Clarence Thomas sounds like an angry man. President Bush`s choice to replace Justice Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme Court is perceived to be part of that narrowest of demographic coteries, the black conservative Republican. Even better for the Bush administration, Thomas` life story borders on the heroic, a genuine by-the-bootstraps saga, complete with poor-but-honest grandparents to raise him and devoted Roman Catholic nuns to school him.
But beyond the biography, it is by his writings and his public utterances that you shall know him, since he isn`t likely to discuss his thoughts on constitutional law during the Senate confirmation process.
Thomas has done some talking in the nearly 15 years he has spent in Washington, however, and much of the talk will soothe conservative ears.
Clearly, he is comfortable with Ronald Reagan`s social agenda, from opposition to legalized abortion to support for school prayer to fierce antagonism toward affirmative-action programs and racial preferences.
Still, Thomas does not appear to fit the stereoptypical image of the black conservative, the aging good soul who counsels rash youth to move slowly and cautiously when dealing with the white man.
His rhetoric reveals an anger not found in the musings of black conservatives of more recent vintage, such as author Shelby Steele and social critic Robert Woodson.
In 1983, Thomas told the Washington Post, ”My granddaddy told me, when I went off to college, `Just remember that no matter how many degrees you get and how high you go, the lowest white man in the gutter can call you a nigger.` ”
Goodbye, Frank Capra; Hello, Spike Lee.
His classmates at Holy Cross College and Yale Law School remember him as a man who passed on the touchy-feely, integrationist rituals of the moment, who sported bib overalls as an undergraduate and was quick to recount his hardscrabble Georgia boyhood and the harsh, self-help counsel of his grandfather.
”There is nothing you can do to get past black skin,” Thomas told Atlantic magazine in 1987. ”I don`t care how educated you are, how good you are at what you do. You`ll never have the same contacts or opportunities, you`ll never be seen as equal to whites.”
That is not a message likely to emanate from the Huxtable household. It sounds more like the anthem of the black nationalist.
When he joined the Reagan administration in 1981, Thomas initially declined a position as assistant secretary for civil rights in the Education Department.
He was ”insulted” by that initial contact, Thomas told the Heritage Foundation in 1987, since his background was in general corporate regulatory matters rather than civil rights.
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Thomas did find his way into the job, however, and then into an 8-year tour as chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
It is clear from his public pronouncements that Thomas loathed the concept of the commission and was disinclined to enforce anti-discrimination laws. At different points in his career, Thomas has questioned the wisdom of minimum-wage laws, rent control and enterprise zones for slum redevelopment.
So Bush wasn`t joking last week when he characterized Thomas as ”a fiercely independent thinker.” More bureaucrat than judge in his public life, it is interesting to consider what manner of independent thought Thomas might offer when he is given a lifetime job with no mechanism for recall or review. At this moment, the Thomas nomination appears to be an astute political maneuver on the part of the Bush administration.
In naming Thomas, Bush cornered his Democratic political opposition, which will have difficulty mustering a fight against even a marginally qualified black nominee.
The nomination puts the civil-rights establishment in the same spot, leading one prominent civil-rights lawyer to characterize the naming of Thomas ”a bittersweet gift” for black Americans.
It`s possible that Thomas will become a bittersweet gift for conservatives-or at least for Bush-as well.
Thomas talks like a man whose anger transcends the base-line conservative view that government is a poor vehicle for social engineering. He talks like a man who left his Georgia hometown in a state of high moral dudgeon, and has not lost his edge.