He also enters a whole new set of associations, particularly with wealthy white conservatives. As a member of the Supreme Court, Thomas has repeatedly expressed skepticism of broad powers for federal agencies like EPA an attribute Stern links back to the justices early environmental work. Clarence Thomas and the Lost Constitution by Myron Magnet. Where did Clarence Thomas go to school? WebAs an undergraduate at Holy Cross College, Thomas received a scholarship set aside for racial minorities. WebSupreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas noted that he knows about the obstacles Black people in the US have faced as he ruled affirmative action should still be outlawed. KIRK: The way they tell the story - these are Black women. His memoir, My And in Clarence's world, the nuns were looking for the first Black priest for Savannah, and Clarence got the seal of approval from Sister Mary Virgilius and others. When Thomas left Monsanto in 1979 for a two-year stint advising then-Sen. Clarence Thomas These laws and their proper application are all that stand between the first 17 years of my life and the second 17 years.". Virginia Thomas Biography Thomas received a degree in English in 1971 from College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts and received his law degree from Yale Law School in 1974. FRONTLINE traces the 'ambition and revenge' driving SCOTUS Thomas went on to complain that affirmative-action programs stigmatize the beneficiaries - an argument not raised by the plaintiff in the case, a white building contractor who says he unfairly lost federal work to a Latino-owned business. Newsweek has reached out to Yale and a representative for Clarence Thomas via email for comment. WebIn 1973 their son, Jamal, was born. He says he has the degree, the Yale Law School degree, framed with a 10-cent price - one of those stickers that says 10 cents - and he stuck it on the diploma frame and said, that's basically what that Yale Law School degree was worth to me. Thomas And certainly, the last few years after he came out of the shadow of Justice Antonin Scalia, the real intellectual leader of the right on the court - once Scalia passed away, it then fell to Thomas to carry on the tradition and bring his own perspective to it in full flower. He was in some form of shell shock during his years at Yale Law School. We're not up about - this is not about quotas. KIRK: So here's a guy who never really has hung out with a group of like-minded, maybe even open-minded, Black kids his age, and he goes off to Holy Cross. Fact Check: Did Clarence Thomas Go to Yale Under Affirmative Affirmative Action Supreme Court decision: Clarence Thomas Thomas Tell us about that. DAVIES: Yeah, he would have staff tape the Rush Limbaugh broadcasts that he missed so he could listen to them later at a time when the technology wasn't like it is today. Marcus wrote that Clanton had been hired by Ginni Thomas, went to law school and became a clerk for William H. Pryor Jr., chief judge of the 11th Circuit and on Donald Trumps original shortlist for the Supreme Court. Marcus also noted that Pryor has sent Ruth Marcus picked up the story in The Washington Post on October 8, 2021. Rather than corporate law, government service is an avenue that he can advance in, as it turns out. We have visibility into what happened with him, the deep collapse. Leo has been particularly close to Clarence and Ginni Thomasthey have been friends since at least 1991. DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR, and we're speaking with veteran filmmaker Michael Kirk. And he says that there's an expression for doing a Clarence Thomas, meaning that that's when someone uses their Blackness to achieve a place of power and then turns their back on the Black community. This is 1968, 1969. Just give us a sense of what that relationship was like and what the benefits were to Clarence Thomas. WebTHE HONORABLE CLARENCE THOMAS. Where did Justice Clarence Thomas go to law school? Thomas, the second of only three Black Supreme Court justices in American history, is the courts harshest Although, that may exist and may come forward at some moment. While Clarence Thomas did not deliver the Supreme Court ruling this week, he did write a 58-page concurring opinion, saying the foundational policies of affirmative action "fly in the face of our colorblind Constitution and our Nation's equality ideal. Did anybody have anything good to say about him at the EEOC? Thomas did not respond. I'm Dave Davies, and this is FRESH AIR. March 25, 2022. did Clarence Thomas Did Clarence Thomas Responding to Thomas, Justice John Paul Stevens pointed out that if beneficiaries of affirmative action feel stigmatized, they can simply "opt out of the program.". ", The notion that Thomas stood to benefit from the same programs could be seen as hypocrisy, a criticism that has been leveled at him before by none other than Rosa Parks, saying in 1996 (as reported by The New Yorker) that Thomas "had all the advantages of affirmative action and went against it. Although Thomas may have earned a place based on his prior academic performance, the All of that is happening around him. Is it sincere belief in his conservative principles? Lawyers with supreme court business paid Clarence Thomas aide via Venmo, UScolleges and universities are selling access to supreme court justices, TheUS supreme court has hijacked American democracy, USsupreme court ethics: chief justice urged to testify for good of democracy, Democracy is at risk: inside the fight for supreme court reform, USsupreme court creeping dangerously towards authoritarianism, AOC says, Aconservative overhaul of public life: what the supreme courts term means for the US, Theking of dark money effectively controls the US supreme court now. That switch may have occurred most pointedly during his time at Yale, when, in Thomass own recollection, a white admissions officer told him and a group of Black students that none of them was qualified to be there. Says a lot about this Supreme Court.". That was his reason for doing it. Jun 29, 2023, 08:34 PM EDT. As a set of legal statutes and governmental policies, affirmative action policies in college admissions intended to account for historical wrongdoings against entire groups of marginalized people expressly Black Americans. I talked to Aya Waller-Bey, a sociology PhD candidate at the University of Michigan, who studies the role of race and racial narratives in college essays. Where did Clarence Thomas go to school? Accuracy and availability may vary. History As It Happens: Clarence Thomas and the 14th Amendment Reviewed by Peter Wood. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is the most senior member of the Conservative supermajority that now dominates the court, giving him a level of And then this - out of the blue, this moment happens, and you're - everything is blowing up in your face. Thomas But there were other women who would have - could have offered corroborating evidence that were never called. We'll continue our conversation in just a moment. However, he failed his physical examination. You know, what I guess I'm getting at with those parts of the documentary is, what really motivates Clarence Thomas? Saida Grundy is an associate professor of sociology and African American studies at Boston University, and the author of Respectable: Politics and Paradox in Making the Morehouse Man. Clarence Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is looking to enact a judicial overhaul, spurring widespread demonstrations. Did Clarence Thomas Benefit From Affirmative Action He Just Hardcover, 168 pages, $24. He was not happy about the implications of affirmative action, and it was among the first times that he would, of course, throughout his life be a recipient, a beneficiary of what became known as affirmative action. Twitter Has Undeniably Gotten Better Under Elon Musk, Israel Protests ExplainedWhy Millions Fear Nation Is Becoming Dictatorship, Ron DeSantis Falls to Third Place in Key 2024 State: Poll, Republicans Want to Give Americans an Extra $4,500 for Having Kids. Clarence Thomas is the United States Supreme Courts second African American justice.. I think if there was an ideology for Clarence Thomas around that time, it might not be political, but it certainly was a mixture of ambition and revenge. Is it anger? Clarence Thomas KIRK: I think he really is surprised at - I mean, he thinks what he's getting is a ticket to ride. "The mind of Clarence Thomas: the American Dream for me but not for thee. They traveled the world in the jet. Thomas, who attended seminaries in the South and The College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts before enrolling at Yale, has said he believes minority students His latest work is a PBS Frontline documentary about the lives and influences on U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife Ginni, a conservative political activist. You always cut it when the going gets rough, the rough get going, or the tough gets going, or whatever the saying is. And while those kind of things were breaking out every night, Clarence leaves Cambridge at 4 in the morning, gets back to campus and has a kind of epiphany where he says to himself - at least in his book, this is what he reports - he says to himself, why was I doing that? Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is looking to enact a judicial overhaul, spurring widespread demonstrations. I want to make a contribution. What happened? The vast majority of people there are Black. He would - he hated the idea that - and tried everything he could do to not enforce - the idea of quotas, a word that he discovered was - could be quite successfully used. 2000 H Street, NW Washington DC 20052. And Danforth goes out to Thomas' house as the news is breaking, and Thomas is just ruined. So Clarence Thomas at the time was a spokesman tasked with going on C-Span and other venues, meeting with evangelicals, lots of other things to make who he was and what his opinions were about this and therefore what Ronald Reagan's opinions were about something like affirmative action, make it more plausible and easier to accept for people by taking the teeth right out of it. But as of Thursday, those policies are effectively barred on a systemic scale. A complex man, Clarence Thomas took in his great-nephew when the boy's father, his nephew, was in and out of prison but was finally sent away for a long time for drugs. Former DNC Chief Keith Ellison Compares Clarence Thomas To We don't want quotas. And who he is and who the man is who is now doing that, I think, becomes much clearer now as the decisions that represent the things that have happened to him in his life connect up. So, yes, when he doesn't - he arrives at what he thinks of as the pinnacle, he graduates from Yale Law School and he realizes it's not going to yield any kind of a job that he had aspirations for. He was admitted to law And he would defend efforts to challenge it. But his wife at the time, not Clarence's mom's mother or their natural - their biological grandmother, but that woman that was married to Clarence's grandfather really wanted the kids. from Yale Law School in 1974. They would - he had a - Crow has a huge yacht. WebThomas graduated from the school in 1974. Copy. Supporters of affirmative action protest near the US supreme court. And other conservatives said he was with the president. Several reports from Yale officials and representatives confirmed that the university followed an affirmative action policy at the time Thomas attended its law school. ", "Slaveholders argued that slavery was a 'positive good' that civilized blacks and elevated them in every dimension of life," he added. ", The decision this week by the Supreme Court has awakened that echo, with MSNBC host Chris Hayes describing Thomas as having turned around to "pull the ladder up behind him.". So did his boss, President Ronald Reagan, whose opposition dated back to the years of Martin Luther King Jr. President Bush - who, like Reagan, had opposed the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act - later chose Thomas to fill the Supreme Court seat of civil-rights legend Thurgood Marshall, the only other African American to sit on the highest court. 2010-03-14 23:57:17. Judicial record undermines Clarence Thomas defence in luxury gifts scandal And, you know, I have to say, anybody who runs a big organization, we'll find some people that don't like him. ", There is no place for discrimination based on race in the United States, and I am pleased that the Supreme Court has put an end to this egregious violation of civil and constitutional rights in admissions processes, which only served to perpetuate racism. Our guest today is veteran filmmaker Michael Kirk, who's the director, co-writer and co-producer of a new "Frontline" documentary about the lives and formative influences on Clarence and Ginni Thomas and their paths to power in Washington. And basically, he said to Clarence, you're going to end up just like your no-good father. It was back at zero. Thomas opens up about the process in a new documentary and claims the biggest impediment to his life and legal career was not the KKK but the modern-day liberal.. Or a recent immigrant who climbs the soapbox to call for a halt to further immigration. And they said that's exactly the problem. They will rely on Thomass brand of exceptionalism and individualism, further undermining the intention and legacy of one of the few successful efforts at racial redress in this country. There's a scene in the film where Ronald Reagan gives him a jar of jelly beans for his birthday in the Oval Office. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Encounter, 2019. The transformation of Clarence Thomas, from In partnership with: May 9, 2023 by Julia Ingram Originally published May 9, 2023, this story was updated on June 29, 2023. Clarence Thomas Clarence Thomas You're surrounded by - I mean, one of his - his married student housing roommate was John Bolton. Virginia grew up to become interested in politics and aimed at joining the United States Congress at a young age. Ginni Thomas has long been active in conservative circles. He - the way he tells the story, or the way people who know him tell the story, is that Clarence decides to memorize many of Malcolm's speeches and is himself a sort of self-styled campus radical, believing, I think, that this was a way to fix the world, that he had - he would find acceptance in the anti-war and pro-civil-rights movements. This is before the actual testimony and hearings. from Yale University in 1974. And he was heartbroken when he discovered once again, so obviously to him, that the students did not believe that he belonged there because of affirmative action. In a word: Yes. THERE is something unseemly about a guy who has just built a house on the beach and is now leading the charge to stop all further beach-front construction. He was sailing to confirmation. Clarence Thomas graduated cum laude from the College of Holy Cross in Massachusetts in 1971 and received a J.D. Web"Clarence Thomas should resign," the New York Democrat wrote on Twitter. While speaking with PBS FRONTLINE earlier this year, former National Security Adviser John Bolton said, "I do think he believed that people assumed he [Justice Thomas] was there as a beneficiary of affirmative action and it grated on him." Thomas Justice Clarence Thomas said he doesnt have a clue what diversity means as the Supreme Court heard arguments Monday over eliminating race in college admissions. They aimed to address Jim Crow, lynching, white terroristic violence, redlining, segregation in housing and schooling, and exclusionary government assistance policies like the GI bill, the greatest expansion of the middle class in US history that benefitted white people almost exclusively. We like to believe they are leaders who are unsullied by the ugly debates that are on television and in the newspapers, and happening on the floor of the House and the Senate and run over by the White House. Washington CNN The Clarence Thomas One of the most interesting to me was that he canceled his subscription to The Washington Post. (SOUNDBITE OF DUKE ELLINGTON'S "SWITCH BLADE"). Thomas graduated from the College of the Holy Cross in 1974 and from Yale Law School in 1977. Thomas Published 9:00 AM PDT, February 25, 2023. Those who knew Justice Clarence Thomas during his formative years at College of the Holy Cross and Yale Law School have long noted the sharp ideological turn he took over the course of his life: from admiring Malcolm X and protesting racism alongside his Black classmates to deeply resenting the affirmative action policies that afforded him his success. You know, you make decisions. George Washington University has decided to stand by US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, despite protests from students calling for his termination. And his grandfather and he never really mended that breach after that. Thomas received a degree in English in 1971 from College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts and received his law degree from Yale Justice Clarence Thomas at the White House in Washington, D.C., on October 26, 2020. WebWhere did Clarence Thomas go to school? It's called "Clarence And Ginni Thomas: Politics, Power And The Supreme Court.". Today, he voted to deny these opportunities to all present and future students of color. Justice Clarence Thomas voted to strike it down for future generations. He was admitted to Yale Law School in 1971 as part of an aggressive (and successful) affirmative-action program with a clear goal: 10 percent minority enrollment. There's an obvious contradiction here: Clarence Thomas benefited enormously from the kind of affirmative-action programs he now seeks to kill. Do you feel like you really got to the bottom of it or whether there was a consensus among all of these friends and associates of his about that? Justice Clarence Thomas said the court has a duty to correct the error of cases that legalized same sex intimacy and marriage, as well as access to birth control. His decades-long rejection of the idea that his success is tied to race-conscious policies is core to his self-image. DAVIES: That's Glenn Loury from the documentary "Clarence And Ginni Thomas: Politics, Power And The Supreme Court," which is directed by our guest, Michael Kirk. Actor: Cocoon. Thomas did not attend an integrated school until he entered St. John Why have him in the group? Thomas received a degree in English in 1971 from College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts and received his law degree from Yale Law School in 1974. This is Savannah, Ga., in the 1950s as Clarence is growing up - very Jim Crow South, very racist undercurrents in everything Clarence would have done coming from Pin Point into Savannah or even in Pin Point, which was largely a fishing village. Clarence didn't exactly have a plethora of social skills and was mocked and ridiculed. Clarence Thomas Thomas has repeatedly claimed that affirmative action initiatives or similar policies were responsible for his admission and his sense of discrimination therein. And Danforth goes to visit Clarence Thomas, right? Let me reintroduce you. A screen and stage performer, Thomas appeared on stage in "A Lesson Before Dying", and on screen in Fosse's "Lenny"(1974) and also in DAVIES: That's a pretty radical turn, to go from somebody who's wearing, you know, fatigues and army books and has a poster of Malcolm X in his room to buckling down and being a more conventional student.