"There is Critical Race Theory scholarship connecting a preference for formality to race," I said in a post speculating about why Clarence Thomas might have said "I like formality."

I was expressing skepticism about the cue in the NYT (from Adam Liptak) to interpret Justice Thomas's statement to mean that "he was content with the way things are." (This was in reference to the way the Supreme Court Justices communicate by paper memo, and not by email or in face-to-face discussions.)

I said:

I could think of some other ways to interpret those 3 words and don't like being told to think of Justice Thomas as complacent and stiff. A person might like formality without being content with the way things are. A preference for formality can arise out of discomfort and mistrust. What kind of person shies away from free-wheeling banter and wants things put in writing?

I dropped a rare footnote: "There is Critical Race Theory scholarship connecting a preference for formality to race. Citation to come." That was 3 days ago, and at least one commenter has signaled he's still waiting. Did I think he'd forget?

I'd known all along what I wanted to cite, the Patricia J. Williams book from 20 years ago called "Alchemy of Race and Rights: Diary of a Law Professor." Unfortunately, that's not on Kindle, so needing to find my hard copy slowed me down.

In Chapter 8, "The Pain of Word Bondage," Williams describes the willingness of her colleague Peter Gabel to rent an apartment with no written agreement, to hand over a $900 cash deposit to strangers without even getting the keys. She, a black, female law professor, could not share his warm feeling for informality:

… I was raised to be acutely conscious of the likelihood that no matter what degree of professional I am, people will greet and dismiss my black femaleness as unreliable, untrustworthy, hostile, angry, powerless, irrational, and probably destitute. Futility and despair are very real parts of my response. So it helps me to clarify boundary; to show that I can speak the language of lease is my way of enhancing trust in me in my business affairs. As black, I have been given by this society a strong sense of myself as already too familiar, personal, subordinate to white people. I am still evolving from being treated as three-fifths of a human, a subpart of the white estate. I grew up in a neighborhood where landlords would not sign leases with their poor black tenants, and demanded that the rent be paid in cash; although superficially resembling Peter's transactions, such informality in most white-on-black situations signals distrust, not trust. Unlike Peter, I am still engaged in the struggle to set up transactions at arm's length, as legitimately commercial, and to portray myself as a bargainer of separate worth, distinct power, sufficient rights to manipulate commerce.

Peter, I speculate, would say that a lease or any other formal mechanism would introduce distrust into his relationships and he would suffer alienation, leading to the commodification of his being and the degradation of his person to property. For me, in contrast, the lack of formal relation to the other would leave me estranged. It would risk figurative isolation from that creative commerce by which I may be recognized as whole, by which I may feed and clothe and shelter myself, by which I may be seen as equal — even if I am a stranger. For me, stranger-stranger relations are better than stranger-chattel.

Now, take that observation and test out whether it could be similar to what Clarence Thomas was thinking when he said "I like formality."