The Man from Pinpoint

In his new book, My Grandfather’s Son, Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas, breaks his long-standing silence and produces a poignant memoir of his upbringing, his educational experiences, and the events that helped mold his personal philosophy of independence and self-sufficiency. Much has been written about Thomas, especially since his contentious 1991 confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, about this man that liberals love to hate because of his conservative views on many social issues. In reading this frank and revealing book, I was struck by how his life’s journey had dovetailed with the emergence of the modern Civil Rights movement which provided him a unique vantage point from which to hammer out his own point of view.

Born in 1948 in the tiny village of Pinpoint, Georgia, Thomas entered a world where black people still lived a segregated existence and during his early years, he had ample experience of the limitations such a system imposes. He came of age just as the budding Civil Rights movement emerged with all of its exciting potential. Thomas had an insider’s perspective as young blacks found themselves surging ahead into uncharted waters. Fortunately, he had been raised with a strong set of values that helped him chart his own course.

Thomas was raised in Savannah by his maternal grandfather, Myers Anderson, whom he called Daddy. A stern man, Anderson used his own brand of tough-love to teach his belief in self-reliance, hard work and tenacity. While the young Thomas bristled under Daddy’s discipline, he found ample opportunity in later years to fall back on these values. Another powerful influence came from the catholic nuns who taught at the segregated parochial schools that he attended. In addition to providing him with strong academic foundation, the nuns were also instrumental in helping him attend The College of the Holy Cross that he entered following several years of wrestling with the strength of his religious vocation in the seminary.

Thomas worked hard to graduate from Holy Cross as well as Yale Law School. And while his strong academic skills stood him well, he struggled financially, especially in law school where he was a married student with a wife and child. But the more telling struggle was the one he waged with the emerging battle for Civil Rights. As an undergraduate he was part of the black student movement and experienced the heady rhetoric and activism that sought to right century-old wrongs. While Thomas had plenty of firsthand experience of life under the old ways of segregation, he was troubled by some of the new ideas being put forth, especially those that stressed separatism and rejection of white society. He also disagreed with some of the new social theories, such as forced busing to achieve school integration. He felt that while this solution allowed for statistical “progress”, it did not do enough to address the issue of providing quality education for all students. He distrusted the disturbing trend towards increased emphasis on government programs rather than stressing self-reliance as a means of improving one’s lot in life. His experience with Affirmative Action left him bristling over the fact that when he went in search of his first job, he found that his hard-won Yale Law degree was devalued in the marketplace by the assumption that black graduates had not been held to the same standards as other students. At the same time, his efforts to build a career, trying to balance the needs of his family against his determination to achieve a measure of job satisfaction should resonate with generations of young people, especially those who lacked a strong support system, who sought to make their way in the world.

In 1991, President George Bush nominated Thomas to a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. Among the qualities that supported his nomination was his hard won conservative philosophy that made him an attractive candidate for the Republicans. Unfortunately, it also made him a marked man for the democrats who quickly geared up to block his appointment. The chain of events is well documented, but it is important to recall that the charges brought by Anita Hill came by way of a supposedly confidential FBI investigation that was leaked to the press by committee staffers. In spite of the fact that the Judiciary Committee had already passed his nomination to the full senate, the hearings were re-opened to air Hill’s lurid uncorroborated charges in the public arena. And while, in the final analysis, it boiled down to his word against hers, Thomas brought a spotless record to the table while Hill’s employment record detracted from her credibility.

Fortunately, there were enough tough minded supporters who refused to let Clarence Thomas get Borked. But for a man who had struggled to live his life in a just manner, he realized that Hill’s charges would stick to him forever. Yes, he was eventually appointed to the Supreme Court, but he was left with a besmirched reputation that, in some quarters, will never be retored. In an attempt at blocking the appointment of a man who’s only sin was his conservative views, his detractors, left wing liberals all, stooped to the old segregationist trick of accusing a black man of sexual impropriety. It was more than ironic to watch members of this same group rush to defend Bill Clinton a few years later when was impeached for lying about using the Oval Office as a lair for sex with a subordinate.

On October 9th the Boston Globe ran an editorial by Derrick Z. Jackson’s that I thought at first was a review of My Grandfather’s Son. After reading the article, however,I realized that Jackson, in all likelihood, hadn’t bothered to read the book, which he neglected to name. He simply used snatches of the book to do a hatchet job on the Supreme Court Justice who, according to Jackson, should just forget about Hill’s charges since he had “won” in 1991. The Globe added editorial balance by running a cartoon next to the article depicting Thomas’ car spinning mud on Anita Hill posing as an innocent bystander. Nice Touch. If any of these journalistic wizards had bothered to read the book, they would have realized that the recalling of anecdotes of Hill’s employment were an effort at understanding why she made these charges which Thomas labels sees as totally false.

It is not hard to see how liberals can disagree with Clarence Thomas, but throwing fabricated dirt on his Supreme Court nomination is a far cry from a thoughtful debate on the issues. Don’t make the same mistake as the Globe staff. Read this book and you will come away with an appreciation of the ordeal that Clarence Thomas underwent and the inner steel that allowed him to survive it.