I think not even trying to rectify the issues of the past is worse than doing nothing at all.
Because they have different judicial philosophies
That doesn't mean Clarence Thomas isn't a c00n or a nut, it just means that him and Scalia have different perspectives on how best to eliminate human and civil rights in the country. In the same way that Scalia and Thomas differ from Posner and Rehnquist
He's had an outsized amount of help to get where he is. He has basically been spirited into every single post-law position he's ever been in.
And there's never been a single non-right-wing opinion he's written on the Courts. Not a single one.
It's not nuanced or complex. There's a desperation to make him into a more complex figure than he is, because being African-American and being anti-Black come with so much cognitive dissonance.
The reality is, that he's done nothing but try his best to make life harder for Black people in the U.S. for the working class and poor, for the laborer, for the international servant or slave, for groups under surveillance, for minority voters in the South, for people who have been incarcerated (or may be incarcerated), for large groups who want to bring class actions, for small businesses, for women seeking healthcare, for anyone seeking healthcare, for people trying to collectively bargain, for immigrants, etc.