My Grandfather's Son: A Memoir by Clarence Thomas
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Book Reviews of My Grandfather's Son: A Memoir
Book Review: A Challenging Read
Summary: 5 Stars
I rarely stay up till wee-hours in the morning reading a book, but I did so last night. At 1:30 a.m., I finished reading the final words in Clarence Thomas' My Grandfather's Son: A Memoir. This is a must-read for those of us who remember the Anita Hill Hearings and the national trial of 1991 when a conservative black man was appointed to the Supreme Court. Those of you who remember the portrayal of the He-said/She-said dispute by the media will find the behind-the-scenes final chapters irresistible page-turners.
There were a number of things that struck me about the life of Clarence Thomas that I hadn't known. First, as the title points out, he was raised by his grandfather (his mother's father) as his relationship with his biological father "ended at conception." Before going to live with his grandfather, his life was as "southern black" as you can get, and his book recalls his daily chore of hauling the bucket of human waste out of the outhouse for the rest of the family. His childhood was extremely impoverished, his lifelong belongings fitting into a paper bag when he moved to his grandparent's home. It was under his grandfather's teaching (he and his brother called their grandfather "Daddy") that Clarence learned the strong work ethic that made him the conservative he is today.More...
Clarence Thomas was truly raised in "extreme poverty." I posted a few weeks ago of our family's financial situation, one that is labeled as "extremely impoverished." Our family is quite well off compared to that of Thomas' childhood. In fact, Wendy and I respond with scoff to the government's labeling our "poverty." And this is how Thomas' grandfather saw finances, and he, likewise, refused to go on welfare or government assistance. He was a self-employed man who taught Thomas that "anything was possible with a little bit of elbow grease." Thomas grew up with a sense that no opportunity was out of his reach, and that attitude led him through rigorous Catholic education, Yale Law School, political confirmations and eventually through one of the toughest character assassination attempts in the history of American politics. I completely resonate with Thomas' refusal to allow others to judge his opinions, his motives, and his character.
This was the second thing that struck me of Thomas' life: his fight against The Man. Those who read this book will find it surprising that Thomas was not always a conservative. His lifetime passion was with the civil rights movement, a genuine desire to help other disadvantaged blacks. He even explains his "radical" youth where he dressed in army fatigues and resembled the Black Panthers, never considering that his views resembled Republicans more than Democrats. Yet it became undeniable that his world view, so distinctly defined by his grandfather, came to realize that blacks were held to social slavery by the legal experimentation of liberal ideologies. In his quest to grant blacks freedom, he grew to embrace conservative principles of hard work, expanded opportunity for all, and limited government.
But The Man expected this Negro to be a liberal democrat, and for his denial of liberal ideologies that Thomas believed to be harmful to his people, he suffered incredible hostility. The Senate confirmation hearings was actually Thomas' fifth confirmation process, so he was used to a fair amount of politics. Thomas goes to great pains explaining how vicious his enemies were. Here was Thomas, a southern black man who rose from poverty and racism to fulfill the American dream, only to be vilified and lectured by a panel of white men who claimed Thomas knew little of discrimination. Such judgmentalism was hypocritical to the n'th degree. Thomas explains how the final days of his confirmation were atrocious:
What they didn't understand was that my opponents didn't care who I was. Even if they had wanted to know the truth about me, it would have made no sense to them, since I refused to stay in my place and play by their rules and was too complicated to fit into their simple-minded, stereotypical pigeonholes. In any case, I couldn't be defeated without first being caricatured and dehumanized. They couldn't deny that I had a loyal and loving family, so they found ways to use it against me; they couldn't deny that I'd been born into rural poverty, so they cast doubt on everything I'd done since leaving home, twisting and belittling my escape from the poverty and ignorance of my young years. Above all they couldn't allow my life to be seen as the story of an ordinary person who, like most people, had worked out his problems step by unsure step. That would have been too honest--and too human.
The third profundity of this book is the reality I had to come to grips with: I was swayed by a dominant media machine that stamped me with an opinion of a fellow human being, someone I knew nothing about. Anita Hill came forth with testimony, and two others from Thomas' work backed up her allegations. Thomas explains how Anita's testimony contradicted itself and phone records and calendar history exonerated him of guilt. The testimony of the two who backed up Anita also failed the test of the most reasonable scrutiny. Besides, hundreds of former employees (there were a history of 800 who served under Thomas' management) lined up to testify on behalf of Thomas' character and against Anita's. Thomas does an outstanding job telling it the way he recalls.
A few days before I finished Thomas' book, I was talking with a dear friend of mine about the Anita Hill hearings. When I recalled the hearings' injustice, he reminded me, "Yeah, but Anita Hill had witnesses to back her up...Something must have happened." I sort of agreed. The insinuation was that the accusation of guilt was enough. Thomas addresses this attitude as a cultural plague the Black Man has carried in his history. This wasn't a "cry racism" response to his confirmation hearing. Quite the contrary. He reminds his readers that "hypersensitive civil-rights leaders who saw racism around every corner fell silent when my liberal enemies sneered that I was unqualified to sit on the Court." The reality was that if I had doubts about Clarence Thomas, it was very likely because of the media's portrayal of him and, perhaps, because of real prejudgment deep down inside.
Finally, Thomas accurately labeled the entire ordeal in a most poetic and succinct way. I remember the final words of the hearings. Thomas doesn't make a big deal of the fact that C-Span provided live coverage rather than allowing the media monopoly cut and edit his strongest verbiage. Thomas' final words alone vindicated himself, for it turned the tables on what his enemies' attempt to sink his nomination to the Supreme Court:
"This is a circus. It is a national disgrace. And from my standpoint, as a black American, as far as I am concerned, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that, unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you, you will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate rather than hung from a tree."
I highly recommend My Grandfather's Son by Justice Clarence Thomas. The book is packed full of timeless lessons.
Book Review: Since Justice Thomas "didn't know his place, he had to be put down"
Summary: 5 Stars
Psychologically and spiritually thought-provoking, this book is also, quite simply, inspiring.
Justice Thomas' brutally poor upbringing should be a source of pride for all Americans, especially blacks, irrespective of your political leanings. More than anything else, the deep respect and gratitude that Thomas has for his grandfather is evident throughout all 290 pages. It seems his religiosity aided that mentality. Thomas minces no words in explaining he once feared the man who, despite their differences when Thomas was "an angry black man" at Yale and Holy Cross, he came to view as the greatest man he ever knew.
The writing is tight and not pedantic, and the length of the book is optimal for a smooth read. I personally learned a lot -- not only confirming my well-researched opinions of the destructiveness of post-1960s left-wing racial bigotry, but the booktaught me more about how moral, strong-willed, and compassionate conservatives like Thomas, Sen. Danforth and others are, as compared to their political adversaries.
The first chapters on his humble origins are tough to imagine, and the final chapters -- his 'lynching' by the white Democrat senators (Then-Sen., now VP Joe Biden, who lies and goes back on his word twice, Howard Metzenbaum, Pat Leahy, Teddy Kennedy, and the rest of the modern northern slaveholders) in 1991, and the lies and slander from vicious, immature, publicity-seeking and agenda-driven Anita Hill (a woman who, despite her inferior work abilities, Thomas assisted over and over with kindness, professionalism and generosity) -- leave you with more admiration for this man's humility and prudence than you'd believe. (Hill, a true sexist who never apologized for her destruction of numerous lives, has parlayed her infamy into top positions at upper crust universities like Brandeis and Wellesley where she now brainwashes youths to hate men.)
The hypocrisy from belittling and dehumanizing organizations like the AFL-CIO, People for the American Way, the NAACP and the so-called "civil rights organizations" that ignored Thomas's plight and fought to defeat him -- putting politics over right/wrong -- was expected, but so saddening. The "progressive" black organizations proved it's a-okay to smear a successful black man when he doesn't agree with your warped politics. They continue to deter black progress while demonizing opponents with ad hominem racial attacks today (see ANY criticism of the DISASTROUS last two years as "racist"), yet tossed Thomas out because he wouldn't play their destructive game.
Indeed, as Justice Thomas explains, he was also a staunch black radical, who valued the 'progress of his people' over others; but, unlike others, he also knew why and how blacks (and any identity group) succeeds (hard work, self-reliance, no bitterness, equal opportunity) versus how they fail (demeaning social engineering policies, welfare, affirmative action/preferential treatment at the expense of others, and other backwards policies put forth by condescending 'elite liberals' who only care about the votes/support of blacks).
Very clearly throughout the book, Thomas relays that all he wanted was for blacks to have the same open door that whites had, and reiterates that he learned very quickly that a law degree from Yale 'means one thing for a white person and a different thing for a black'. Affirmative action and quotas may have gotten him into Yale, but after being treated like a child for three years at Yale but northern white liberals, he realized he was unqualified for most jobs. The soft-bigotry of low expectation, as Pres. GW Bush astutely deemed the left's racism, was at work in 1973.
Thomas' point is that the government interference sought by the left has created a new kind of slavery (akin to Democrats in Civil War times but lacking physical violence) meant for 'his people,' but that he personally rejected.
It's therefore unacceptable to the intolerant bigots of the left Thomas had "the black experience" (and a MUCH more 'oppressed' one than 90% endure) and merely came to a different conclusion on how equality can be achieved. With candor about the pain and with factual evidence, his side of the story (not the media's incorrect version) is finally told.
What's also truly appalling in this book is the usual media groupthink and 'superior wisdom' of over-educated liberals with limited life experience, who actually thought they knew what was better for blacks. Needless to add, 20 years later today, this still occurs in the Obama Administration and their supporters.
So you still ask: Which ideology/party hinders 'minority achievement?'
Shouldn't a man's faith, intellect and experience, rather than the color of a man's skin, dictate his ideas? Some say yes; the left says NO.
Referring mainly to Democrat Senators Joe Biden (DE), Pat Leahy (VT), Ted Kennedy and Howard Metzenbaum (OH), Thomas poignantly explains:
1. "As a child in the Deep South,, I'd grown up fearing the lynch mobs of the KKK; as an adult, I was starting to wonder if I'd been afraid of wrong white people all along. My worst fears had come to pass not in Georgia but in Washington, where I was being pursued not by bigots in white robes but by left-wing zealots draped in flowing sanctimony."
2. "From my standpoint as a black American, this is a high tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it's a message that unless you kowtow to white liberals, you will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the US Senate rather than hung from a tree."
{With respect to these quotes, I'd be remiss to not mention something else that irked me: I was quickly reminded of how the 'mainstream' media has done a great job transforming vicious Joe Biden into a affable, innocuous "Uncle Joe," despite the fact that he's still a deceitful cunning statist as shown in 1991 and prior to that when he stopped Robert Bork from taking his deserved seat on the SCT in 1987.}
Thankfully, Thomas, a better man than I, moved beyond suffering and prejudice and bias to live the America dream. It is a dignified story filled with TRUE 'hope,' and it's a story worth telling and reading, as he graciously doesn't pander to anyone; without nuance, the Associate Justice simply wrote this book from his heart to memorialize his life.
If you can read the book with an open-mind, you'll learn a lot and feel good that you perused. You'll also become like Thomas's sister who was instructed to love JFK and the Democrats, but after seeing the hatred and bigotry which how they treated Thomas, said she'd now 'vote for a dog' before a Democrat.
Book Review: A book everyone should read instead of accepting the distorted media image of Justice Thomas
Summary: 5 Stars
This is one of those books that I think everyone ought to read. The media has worked very hard to provide is preferred view of Clarence Thomas and it is a very distorted picture. In this memoir, Justice Thomas presents his life as he lived it, with his successes, failures, mistakes, difficulties, accomplishments, despair, and joy.
He writes movingly about his youth and being completely abandoned after conception by his father and barely attended to by his mother. He and his brother really only found their footing when they went to live with his Grandfather, whom they called Daddy, and his wife, whom they called Aunt Tina. Daddy was very strict with the boys. He worked very hard and worked the boys very hard. He made sure his grandsons had the best education they could scrape together. Clarence preferred the more rural life with Daddy where they had good healthy fresh food and a clean place to live.
Certainly, they were aware of racism, but it didn't hit Clarence hard until college. There it became personal and it changed him. It was in college that Thomas became a radical and took on the leftist black militancy that was so popular in those years. It allowed him to vent his rage and feel empowered, but it wasn't too many years before he saw how empty it was. At Yale Law School he saw how crippling the liberal condescension was to those admitted under racial preferences standards. When they graduated with a degree from Yale Law, which should have opened doors to top jobs, those hiring discounted any achievements of the minority graduates, assuming they were not the same as the achievements of the non-minority graduates. This was a bitter wake-up call for Thomas and hardened his views about the harm preferences do to minorities. He states that the lower standards sap the motivation of those competing for slots to prepare because it inculcates a sense of entitlement. And it cheats those who make spectacular achievements by causing them to viewed as somehow not being accomplished using the same measures.
Once he started sharing these views, he also found out about the prejudice of those who expect all African-Americans to hold to the same views on race relations and programs that propose to alleviate it. In time, he went to work for John Danforth when he was attorney general of Missouri and they remained close ever since. Thomas went to work as a corporate attorney for Monsanto, but found it stifling and returned to work for Danforth in the Seantor's office. He left that office to work in the Civil Rights department of the Department of Education. In 1982 he was appointed to be the Chairmen of the EEOC. Thomas says he wasn't interested in the job, but his friends told him it was time to stop talking about his views on improving the lives of blacks and to do something about it. Thomas is frank about his differences in views with the Reagan administration and what he believes they did wrong to aggravate both their opponents and those who wanted to support them, but found it difficult.
President George H.W. Bush appointed him to be a Federal Judge and, obviously, nominated him for the Supreme Court. The last portion of the book recounts the nomination process as he experienced it. Along the way, we learn the truth about how Anita Hill came to work in his office and the nature of her work there. We also learn about their completely non-personal relationship, when and how she left for Oral Roberts University and the secret and surprise nature of her testimony to try to stop his nomination in the Senate. His writing on the personal agony of this process is quite moving. It is also important to remember why, at the time, the public believed Thomas rather than Hill. Of course, the liberal media has worked ever since to reverse that understanding so that nowadays it is a commonplace that Hill told the truth, when clearly she did not and even those she listed as confirming witnesses did not corroborate her story.
Thomas is also very frank about his personal difficulties. He talks about his first marriage and his sense of guilt over its failure. The difficulties he had with drinking, with his personal finances, and his complex relationship with Daddy are quite moving. I suspect that his openness about these personal difficulties will mean more to regular folks of all races than Thomas believes. Another important aspect of this book is how he shares his spiritual journey from youthful faith, to the young adult rejection of spiritual matters to the refiner's fire that brought him back to Christ. His devotion to his son from his first marriage, Jamal, is also inspiring. Few of us can claim to be perfect parents, but Thomas was certainly devoted to seeing his son well-educated and trying to be the best father his personal limitations would allow him to be. The strength and love he shares with his wife, Virginia, is heartwarming and the strength she supplied during the crucible of the nominating process was vital.
I hope you read this book. You will get to know Justice Thomas instead of knowing him through the distorting lenses of the popular media. Might I suggest it for reading material during Black History Month?
Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI
Book Review: Books I Haven't Read
Summary: 5 Stars
I sent a copy of Atlas Shrugged to my son. He says the writing is amazing, although he notices an overuse of the heavy sentence. He says it cured him of his bias against female writers. Well, I used to have that too. It took a while for me to get rid of all my faults. As Krauthammer said of Judge Thomas's new autobiography, I've read Atlas Shrugged, but not personally. I've read a lot about it. But Gawd, it's like a million pages long. And I'm getting presbyopia. In my case they should change the name of that condition, to something like hotstudopia. Cuz I'm so virile. I feel the need to point this out, because people just don't pay attention to the really important stuff. Also important is the reading of good books. Maybe it's out on tape? One of you ingrate slackers can send me one, as a minimal gesture toward how much I've done for you.
I am going to buy Thomas's autobiography. A birthday present. I don't really go in for birthday presents, but it's an excuse to give this book, which I think will be a, as it were, blessing. Kristol recounts how Thomas was abandoned by his father and raised by a very stern grandfather, who later was gentle and indulgent with Thomas's own son, Jamal. Per Kristol, Thomas eventually inquired about this of the old man, whom he called "Daddy": "'Tell me something, Daddy, you never make Jamal do anything he doesn't want to do. You let him do whatever he wants. You do whatever he asks you to do. But you never treated [my brother] and me that way. Why not?' His grandfather replied, 'Jamal is not my responsibility.'"
This seems to me to be a profound truth.
"And Thomas goes on to wonder 'how hard it had been for him to hide his affection from us. How often had he looked in on my brother and me as we slept, gazing at us with the same sweetness I saw each time he looked at Jamal? How often had he longed to hold us, hug us, grant our every wish, but held himself back for fear of letting us see his vulnerability, believing as he did that real love demanded not affection but discipline?'"
I bend the other way. Not indulgent, but affectionate. I had an unshakable conviction about discipline, but it was selective. Some things don't matter. Some things are best overlooked. Both views are probably right. Mine is easier, I think, or at least more human. It certainly requires more wisdom, and so invites more frequent failure. But I hope the failures would be smaller than that which comes from withholding tenderness. Thomas turned out alright. So has my son.
"At the most recent Democratic presidential debate," says Kristol, "Tim Russert asked the candidates to name their favorite Bible verse. The answers tended toward the unexceptionable..." His own favorite verse, he thinks, might be from the preparation for the reading of the Torah during the sabbath. When the scrolls are produced, "the congregation stands, as the Israelites stood at the base of Mt. Sinai, and chants the verse: 'When the ark was carried forward, Moses would say, "Arise, Lord! May Your enemies be scattered, may Your foes be put to flight."'" Numbers 10:35.
As I've said, once I read the Bible four times in six weeks. It sort of all comes together, when you do that. Sixty-six books, forty authors, but one book and one author. I saw it. And I don't have a favorite verse. There are a number that speak to me. But what leaped to my mind at the question are two verses, each, respectively, the shortest verse in the Bible. Jesus wept. The shortest verse in the English Bible. Jesus, a man, grieves. But Rejoice, always. The shortest Greek verse. We cannot always rejoice. It is a commandment that God knows is impossible. Jesus, after all, wept. We have a God who weeps.
There's that wisdom thing again. We must do what is appropriate to the moment. We must be stern, and gentle. There is a way that we are God's responsibilities. We have a parent who abandoned us. Call him Adam, who handed us over to despair. No blame to him. We all would have done the same thing. But standing back behind Adam is God, a stern father. He wants us to rejoice. He weeps. He watches us as we sleep and feels unspeakable affection for us, but he shows it only in his discipline, or almost only. He can't indulge us now. The time of rejoicing is a promise of the future. This is a time for tears. We have responsibilities.
But we have a father, at least, who loves us as we sleep. I know this from a book I read. And from my own son, whom I loved as he slept.
J
Book Review: Deeply personal and eloquent
Summary: 5 Stars
Clarence Thomas is a complex man who rose from a life of poverty in the segregated Deep South to become an associate justice on the United States Supreme Court. In his candid memoir, Justice Thomas chronicles his journey and pays tribute to the one real hero in his life --- his maternal grandfather.
On June 23, 1948, a sweltering night in Pinpoint, Georgia, "when the air is so wet that you can barely draw breath," Clarence Thomas is born to M.C. and Leola "Pigeon" Thomas. Delivered by a midwife in his Aunt Annie's house, Clarence is, in his mother's words, "too stubborn to cry." Two years later his parents are divorced and his father moves to Philadelphia, leaving the family behind.
In the summer of 1955, "without a word of explanation," Pigeon sends Clarence and his younger brother Myers to live with their grandparents. On the morning the boys move in, his grandfather, whom he calls Daddy, tells them, "The damn vacation is over." While almost all other family members belong to Baptist or other Protestant churches, Daddy is a Roman Catholic convert. Daddy makes sure the boys are educated in the structured and disciplined environment of St. Benedict the Moor Grammar School. At St. Benedict's Clarence is treated with respect by the nuns and pushed to do his best. At home he is expected to pull his load. After graduation, he attends St. Pius X, Savannah's only Catholic high school for blacks.
A few months shy of his 16th birthday, Clarence believes he has a calling to become a priest and transfers to Saint John Vianney seminary school. Clarence is one of the first African-American students admitted. After graduation, he and several other classmates head for Immaculate Conception seminary, near Kansas City, Missouri. During his time there, Clarence begins to doubt his vocation. He leaves the seminary, although he knows his decision will break the promise he made to Daddy not to quit. Shortly after returning home, Daddy asks him to leave, saying he will probably turn out like his `"no-good daddy or those other no-good Pinpoint Negroes.'" With nowhere else to turn, Clarence moves in with his mother. It is 1968 --- a year of riots, assassinations and disillusion --- the year that he becomes an "angry black man."
To prove his daddy wrong, Clarence enrolls in Holy Cross College in Boston to finish his education. There he meets other black students who feel disillusioned as he does, and he joins them in protest demonstrations. Clarence also becomes acquainted with Kathy Ambush, a student at a nearby Catholic school for women. He decides to pursue a law degree at Yale, and in 1971, he and Kathy are married.
When a friend tells him that John Danforth, a Yale Law School graduate serving as Missouri's Attorney General, is looking for other Yalies to work for him, once again Clarence moves to Missouri --- this time to Jefferson City with Kathy. He works in the attorney general's office, where job satisfaction is high but the salary is not. A few years later he accepts a higher paid position with Monsanto Chemical Company in St. Louis, but he finds little job satisfaction there.
After being offered another job working for Danforth, who has become a U.S. Senator, he and Kathy pack up and head for Washington, D.C. His connection with Danforth, along with his reputation and keen mind, gets him noticed by influential Republicans who see him as a rising star. But on the home front all is not well. Eventually he and Kathy divorce. He leaves Kathy and their son Jamal and throws himself into his work, and at times, he loses himself in a bottle.
Clarence later meets Virginia Bess Lamp. In 1987 she becomes his second wife and his "pillar of love, strength, and support." Her support comes in handy when he is nominated by President George Bush to fill a vacancy on the United States Supreme Court. In 1991, after a bitter confirmation hearing that includes allegations of sexual harassment by Anita Hill, he is appointed the second black Supreme Court justice.
MY GRANDFATHER'S SON is Clarence Thomas's deeply personal and eloquent story of faith, hope and courage. But most of all it is a loving tribute to his grandfather --- the man whose hard work, discipline and determination made it possible for a child born into a life of poverty and segregation to become a justice on the United States Supreme Court.
--- Reviewed by Donna Volkenannt (dvolkenannt@charter.net)