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Usually ships in 1 business days | | | | | | Provocative, inspiring, and unflinchingly honest, My Grandfather's Son is the story of one of America's most remarkable and controversial leaders, Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, told in his own words. Thomas was born in rural Georgia on June 23, 1948, into a life marked by poverty and hunger. His parents divorced when Thomas was still a baby, and his father moved north to Philadelphia, leaving his young mother to raise him and his brother and sister on the ten dollars a week she earned as a maid. At age seven, Thomas and his six-year-old brother were sent to live with his mother's father, Myers Anderson, and her stepmother in their Savannah home. It was a move that would forever change Thomas's life. His grandfather, whom he called "Daddy," was a black man with a strict work ethic, trying to raise a family in the years of Jim Crow. Thomas witnessed his grandparents' steadfastness despite injustices, their hopefulness despite bigotry, and their deep love for their country. His own quiet ambition would propel him to Holy Cross and Yale Law School, and eventually—despite a bitter, highly contested public confirmation—to the highest court in the land. In this candid and deeply moving memoir, a quintessential American tale of hardship and grit, Clarence Thomas recounts his astonishing journey for the first time, and pays homage to the man who made it possible. Intimately and eloquently, Thomas speaks out, revealing the pieces of his life he holds dear, detailing the suffering and injustices he has overcome, including the acrimonious and polarizing Senate hearing involving a former aide, Anita Hill, and the depression and despair it created in his own life and the lives of those closest to him. My Grandfather's Son is the story of a determined man whose faith, courage, and perseverance inspired him to rise up against all odds and achieve his dreams. | | | |
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| | Product Details | | Author: | Clarence Thomas | | Hardcover: | 304 pages | | Publisher: | Harper | | Publication Date: | October 01, 2007 | | Language: | English | | ISBN: | 0060565551 | | Package Length: | 9.1 inches | | Package Width: | 6.2 inches | | Package Height: | 1.2 inches | | Package Weight: | 1.3 pounds | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 338 reviews |
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 Heart-Warming and Genuine Sep 07, 2010
Most striking about Justice Clarence Thomas' memoir, My Grandfather's Son, is the heart-warming and genuine approach he takes to telling his story. From his difficult relationship with his grandfather, to his struggles with left wing radicalism, alcohol, and finances, all the way back to his reconciliation with them all, Justice Thomas is humble about his shortcomings, magnanimous towards those of others, and unapologetic about the beliefs he now holds so dear. Nearly two-thirds of the book recounts these struggles, with the last third devoted to his confirmation for the D.C. Court of Appeals and eventually the Supreme Court. As you would expect, Anita Hill plays a prominent role, but so do many others. In fact, so many individuals emerge during the confirmation episode it is difficult to keep them all straight.
When it is all said and done, though, Justice Thomas' story is so compelling--from the depths of poverty in Pinpoint to the heights of our justice system in the marble-lined halls of the Supreme Court--and presented so personably, you can't help but respect him, even if you tend to disagree with him.
 Curiously unengaging Sep 02, 2010
When I was about 12 years old riding in a car with my neighbors, we passed a black boy walking down the street. One of my "friends" shouted, "Hey Jigaboo!" at him as we drove past. I was appalled and confused, but the mom driving said nothing, and who was I to rock the boat? So I remained silent, imagining the burning hatred in that poor kid . I remember that day vividly. And it occurred in suburban New Jersey in the late 60s, not sweltering Savannah in the early 50s.
Why mention this? Because those who complain about Justice Thomas's whining have, I am sure, never endured relentless slights such as that. I was fat, I didn't fit in, and I was lonely as a child. But my pre-occupations were all internal; I didn't have to live with random strangers driving by feeling as if they could insult me with impunity.
So the book begins on a roll, the story of an abandoned and neglected little boy managing to find his way to his grandfather's house. And there, life changed. Oh my, how it did. The life he describes sounds like the poor farmer's life since the beginning of time. His back and his brow brought forth the food on his table. This was extraordinary reading. I was living just a few years later and a few miles away, but this life is as remote from mine as the life of a Medieval peasant or Roman street urchin. But though he tried, he never really got into what his life was about. I wanted more details. And when he got older and wanted to rebel, why didn't he? What thoughts did he have? Just a bit too quick, though still compelling and worth reading.
But after that, it feels more like a campaign biography than a harrowing memoir. Just a bit too nice, a bit too pat. He has some struggles, he antagonizes and breaks with his grandfather, he embraces the black liberation thinking, he marries and divorces (without really offering much explanation), he gets some jobs he likes and some he doesn't, and becomes the star pupil of Jack Danforth, who greases some skids and gets him to Washington.
And while I'm sure the work he did at the EEOC was important and useful and challenging, it wasn't all that interesting. The overseer of a bureaucracy is not the star of very many films for good reason. And again, the tone is just a tad too nice, a tad too distant. Too many "thank yous" and "good jobs."
Then comes the confirmation hearings, the grubbiest and most sordid attack any federal nominee has endured in my lifetime. And though I'm sure he could say much more, he again pulls his punches. And leaves me feeling as if much more went on than he related. Somehow the raw, visceral hatred and malign political slander that he endured never really generate the kind of fiery prose that seems appropriate. Justice Thomas is a fine man and a fine judge. Harry Reid, who, I hope, will be sent back to the Nevada desert where he belongs, is typical of the leftists who continue to despise this uppity black man for refusing to kowtow to his betters. Bear that in mind when reading the negative reviews here. But I should have liked this book far more than I did. Just pulled too many punches and was insufficiently introspective.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 An enjoyable read. Jul 22, 2010
This might be the best autobiography/memoir I've read. As has been mentioned elsewhere even if you don't agree with Justice Thomas's politics this is still an enjoyable read. Knowing his background now, it is amazing how far he has come and what he has accomplished and yet in the book he still does not come across as bragging. He has a very easy going and enjoyable writing style that as you read makes you feel as though you could be listening to a story from your next door neighbor not a supreme court justice. If you are considering the book it's a good read.
4 of 16 found the following review helpful:
 Clarence Thomas Lacks Introspection Jun 01, 2010
I was not a fan of Clarence Thomas before I started this book, because I disagree with him on most issues, particularly those related to race. However, I was curious to discover how he had come to the conclusions that he has reached. I love to hear compelling arguments. Hearing why someone believes a certain thing allows me to respect their final conclusion even if I disagree with it.
Thomas' book made me even less of a fan of his. Thomas is bereft of introspection. He is simply unable to see himself, his choices or his experiences in an objective light, and that causes him to make continuous false assertions and false conclusions throughout the book.
For example, on page 95 he writes: "It turned out that blacks were responsible for almost 80 percent of violent crimes committed against blacks, and killed over 90 percent of black murder victims. This was a bitter pill to swallow. Until then I'd ignored the obvious implication of black-on-black crime rates. After I worked on that case, I knew better than to assume that whites were responsible for all the woes of blacks, and stopped throwing around the word `oppression' so carelessly."
On its face this is an example of faulty reasoning. The white power structure of the United States has enslaved, segregated and systematically discriminated against blacks for hundreds of years. That created despair and hopelessness among blacks, which in turn expresses itself through violence. Against whom will blacks commit violent acts? The people nearest them. That's the reason that wealthy people flee the inner city and build gated communities. They believe that putting distance between themselves and the poor will protect them from crime.
By and large, black people don't live, work or attend school near white people. They live near other black people, therefore the crimes they commit are mostly against other black people.
The same logic applies to white people. The vast majority of the crimes that white people commit are against other white people. When a white teenager gets into a fight, chances are his opponent is another white kid. When a white husband beats his wife, chances are she's white. When white kid goes to school and shoots his classmates, chances are most of them are white. Most crimes are proximity driven. Violence touches the closest available victims.
That's fairly simple logic, yet Thomas fails to make that connection, and his blindness is even more striking when you consider the words he uses to describe his own "oppressive" experiences as a black man in America.
1) On page 5, he describes his life in Pinpoint at "unforgiving."
2) On Page 6, he says the tenement flat he lived in was "the foulest kind of urban squalor."
3) On page 7, he says of his mother, "It was as though her job sapped all the hope out of her. She worked to stay alive and keep us alive, nothing more."
4) On page 8, he says, "never before had I known the nagging chronic hunger ...'
5) On page 35, other boys at his white high school shunned him on the basketball court. He writes, "I couldn't bear to know. Every step was agony."
6) Also on page 35, a student yells the N-word at him. He writes, "I felt as if my soul had been pierced."
7) On page 37, "I was stunned to learn that Richard Chisolm had dropped out, leaving me as the school's only black student."
8) On page 41, "I was the only black in the group, and when the management finally decided to throw someone out, they picked me."
9) Also on page 41, "I deserved the super-jock trophy traditionally given to the outstanding athlete. No trophy was given out that year ... I couldn't help thinking that I'd been passed over because I was black."
10) While he's waiting to hear his bar exam results he said, "my nerves were shot, in part, because one of the blacks in my bar-review course had warned me that Missouri had a `rule of two,' meaning that only two blacks were allowed to pass each year ... I found this warning impossible to ignore."
11) On page 269, he writes, "As a child I had been warned by Daddy that I could be picked up off the streets of Savannah and hauled off to jail or the chain gang for no reason other than I was black."
12) Also on page 269, "the fear (the police) instilled in southern blacks, a fear that had helped to keep segregation alive."
13) On page 47 he writes, "The more injustice I saw, the angrier I became, and the angrier I became, the more injustices I saw ..."
14) On page 51 he writes, "Racism had become the answer to all my questions, the trump card that won every argument."
15) On page 27, he writes that his grandfather rescued him by taking him in. "To stay there would have doomed me to a dismal life of ignorance, perhaps even of crime--a life lost before it started."
It goes on and on. Thomas makes constant references to the injustices that he suffered as a result of his race, and the anger that boiled in him because of it. Yet, when he reads a statistic about black-on-black crime, he's incapable of imagining that most poor blacks felt just as oppressed and angry as he did, but they didn't have the intellect or the opportunities to escape as he did. Point 15 above reveals that could see that his life might have led to crime if he had stayed where he was, but he refuses to acknowledge the plight of the many kids who were stuck in those cruel environments.
Throughout the book, Thomas seemed to judge his one life by one standard and the lives of all other blacks by a separate standard. This double standard and/or lack of self-awareness permeates virtually every major premise that he makes in this book.
On page 63 he writes on the subject of being black in America, "Now I understood for the first time that we were expected to be full of rage. It was our role--but I didn't want to play it anymore. I'd already been doing it for too long, and it hadn't improved my life. I had better things to do than be angry."
This statement is grossly inaccurate. The white establishment did not expect blacks to be full of rage any more than a cattle farmer expects his herd to be full of rage. There might be the occasional malcontent to deal with, but overall docility is the expectation. That's why the race riots and marches of the 1960s were so shocking to whites. Black people were resisting their fate. They were enraged and out making trouble. The white establishment fought back with fire hoses, police dogs, batons, guns and assassinations, trying to quell this uprising and put blacks back in their place. Docility was the expectation, not rage.
In fact, Thomas himself makes the point about docility on page 31: "Blacks in Savannah rarely came into contact with whites, and when we did the encounters were brief and not too unpleasant, since our second-class status was so firmly accepted that no unpleasantness was needed to enforce it."
On page 22, he writes, "No matter how curious you might be about the way white people lived, you didn't go where you didn't belong. That was a recipe for jail or worse."
Second, Thomas' statement that he was going to stop being angry was inaccurate because he clearly didn't stop. He is an extremely angry, bitter man who, despite his many successes, feels that he has been wronged by the world.
Even as he is climbed higher in the governmental and judicial ranks he still used extreme words to describe his state of mind.
1) While he's working for Monsanto, page 117, "My sense of hopelessness was intensified ..."
2) A jogger passes him and he writes, "I was humiliated..."
3) Page 136, during his divorce he felt "despair" and "anguish"
4) When he took the job at EEOC, he writes on page 143, "I was overwhelmed by a feeling of hopelessness."
5) Page 144, "I sat at my desk and wept."
6) Page 151, the sight of his name in the Washington Post, "sent me into something close to panic."
7) He and Virginia are buying a house, page 189, "after answering countless humiliating questions ..."
8) Page 190, when their loan was disapproved, "Virginia and I were so despondent ..."
9) During the Supreme Court confirmation hearing, Page 246, they were trying to kill me."
If a Yale-educated, highly recruited career man like Thomas can feel these extremely negative emotions about his lot in life, then why is it so hard for him to understand the humiliation, hopelessness and despondency of millions of blacks who have are far less fortunate than he is?
Another example of flawed reasoning is revealed in his position on racial preferences in hiring. Throughout the book Thomas maintains that racial preferences are bad, that blacks who are admitted based on their race are being set up for failure and that applications should be race neutral. But his own life provides counter-evidence to his position.
On page 38 he writes, "I briefly fantasized about going to Georgia Tech or West Point ... yet hope soon succumbed to reality, since I also knew that it would be all but impossible for a black kid like me to get into either school, and I decided to stick to my religious studies."
If a young man of Thomas' intellect is too intimidated to even apply to those schools that speaks volumes about the oppression that he has experienced in his life, which produced a hopelessness or deep pessimism about his prospects. If Thomas thought that way, what hope is there for other blacks of slightly lesser intelligence, who might have succeeded in college if only they'd had an opportunity?
Ironically, Thomas was admitted to Yale based partly on his race.
On page 74, he writes, "I thought of myself more as disadvantaged than black, and I asked Yale to take that fact into account when I applied, not thinking that there might be anything wrong with doing so. I simply took it for granted that Yale was giving me a break because I was poor (and especially since that poverty was in part due to racial discrimination) .... I had been told that minority students were admitted under the same standards as legacy students, and why couldn't Yale be willing to take the same chance on a poor black kid from Georgia who'd always managed to achieve against the odds ..."
So when he personally needed racial preferences, he was a fan of them. However, the moment he didn't personally need racial preferences, he became an opponent of them.
On page 75 he writes, "After graduating from Yale, I met a black alumnus of the University of Michigan Law School who told me that he'd made a point of not mentioning his race on his application. I wished with all my heart that I'd done the same." He doesn't need the preference any more, so now he opposes even the preference that he received to get into law school.
His feelings about this issue are so irrational that he now hates Yale University for admitting him. On page 99 he writes, "As a symbol of my disillusionment, I peeled a 15-cent price sticker off of a package of cigars and stuck it on the frame of my law degree to remind myself of the mistake I'd made by going to Yale ... Instead of hanging it on the wall of my Supreme Court office, I stored it in the basement of my Virginia home--with the sticker still on the frame."
But his hatred of racial preferences is not uniform. As he continued through his career, he became a fan of them whenever they might benefit himself or his friends.
1) On page 114, he describes his job at Monsanto: "My disillusion deepened when I noticed that Monsanto employed a number of talented blacks who should have been moving up the corporate ladder far more quickly. I went to the black manager in charge of affirmative-action compliance to complain about his complacent attitude toward these gifted young managers.".
2) On page 158, he contradicts the point above with a story about his arrival at the EEOC: "My predecessor had charged Sears with failing to hire ore promote enough blacks and women to the company's more lucrative commission-sales jobs. In fact though, there were no actual job applicants or employees alleging discrimination; the charges were based solely on the fact that these groups were numerically underrepresented relative to their presence in the population." This numerical argument is nearly identical to the one he made at Monsanto, but since Thomas will not personally benefit, he is now opposed to using numbers as evidence of discrimination.
Thomas employed racial preferences in his personal decision-making:
1) On page 140 after he takes over at EEOC, "Gil Hardy called me up and asked me to `help a sister' who was leaving his firm. Her name was Anita Hill ... I agreed to interview her. Not only did I feel an obligation to help my fellow blacks, but I remembered how hard it had been for me to land a job after graduating from Yale, and I didn't want to treat her as badly as I was treated."
2) On page 181, "Besides, Virginia was white, and I had no inclination to date outside of my race."
3) On page 193 he writes, "After the election ... I drafted a memo to the new president-elect suggesting that he take a more positive approach on racial issues ... recommended that he consider appointing blacks to positions of responsibility other than the race-related ones they'd traditionally held."
4) Page 193, "As long as I was still at EEOC though I wanted to continue pushing for the appointments of minorities to senior positions."
5) On page 244, he wrote this slightly nonsensical and entirely contradictory passage: "I wanted to show that a predominantly minority and female agency could be run as professionally as any other--and that it could be done without the benefit of affirmative action or quotas. All that was necessary, I believed, was a concerted effort to give those who had been excluded an opportunity to do their best." Isn't that was preferences and affirmative action were all about?
He also is opposed to the "white" government getting involved in the lives of black people, trying to fix the problems in black America. On page 106, he writes: "The problems faced by blacks in America would take quite some time to solve, and the responsibility for solving them would fall largely on black people." That's a constant theme. He doesn't believe that blacks should rely on white people to solve their problems.
But throughout his life, Thomas been bailed out by a steady succession of white people and the white establishment. On page 57 he and several other students walk out of Holy Cross in protest of punishments handed down to black demonstrators. Immediately, he regrets walking out and is desperate to return. "Within a few hours my problem was solved. Art Martin and Ted Wells, the leaders of the BSU, persuaded the administration to let us return to campus ... I will forever be indebted to Art, Ted and the school administration for giving me a second chance."
He's basically saying, "Thank you, white administrators. I stepped out of line on what I thought was a matter of principle, but that I instantly regretted. You graciously let me back in. I won't act up any more."
Thomas is a self-admitted terrible money manager, but it didn't matter, because he always had white friends to bail him out.
1) Page 93, after failing to make money by selling his blood he writes, "Finally I called the attorney general to ask for help, and Alex Netchvolodoff, his administrative assistant, arranged for me to do some part time work in the St. Louis office."
2) On page 100, he writes that he borrowed "small sums from my colleagues to make ends meet."
3) On page 102 he has more money problems, and "once again the attorney general saved the day; I mentioned the problem to him and he referred me to the president of a local bank, a friendly small-town type who believed that character mattered as much as collateral. He took Jack Danforth's word for my character and agreed to lend me the money."
4) Page 102, "I started going out with them after work ... since I had so little money, one of them always picked up the tab."
5) He needed a job so on page 109 "once again I spoke to the attorney general, and he put me in touch with George Capps, a businessman friend from St. Louis, who suggested in turn that I approach Monsanto .... When the company offered me a job in early 1977, I accepted."
6) During his divorce, page 135, "I was so broke that I often had to borrow small sums of money from friends in order to take the bus to work."
7) Page 174, after his credit card is seized and destroyed at the car rental counter, "I had to beg him to let me rent a car so that I could get to my meeting."
8) Page 189, "I was up to my ears in debt and doubted whether I could pass the kind of credit check necessary to obtain a mortgage, but thanks to Virginia's income, our overall financial picture had improved considerably."
9) Page 190, he and Virginia are not approved for their loan, so "with the help of her parents and a persistent young man at the mortgage company our prayers were answered."
10) Page 276, "Senator Hatch had insisted on paying."
11) Page 283, "Virginia's parents picked up the enormous tab."
Where would Thomas be without all of these white people to keep feeding him money and picking up the tab for him? He might be in the same boat as the blacks in the neighborhood where he grew up. And it's significant that the attorney general is a high ranking member of the white establishment. Thomas is convinced that blacks should not rely on the white establishment for solutions, but when he's in a bind, who does he call?
He repeatedly criticizes blacks for what he calls a "knee-jerk" aversion to the Republican Party. On page 125, he writes, "That kind of all-us-black-folks-think-alike nonsense wasn't part of my upbringing, and I saw it as nothing more than another way to herd blacks into a political camp."
Yet on page 179, he writes, "blacks didn't vote for Republicans ... as a result there was little interest within the administration in helping a constituency that wouldn't do anything in return to help the President ... One political consultant was honest enough to tell me straight out that since the President's reelection strategy didn't include the black vote, there was no role for me."
So Thomas heard from the horse's mouth that the Republican party didn't court black people, yet he is still critical of black people who refuse to vote Republican. It seems totally rational that the Republican party doesn't waste time courting people who won't vote Republican, and it's equally rational that black people don't waste their votes on a party that's not interested in their issues.
Why does Thomas criticize the logic of blacks, while praising (or at least accepting without challenge) the logic of the Republican party?
These two passage illustrate the reason that most black Americans feel little or no connection with Thomas. He had the type of tough childhood that should make him understand the plight of black people, and use his position of power to improve their lives. But he doesn't. As a general rule, he scorns anything political that black people say or do, while he has immediate respect for anything political that white people say or do.
Another example, on page 147, he writes, "One day I mentioned to a senior career staffer that I didn't understand why there was so little focus on the educational role of black colleges. He snapped back that they had no right to exist. His statement floored me, though in the next instant I realized that it was implicit in the position taken by the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, which were obsessed with the racial composition of while colleges to the virtual exclusion of all other considerations. At no time in our discussions with these groups did the education of black students take center stage. All they seemed to care about were the numbers."
So a white man says that black colleges have no right to exist, and Thomas immediately aims his criticism at the NAACP. To understand how infuriating that is to black Americans, imagine that an extremely powerful Jewish-American leader was in a conversation with someone who said, "Israel had no right to exist," and he ignored that comment and instead criticized Jewish advocacy group.
Black people do not like Clarence Thomas, because Clarence Thomas doesn't like black people.
Further evidence of Thomas' lack of introspection is his disdain for "victim" status. He doesn't want the government to create special programs for blacks, that would make them "more dependent on the government. That would amount to a new kind of enslavement, one which ultimately relied on the generosity--and the ever-changing self-interest--of politicians and activists." (p. 56) But his position is very hypocritical, because he spends the bulk of the book portraying himself as a victim. Early in his life, he was a victim of racial injustice by whites. Later, he became a victim of angry blacks and liberal whites who resented his so-called "honesty".
Plus he constantly describes himself as a reluctant character in his own life. Occasionally he says, "I really wanted to do (fill in the blank)" but more often he says, "I didn't want to do (fill in the blank) but so-and-so insisted that I give it a try."
1) He got married against his better judgment. Page 69, "I was still full of doubts, and a bolt of sharp, sickening pain shot through my body as we said our vows."
2) Page 75, he resented Yale, believing that the school had played a trick on him by considering his race in admissions.
3) He repeatedly brags that his father refused to take welfare and he told a Washington Post reporter that welfare had ruined his mother's ambition. But on page 76, when he needed financial aid at Yale, he was the recipient of a wealth-redistribution system that worked just like welfare. He writes, "In the end all Yale had to offer me was the tuition postponement option, a program in which the cost of student loans was spread across a class of students who repaid it as a group according to their means, with the greatest burden falling on those with the largest incomes. I didn't know what else to do so I signed on the dotted line."
4) Page 86, "I had grave reservations about working at a predominantly white institution, subject to the whims of white superiors
5) Page 96, he's going to argue his first case before the Missouri Supreme Court, and he writes, "Couldn't someone else argue this case?"
6) Page 119, Senator Danford invites him to join his staff. He writes, "I was interested so long as I wouldn't have to work on civil-rights issues or matters involving race ... (ultimately) I couldn't say no."
7) Page 137, he gets a call from the Office of Presidential Personnel asking him to become assistant secretary for civil rights in the Department of Education. "I expected to say no .... I didn't care to work in a civil-rights post. I had no background in that area, and was sure that I'd been singled out solely because I was black .... I decided to give it a try."
8) Page 149, President Reagan is looking for a new head of the EEOC. Thomas writes, "Pen ended our conversation by asking what my answer would be if the president himself asked me to take the job. I hesitated, then reluctantly admitted that I'd have to say yes."
9) On becoming a Supreme Court Justice, page 210, "I knew I didn't want the job, but I also knew I'd need to come up with a better answer than that if I was going to say no to the president of the United States ... I tried to think of a way to convince President Bush to choose somebody else."
I don't completely understand why he presents himself as such a passive figure in his own career. I believe it's probably to puff himself up, so that he can say, "They pursued ME. I didn't even want this job, but they were desperate to have ME."
Regarding Anita Hill, I never had an opinion about her allegations, because I didn't follow Thomas' confirmation hearing very closely, and knew little of the charges. After reading Thomas's version of things, I still don't know if her allegations were true (because I still don't know exactly what they were), but I found Thomas' portrayal of his interactions with her to be somewhat unbelievable. Everything he says about her raises questions about his motives.
As I mentioned earlier, he initially hired her at the behest of a friend because she was black and he felt an obligation to help a fellow black lawyer.
1) Page 156, I also had to do something about Anita Hill, who'd been pestering Anna Jenkins, my interim secretary, as had Gil. I reluctantly brought her aboard and the first thing she did was claim the largest office in my suite." Question: Why did he let her take the largest office? He was the boss, he could have rejected her request.
2) Page 171, just after his grandparents died, "In the midst of my grief, Anita Hill had been nagging me to write her a letter of recommendation, and the sooner I did it, the sooner she'd be out of my hair." Question: Why did he need her out of his hair?
3) Page 173 he sends Anita to a conference in Oklahoma and she gets a job on the faculty at the school. "much to my relief, Anita accepted Dean Kothe's offer." Question: Why would he feel relief?
4) Page 230, "Dave Kyllo, another EEOC staffer, had asked her if Anita Hill would say anything negative about me." Question: Thomas managed more than 800 employees at EEOC, why would a third party specifically suggest that Anita Hill would say something negative?
5) On page 241, on of Thomas' advisors warns him that the FBI wants to come talk to him. Thomas writes, "Had some disgruntled employee at EEOC come to the FBI at the last minute to lodge some complaint against me?" Question: Up to that point, the attacks against him had come from a wide array of sources, so why would he immediately assume that the FBI wanted to talk to him about the EEOC?
6) On page 243, the FBI asked if Thomas had wanted to date Anita Hill, and he says, "Goodness no!" He says the suggestion is "laughable." Question: Why would it be laughable? She was an attractive, intelligent young lady. On page 172, he writes, "Anita stormed into my office and accused me of favoring Allyson because I liked light-skinned women." And on page 229, he writes, "Of course, I had my share of romantic involvements between marriages, but there was nothing peculiar about that: I was a divorced man in his thirties." Given all of that, why would it seem "laughable" for someone to ask whether he was interested in Anita Hill?
7) When Hill testified before the Senate, Thomas refused to watch. Page 271, "Why would I have watched it?" Question: One would assume that he would watch it for the same reason that he read all of those cases to prepare for his confirmation. He would watch so that he could refute the "ridiculous" allegations against him.
Overall, I found his comments about Anita Hill to be incomplete and confusing. It would have been more credible if he had described their working relationship in detail and shown us the full extent of their friendship. By describing her and the relationship in such limited ways, everything he says provokes more questions and make him seem guilty even if he isn't
More evidence of Thomas' lack of introspection shows up in the frequency with which he contradicts himself:
1) When President Bush is thinking about nominating him for the Supreme Court, Thomas writes, "I tried to think of a way to convince the President to choose somebody else. The obvious reasons were my relative youth and inexperience--I'd just turned forty-three the week before and had been on the Court of Appeals only fifteen months ..." Yet, Thomas seems insulted then when the American Bar Association basically agrees with his own assessment that he's relatively young and inexperienced. Page 228 "The ABA's evaluation team announced that it considered me to be `qualified' for the Supreme Court. By withholding its highest ranking, `well qualified' the ABA opened the door for my liberal opponents to attack my competence."
2) Page 231, "I expected to be attacked as unqualified to sit on the Supreme Court. What this really meant, of course, was that I dared to hold views of which my opponents disapproved. Had I been a liberal, they would have overlooked my youth and comparative inexperience, not to mention the fact that I'd been admitted to Yale Law School in part because I was black." Yes, that's true, but if he'd been a liberal, conservative groups would have attacked him for these same reasons.
3) He routinely rails against people who expect him to adhere to stereotypes, or who advocate policies based on stereotypes, yet throughout the book makes broad, sweeping statements about "white liberals" and he even uses the phrase "left-wing zelots" a few times.
4) During the confirmation process he explains how his mother, who had always voted for Democrats became so disgusted with the attacks on her son that she vowed to never vote for another Democrat. He seems unaware of the reality that if he had been a liberal, then Republicans would have been attacking him during the confirmation process, and his mother would dislike Republicans. He uses her as an example to bash the Democratic party, when really, it's simply an example of a mother being loyal to her son.
Those are four examples, but throughout the book Thomas says things that are incongruous. These mistakes are indicative of intellectual laziness or a lack of introspection. Given Thomas' long track record of intellectual success, I doubt that mental laziness is his problem. I simply believe that he has a large ego that keeps him from seeing himself and/or judging himself accurately.
Conclusion, Clarence Thomas had a rough childhood. He lived in squalid conditions, he was surrounded by illiterate blacks, yet somehow he managed to rise up through the U.S. power structure to win a coveted seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. There is no question that he is emblematic of the American dream. In this country, even someone from the most humble beginnings can achieve greatness through hard work, intellect and a certain amount of luck.
To understand why black Americans, in general, have no affection for Thomas, one need only read a line from page 280. Thomas writes, that Senator Strom Thurmond was at his side right after the senate voted to approve his nomination. "It seemed ironic that a man who had once been a fervent advocate of racial segregation had ended up supporting my nomination ..."
Actually, that's not ironic at all. It seems pretty clear that Strom Thurmond has the same portrait of Thomas that black Americans have of the new Justice. The only difference is that Thurmond admires Thomas for his position on racial issues and black Americans revile him for it.
Thomas will argue that he has always stood up for what he believed in, and he believes he knows how to help black Americans, but it's interesting that in 289 pages of text he offers only two concrete ideas to help blacks. One is ending all government programs that currently help them. Somehow he's convinced that blacks, left to their own devices, will do better than if they have government assistant. And the second, is that he negotiated a scholarship program with Sears during his first years with EEOC. Ironically, this program included a preference for the children of minorities and female employees. So, once again, he contradicts himself. On the one hand, he's opposed to preferences, but when he creates something, it includes preferences. Beyond these two ideas, he doesn't offer any other affirmative suggestion about what should be done.
Does he have a rational basis for his Conservative beliefs? I assume that he does, but he had 289 pages of text in which to present and defend his beliefs and he never did. He made only a handful of statements regarding his belief that black people would be better off if the government got out of their lives, but he never presented a real argument to support that position.
Overall, I found both Thomas and his book to be unimpressive.
1 of 2 found the following review helpful:
Moving and Informative Apr 09, 2010
No one would expect to discover the path that led Clarence Thomas to become a Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. This is certainly an example of the American Dream. You can't start much lower and end up much higher than did Clarence Thomas.
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