woman complicates the narrative of racial solidarity.
Meanwhile, Ketanji Brown Jackson’s marriage to a white man does not dilute her identity as a trailblazing Black woman, but it does remind us that even at the pinnacle of success, Black Americans still navigate a world where whiteness is the default power structure.
What do these marriages mean in a nation where racial identity is both deeply personal and unavoidably political? Does love across color lines dismantle barriers, or can it sometimes obscure them?
And why, in 2024, are the only two Black justices on the Supreme Court married to white spouses—while their white colleagues are almost all married to people of their own race?
All of the white justices—except Amy Coney Barrett, whose husband is Hispanic—are all married to white spouses.
There are no easy answers.
But the presence of Ginni Thomas and Patrick Jackson in the lives of the Court’s only Black justices forces us to confront the messy reality of race in America: a story not just of personal relationships, but of power, perception, and the enduring legacy of a divided nation.
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