In Jeffrey Toobin’s review of My Grandfather’s Son, the recent memoir by Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas, he points to the oft-cited ingratitude or hypocrisy of Justice Thomas’ oft-expressed scorn for the affirmative action efforts which presumably played an important part of the success he has enjoyed since his admission to Holy Cross College.

As often referenced in the press since the memoir’s publication, Thomas apparently put a fifteen cent sticker on his Yale law degree, with a comment along the lines of “that’s what a law degree from Yale was worth when it bore the taint of racial preference.” Suggesting that, up to and including his appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court, Thomas has never held a job that did not bear the “taint of racial preference,” Toobin remarks that, “as Thomas moved through the ascendancy of Republican Administrations, the paternalism didn’t seem to bother him anymore – or else he found it convenient to pretend that it didn’t exist.” In other words, Toobin says, “Yale and Reagan treated him the same way, but he hates one and reveres the other.”

While I might take issue with his rulings, or find them somewhat ironic, (perhaps even vengeful or selfish), I personally have never had a problem with Justice Thomas’ own personal feelings about his own experience with affirmative action, (if any).

I do not find them “hypocritical”.

I find them human.

What I find perplexing, rather, is something else about Thomas’ rulings which Toobin touches on briefly.

Why are States Rights so important to Thomas when, for example, the Federal Government attempts to protect individuals or the environment; but not so important when a corporation seeks insulation from responsibility under State Law on the basis of preemption by some Federal Regulation?

As Toobin notes, recounting a speech to the American Enterprise Institute in which Thomas urged the attendees to “be not afraid,” Thomas, “while celebrating the courage to speak unpopular truths, was telling some of the most powerful people in the worlds of government, business and finance exactly what they wanted to hear. Indeed, throughout his judicial career Thomas has, in the name of anti-elitism, shown a certain type of solicitude for certain types of elites – say, for employers over employees, for government over individuals, for corporations over regulators, and for executioners over the condemned.”

One interesting thing I noted was a quote apparently lifted from Thomas’ memoir: “I was bitter toward the white bigots whom I held responsible for the unjust treatment of blacks, but even more bitter toward those ostensibly unprejudiced whites who pretended to side with black people while using them to further their own political and social ends.”

How can he tell the difference between the ostensibly unprejudiced whites who pretended to side with the blacks in order to promote their own social and political ends, and the ones who do it for the selfish desire to feel good about themselves for doing what they perceive to be the right thing?



[See Jeffrey Toobin, “Unforgiven: Why is Clarence Thomas So Angry?” The New Yorker, Nov. 12, 2007, p.96.]