"..We’ve become very comfortable with making
judgments about people based on immutable
characteristics. And look what we’ve degenerated
tolook what happened to the Duke lacrosse team,
where because there are rich white boys and a
poor black girl, so many people assumed an
automatic narrative. What happens to the truth,
then? How is that different from the stereotypes
of the days of Jim Crow?" [excerpted from interview below]
Looking for a gift to give your children this
Christmas? You'll find a book suggestion below. ~ Janice
First this:
JSTOR: Historic Hillsdale College: Pioneer in Higher Education ...
After the Civil War the college aggressively
sought enrollment of black freedmen ... evidence
of individual blacks and women graduates support the claim. ...
links.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=black+graduates+from+hillsdale+college
Hillsdale College was founded as Michigan Central
College in Spring Arbor, Michigan, in 1844. Nine
years later it moved to Hillsdale and assumed its
current name. As stated in its Articles of
Incorporation, the College undertakes its work
"grateful to God for the inestimable blessings
resulting from the prevalence of civil and
religious liberty and intelligent piety in the
land, and believing that the diffusion of sound
learning is essential to the perpetuity of these blessings."
Though established by Freewill Baptists,
Hillsdale has been officially non-denominational
since its inception. It was the first American
college to prohibit in its charter any
discrimination based on race, religion or sex,
and became an early force for the abolition of
slavery. It was also only the second college in
the nation to grant four-year liberal arts degrees to women.
Professor and preacher Ransom Dunn, who would
serve Hillsdale College for half a century,
raised money to construct the new hilltop campus
in the early 1850s by riding 6,000 miles on
horseback on the Wisconsin and Minnesota
frontier. It was largely through Dunn’s efforts
that Hillsdale would survive while over 80
percent of colleges founded before the Civil War would not.
A higher percentage of Hillsdale students
enlisted during the Civil War than from any other
western college. Of the more than 400 who fought
for the Union, four won the Congressional Medal
of Honor, three became generals and many more
served as regimental commanders. Sixty gave their lives.
Because of the College’s anti-slavery reputation
and its role in founding the new R epub lican
party (Professor Edmund Fairfield was a leader at
the first convention), many notable speakers
visited its campus during the Civil War era,
including Frederick Douglass and Edward Everett,
who preceded Lincoln at Gettysburg.
Hillsdale’s modern rise to prominence occurred in
the 1970s. On the pretext that some of its
students were receiving federal loans, the
Department of Health, Education and Welfare
attempted to interfere with the College’s
internal affairs, including a demand that
Hillsdale begin counting its students by
race. Hillsdale’s trustees responded with two
toughly worded resolutions: One, the College
would continue its policy of
non-discrimination. Two, "with the help of God,"
it would "resist, by all legal means, any encroachments on its independence."
Following almost a decade of litigation, the U.S.
Supreme Court decided against Hillsdale in
1984. By this time, the College had announced
that rather than complying with unconstitutional
federal regulation, it would instruct its
students that they could no longer bring f ederal
taxpayer money to Hillsdale. Instead, the
College would replace that aid with private contributions.
Hillsdale continues to carry out its original
mission today, both in the classroom and
nationwide, through its many outreach programs,
including its monthly speech digest
Imprimis. [free for the
asking http://www.hillsdale.edu/default.asp
] A prayer written in the Bible that was placed
inside the 1853 cornerstone of Central Hall
reflects its continuing commitment: "May earth be
better and heaven be richer because of the life
and labor of Hillsdale College." http://www.hillsdale.edu/about/history.asp
*
October 2007
“A Conversation with Justice Clarence Thomas”
Clarence Thomas
Associate Justice, United States Supreme Court
The following is excerpted and edited from an
interview with Justice Thomas conducted in his
chambers at the Supreme Court in W ashing ton, D.
C., on September 19, 2007. Conducting the
interview were Kaitlyn Buss, Daniel Burfiend, and
Jillian Melchior, Hillsdale College seniors from
the Herbert H. Dow II Program in American
Journalism and the History and P oliti cal
Science Department. Also present were Hillsdale
president Larry Arnn and Hillsdale v ice p
resident and Imprimis editor Douglas Jeffrey.
The Honorable Clarence Thomas has been an
Associate Justice of the United States Supreme
Court since 1991. Prior to that he served as a
judge on the United States Court of Appeals for
the District of Columbia Circuit, as chairman of
the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission,
and as assistant secretary for civil rights in
the U.S. Department of Education. Justice Thomas
graduated cum laude from the College of the Holy
Cross and earned a J.D. from Yale Law School
before entering legal practice as assistant
attorney general of Missouri and, later, as an
attorney with the Monsanto Company. His new book
is entitled My Grandfather’s Son: A Memoir.
Q: Why did you decide to write My Grandfather’s
Son? http://www.amazon.com/My-Grandfathers-Son-Clarence-Thomas/dp/0060565551
CT: I’ve met with young people from all over the
country, from different backgroundssome with
privileged backgrounds and some with less
privileged backgroundsand they all have tough
problems, challenges and uncertainties in their
lives. And often they think that I grew up wise
and had a plan in life to get where I have
gottenthat I had no doubts and uncertainties
myself. Well, the truth is that I had plenty of
uncertainties and doubts, and this book is my
story. I was proud when my editor called me as
the book was being finalized and said: “The great
thing about this book is that it’s not the usual
W ashing ton book. It’s yours; you wrote it.” In
fact, I did write it. And my hope is that young
people who read it will find something in it they
can identify with and learn from.
Q: I’ve noticed that you have a theme in your
speeches about people who have influenced you,
and now you’re trying to influence others in a
similar way. Can you talk a little about who influenced you?
CT: The first line in the book is, “I was nine
years old when I met my father.” That refers to
my biological father. But my grandfather was my
real father. I named the book My Grandfather’s
Son because that’s who I am. My grandfather and
my grandmother influenced me and made me what I
am today. That’s why I always take offense when I
hear it said that Yale or some other institution
is responsible. I was already fully formed by my
grandparents. Whatever was poured into this
vessel came from their way of life, and from my
grandfather’s independence, his insistence on
self-sufficiency, his desire to think for himself
even in the segregated South.
My father left when I was two, and up there on
the wall you can see a photograph by Walker Evans
of the Savannah neighborhood where my mother, my
brother and I lived in one room. It doesn’t look
like much of a neighborhood, does it? And when I
went to live with my grandfather, I was seven.
His name was Myers Anderson. And it was a
different way of life that he had worked hard to
make possible. He built his house, a cinderblock
house. He made the cinderblocks. And he was proud
of that. It had a refrigerator, a deep freezer, a
hot water heaterI had never seen any of these
things in my life. It was wonderful. And then he
taught me the connection between having these
things and work. Everything he had, he showed me how to get it the honest way.
One of my grandfather’s favorite sayings was,
“Old Man Can’t is dead, I helped bury him.” I
must have heard that a hundred times. Today we’ve
grown comfortable with programs and theories,
whether it’s affirmative action or something
else. Centralized g overnments always love grand
theories and five-year-plans. But no government
program could have done what my grandfather did
for me and for others who needed help. It’s the
golden ruledo unto others as you would have them
do unto you. The golden rule can’t operate
through a government program, it can only work between people.
I was talking to my brother oncemy brother died
eight years ago very suddenly, which was really
devastatingbut we were talking and we agreed
that my grandfather was the greatest person we
had ever known. And mind you, as young people
there came a time that we rejected him. But he
told us the truth about life. He taught us
everything we needed to know to live in this
world. And it remained with us. Even when people
ask about my judicial philosophy, I can honestly
say, to the extent I have one, it comes from my grandfather.
Q: In the photo of your grandfather, he looks
like a very serious man. What was he like personally?
CT: Yes, he was serious, and he was tough. He
wasn’t a mean man, but he was a hard man. He
lived a hard life, and he was hardened by it. His
life was marked by segregation, by no education,
by having no father, by having his mother die
when he was nine and going to live with his
grandmother who was a freed slave. In a recent
book, the authors said my grandfather was a
wealthy man. And one of my cousins said when he
heard this, “Has anybody found the money?” My
grandfather owned two trucks and delivered fuel
oil with one and ice with the other. His only
employees were my brother and me, and we were
little kids. Anything that he could do to make a
living he did. And when the ice business was
displaced by the refrigerator, we started
farming. We repaired our own vehicles, we farmed
our own land, we built our own fence line. We
raised hogs, chickens, cows, and we butchered
them. So he was not rich, no. But he was a
frugal, industrious man. He believed that if you
worked hard enough, you could have what you
needed. If you were frugal enough, you could keep
what you had. And if you had things, you could
help other people who were in need. He believed
that you work from sun to sun, and that was our
life due to our fallen nature. Another of his
favorite sayings was, “There’s nothing you can’t
do with a little elbow grease.”
And the idea of taxation offended him. My first
ideas about taxation had to do with the fact that
we worked for everything we had. My grandfather
would give whatever he could to relatives who
needed itto the elderly, to people with a lot of
kids, to people who had fallen on hard times.
We’d harvest food and take it to folks who needed
it. But the idea of someone coming and exacting
from us what we had worked for, he was offended at that idea.
Q: You mentioned that you had uncertainties and
doubts and that you rejected your grandfather at
some point. How did the lessons that he taught you carry you through?
CT: I went into the seminary at 16, intending to
be a priest. During my last two years there, I
was the only black student. I was raised Roman
Catholic, and I am Roman Catholic today. But I
got angry back in the 1960s. I turned my back on
what I had been taught and I fell away from my
faith. When I left the seminary my grandfather
kicked me out of the house. So I’ve been on my
own since I was 19. And then I was really angry.
I got caught up in the anti-war movement in New
England. I was really an angry black kid. And
then in April of 1970, I was caught up in a riot
in Harvard Square. At one point it was four in
the morning and we were rioting, and there were
tear gas canisters going off. And we made our way
back to Worcester, back to the Holy Cross campus
where I was going to college, and I couldn’t
sleep. I kept thinking, “What did I just do?” I
couldn’t figure it out. And then suddenly I
realized that I was full of hate. I remember
going in front of the chapel and saying, “Lord,
if you take this anger out of my heart, I’ll
never hate again.” I hadn’t prayed in years, and
that was the beginning of my process back. I went
from anger and hatred to cynicism, and then to
trying to figure things out. And over the years I
came to see cynicism as a disease. So what I tell
my clerks today is that I’m more idealistic than
I’ve ever been. That’s the only reason to do the
job. But it was a long struggle. I was something
like the prodigal son, slowly making my way back to what I had abandoned.
The hardest part of my book to write had to do
with the fact that I had been so angry and
bitterangry at whites, angry at the country,
rejecting the church. But finally there came a
time when I was at the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commissionit was in February of
1983and my grandmother was ill. And I saw my
grandfather at the hospital and we embraced for
the only time in our entire lives. And he looked
at me and said that he had recognized that part
of the conflict I had been through with him was
that I was just like him, independent and
strong-willed. I was his son, and it was as
though you could see it in his eyes. And then a
month later he was dead. And it was at that
timethe spring and summer of 1983that I
re-embraced all that he had taught me. I had come
full circle. And it was that summer that I
decided I would live my life as a memorial to my
grandparents’ lives. That’s why I was so upset
during my confirmation hearings, because I saw
what was being done to me as a desecration of
that memorial. Ever since then, when people say
that I’m a conservative or that I’m this or that,
I say, “I’m my grandfather’s son.” If that means I am conservative, so be it.
Q: A lot of people tend to define you by your
race and you don’t seem to. Why do you think that is?
CT: We’ve become very comfortable with making
judgments about people based on immutable
characteristics. And look what we’ve degenerated
tolook what happened to the Duke lacrosse team,
where because there are rich white boys and a
poor black girl, so many people assumed an
automatic narrative. What happens to the truth,
then? How is that different from the stereotypes
of the days of Jim Crow? I often say, “I don’t
hire women law clerks.” People are shocked. But I
don’t hire women law clerksI hire the best law
clerks. And it turns out that 30 percent of them
happen to be women. If a woman graduates from law
school and I say I’m going to hire her because I
need a woman, that seems to me dehumanizing, and
the job would be tainted. That’s my attitude.
Q: Do you think we ever will see each other as individuals?
CT: We used to have that as a goal when I was a
kid and when we lived under segregation. And by
the way, something that we often forget is that
even under segregation, we were really patriotic.
When I came back home with all that anti-war talk
in the ’60s, my grandfather’s response was: “Boy
I didn’t raise you like this. You went up North
and they put all that damned foolishness in your
head.” But my point is, I was raised to treat
people as individuals. My grandfather would say
about whites, “There’s good’ns, there’s bad’ns.”
And about blacks, “There’s good’ns, there’s
bad’ns.” The difference was good and bad, not
black and white. And treating others and being
treated ourselves as individuals was our goal.
I went to a seminary reunion about four years
ago, and a white seminarian who was a year ahead
of me in high school came up to me and saidhere
he is, almost 60 years old, and he had tears in
his eyesand he said, “Clarence, you taught me
something in high school. You taught me that
someone who didn’t look like me could be a better
seminarian, a better person, a better athlete
than I could.” And he said, “From the time I left
the seminary, I’ve always treated people as
individuals.” That was our goal back then.
Q: If you were talking to a group of college
students and you were to give them the most
important lesson that you learned from your grandfather, what would it be?
CT: There may be a disconnect between my world
and yours, because when my grandfather was
raising me, people didn’t talk about their rights
so much. They talked about civil rights, yes, but
they didn’t simply talk about rights and freedom.
They talked more about the responsibilities that
came with freedomabout the fact that if you were
to have freedom, you had to be responsible for
it. What my grandfather believed was that people
have their responsibilities, and that if they are
left alone to fulfill their responsibilities,
that is freedom. Honesty and responsibility, those are the things he taught.
It’s the same thing in civil society. We’re too
focused on the benefits of a civil society and we
think too little about the obligations we
havethe obligations to be civil, to learn about
our history and our government, to conduct
ourselves in a disciplined way, to help others,
to take care of our homes. Too many conversations
today have to do with rights and wants. There is
not enough talk about responsibilities and duties.
Q: How do you think people in today’s generation
can learn that kind of philosophy with such
different upbringings and such a different culture?
CT: We all make choices. My wife is my best
friend in the whole world. And she had a totally
different upbringing from mine, but we have the
same beliefs. How? I don’t think it’s necessarily
the same upbringing that makes the difference. We
have free will. We always have a choice between
just doing whatever we feel like doing and doing
what we are obligated to do. I’ve got a strong
libertarian streak, but a good lesson I’ve
learned is this: You can’t choose right and
wrong, you’ve got to choose between right and
wrong. There’s a wonderful encyclical by Pope
John Paul where he talks about the mistake that
Adam and Eve made. They thought they could choose
right and wrong as opposed to choosing between
the two. Modern nihilists and relativists think
that we can decide or make up right and wrong.
People like my grandfather understood that there
was right and wrong, as certain as that the sun
rises in the east and sets in the west. And they
made their choices between the two. I think anyone today can do the same thing.
Q: There seems to be a lot of negativity toward
you in books and in the media. Is that lonely?
And if so, how do you deal with it?
CT: When people used to criticize my grandfather,
he’d say: “Well then, dammit, they’ve got a
lifetime to get pleased.” That was it. He never
spent any more time on it. Have you ever read the
Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson from 1896?
That’s the case that upheld the idea of “separate
but equal.” There was one dissent in that case,
the dissent by Justice Harlan, who argued that
the C onstitu tion is colorblind. How lonely do
you think he was after he wrote that? Do you
think he was popular? It doesn’t mean he wasn’t
right. I never set out to be unpopular, but
popularity isn’t of high value to me. I set out
to do my best to be right. I am who I am.
Q: What is your purpose in writing your opinions?
CT: What I try to do first in my opinions is to
apply the C onstitution. But also, I look on the
C onstitution as the people’s C onstitution. And
so I try to make the C onstitution accessible
again to people who didn’t go to Harvard Law
School. Of course, some of it gets involved
because you have to deal with a lot of case law.
But I want people to understand what the cases are about.
As for how I think about my opinions, imagine a
train with 100 cars. The cars are the previous
cases dealing with some issuethe meaning of the
Commerce Clause, for instance, or of the First
Amendment. Often what our decisions do is just
tack on a new caboose to the train, and that’s
it. But here’s what I like to do: I like to walk
through the 100 cars and see what’s going on up
front. I like to go back to the C onstitution,
looking at the history and tradition along the
way. Because what if there’s a flashing light on
the dashboard up front that says “wrong
direction”? What if we’re headed the wrong way?
My job is to apply the C onstitution. And here’s
a useful lesson: You hear people talk all the
time about the Bill of Rights. But you should
always keep in mind that the Bill of Rights was
an afterthought. That’s why it’s made up of what
are called amendments. It was not in the original
Constitution. The rights in the Bill of Rights
were originally assumed as natural rights, and
some people at the time thought that writing them
into the C onstitution was redundant. Read the
Declaration of Independence. We should always
start, when we read the C onstitution, by reading
the Declaration, because it gives us the reasons
why the structure of the C onstitution was
designed the way it was. And with the C
onstitution, it was the structure of the g
overnment that was supposed to protect our
liberty. And what has happened through the years
is that the protections afforded by that
structure have been dissipated. So my opinions
are often about the undermining of those structural protections.
People need to know about that. Many might say,
“Well, they are writing about the Commerce
Clause, and nobody cares about that.” But they
should care about it. The same is true of the
doctrine of incorporation. The same is true of
substantive due process. People should care about
these things. And I try to explain why clearly in my opinions.
Q: In your opinion in Morse v. Frederickwhich
had to do with whether a student had a right to
hold up a sign saying “Bong Hits for Jesus”you
talk about the history of education, and about
instilling a core of common values and how that’s
a responsibility of schools. How do you respond
to people who say that there isn’t a common set
of values that schools should instillthat morality is relative?
CT: I did look at history, and more people
should. There was an article in the W ashington
Times just today on how poorly our kids today
understand civics. The title of it is: “Colleges
Flunking Basic Civics Tests, Average is F in U.S.
History.” There is our problem: We think we know
a lot about our rights, but we know nothing about
our country and about the principles that our
liberty is based on and depends on.
Have you ever read Modern Times, by Paul Johnson?
I read it back in the ’80s. It’s long, but it’s
really worth the effort. One point it makes
clearly is the connection between relativism,
nihilism, and Naziism. The common idea that you
can do whatever you want to do, because truth and
morality are relative, leads to the idea that if
you are powerful enough you can kill people
because of their race or faith. So ask your
relativist friends sometime: What is to keep me
from getting a gang of people together and
beating the hell out of you because I think you
deserve to be beaten? Too many people think that
life and liberty are about their frivolous
pleasures. There is more to life. And again,
largely what relativism reflects is simply a lack of learning.
Q: I read a quote where you said that you don’t
argue ideas with brutes. Who were you referring to?
CT: Can a diehard Packers fan have a civil
conversation with a diehard Bears fan right after
a close game? That’s what I’m talking about.
There are some people now who are so wrapped up
in their interests that that’s all they care
about. They don’t even read the opinions that I
write. It is their interests that govern them,
not the thought process or the C onstitution.
They’ve got to have their way or they’ll kill
younot physically, necessarily, but certainly
with calumnies. There are people today who seem
unable to transcend their interests to the point
necessary to have a civil discourse.
Q: Am I correct, based on what you’ve said about
your book, that you think the solution to this
problem of overweening interests is located
somehow in the stories about your grandfather?
CT: My grandfather was a man who understood
implicitly, without education, what it meant to
do rightas a citizen, as a father, as a person.
This was a man who had every reason to be
bitterwho wasn’t. A man who had every reason to
give upwho didn’t. A man who had every reason to
stop workingwho wouldn’t. He was a man who had
nothing but a desire to work by the sweat of his
brow so that he could provide for those of us
around him, and to pass on to us his idea of
right. Another thing he said always stuck with
me. When my brother and I went to live with him
in 1955 as kids, he told us: “Boys, I’m never
going to tell you to do as I say. I’m going to
tell you to do as I do.’ How many people can say
that? And I asked my brother once, “Did he ever
fail to live up to his promise?” No.
Q: Where do you think that you find the courage
to make the unpopular stands that you do?
CT: I take my clerks to Gettysburg every year.
They go over to stand where Lincoln delivered the
Gettysburg Address. Do you know that speech? He
left it for us, the living, to finish the
business. I take that very seriously. And my
clerks get the point. We are here to further the
business that Lincoln was talking about. And then
you think also about the people who lost their
lives there. Was that in vain? Will we allow the
people who have fought our wars for our liberty
to have died in vain? In recent years I’ve had
some wounded vets here in my office, young kids
who have come back from I raq missing limbs,
blinded, in wheelchairs. And people say that I
take hits? Do I look wounded to you? These kids
have given a lot more. What a price people have
paid for us to be right here. I think of them
like I think of my grandparents. One of the
things I’m always trying to do is to make sure
that everything they did was worth itthat if
they were to appear right now they would say,
“You’ve made our sacrifices worth it.” That’s all I want.
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