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David Cordell
Well said, Bob D.
Janalu, it was only a joke, forwarded to me by a lurker. I am aware of only one classmate who spent time in prison, and he has passed away. I suppose that there are others.
Different subject. I think Biden blew it by saying up-front that he would nominate a black woman for the Supreme Court. If he was intent on selecting a black woman, apparently in part to fulfill a promise/debt to Rep. Clyburn, he should have just said he would pick the best person, and then selected a black woman. As it stands, regardless of qualifications, my evaluation is that whomever he selects is just an affirmative action pick that passed over more qualified individuals.
By the way, I think the US population is about 12% black, and this pick will mean that 22% of the Supreme Court will be black, except for the fact that liberals seem to want to deny Clarence Thomas's blackness..Of course, Thomas's socio-economic experience was much closer to that of the typical black person of his era than VP Harris's was of her era. Both of Harris's parents have PhDs and
Bob D.,
As I recall, you lived in Northwood Hills. If you still lived there, your mayor would be black. Your US congressman would be black. Your district attorney would be black. Your county sheriff would be black. Your chief of police would be hispanic. And of course, your vice president would be black. I don't have a problem with any of them, except the VP, but it does poke a hole in the systemic racism concept.
I have always admired Clarence Thomas, especially his extraordinary rise from poverty. What follows is from Wikipedia.
Childhood
Thomas was born in 1948 in Pin Point, Georgia, a small, predominantly black community near Savannah founded by freedmen after the Civil War. He was the second of three children born to M. C. Thomas, a farm worker, and Leola "Pigeon" Williams, a domestic worker.[11][12][13] They were descendants of American slaves, and the family spoke Gullah as a first language.[14] Thomas's earliest known ancestors were slaves named Sandy and Peggy, who were born in the late 18th century and owned by wealthy planter Josiah Wilson of Liberty County, Georgia. Thomas's father left the family when Thomas was two years old. Though Thomas's mother worked hard, she was sometimes paid only pennies per day and struggled to earn enough money to feed the family, and was sometimes forced to rely on charity.[16] After a house fire left them homeless, Thomas and his younger brother Myers were taken to live in Savannah with his maternal grandparents, Myers and Christine (née Hargrove) Anderson.[17]
Thomas then experienced amenities such as indoor plumbing and regular meals for the first time.[11] Myers Anderson had little formal education, but built a thriving fuel oil business that also sold ice. Thomas has called Anderson "the greatest man I have ever known."[17] When Thomas was 10, Anderson started taking the family to help at a farm every day from sunrise to sunset.[17] Anderson believed in hard work and self-reliance, and counseled the children to "never let the sun catch you in bed." He also impressed upon his grandsons the importance of a good education.[11]
Education
Raised Catholic, Thomas attended the predominantly black St. Pius X high school for two years before transferring to St. John Vianney's Minor Seminary on the Isle of Hope, where he was among few black students.[17][18] He also briefly attended Conception Seminary College, a Roman Catholic seminary in Missouri. No one in Thomas's family had attended college.[18] Thomas has said that he left the seminary in the aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. He had overheard another student say after the shooting, "Good, I hope the son of a bitch died",[13][19] and did not think the church did enough to combat racism.[17]
At a nun's suggestion, Thomas enrolled at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, as a sophomore transfer student.[20] While there, Thomas helped found the Black Student Union. He once joined a walkout of the school after some black students were punished while white students went undisciplined for the same violation. Some of the priests negotiated with the protesting black students to reenter the school.[18]
Having spoken Gullah as a child, Thomas realized in college that he still sounded unpolished despite having been drilled in grammar at school, and chose to major in English literature "to conquer the language."[22] At Holy Cross, he was also a member of Alpha Sigma Nu and the Purple Key Society.[23] Thomas graduated from Holy Cross in 1971 with an A.B. cum laude in English literature.[22][23]
Thomas had a series of deferments from the military draft while at Holy Cross. Upon graduation, he was classified 1-A and received a low lottery number, indicating he might be drafted to serve in Vietnam. Thomas failed his medical exam due to curvature of the spine and was not drafted.[24]
Legal education
Thomas entered Yale Law School, from which he received a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree in 1974, graduating in the middle of his class.[25] Thomas has said that the law firms he applied to after graduating from Yale did not take his Juris Doctor seriously, assuming he obtained it because of affirmative action;[26] Dean Louis Pollak wrote in 1969 that Yale Law was then expanding its program of quotas for black applicants, with up to 24 entering that year under a system that deemphasized grades and LSAT scores.[27] According to Thomas, the law firms also "asked pointed questions, unsubtly suggesting that they doubted I was as smart as my grades indicated."[28] In his 2007 memoir, Thomas wrote, "I peeled a fifteen-cent sticker off a package of cigars and stuck it on the frame of my law degree to remind myself of the mistake I'd made by going to Yale. I never did change my mind about its value."
Literary influences
In 1975, when Thomas read economist Thomas Sowell's Race and Economics, he found an intellectual foundation for his philosophy.[16][30] The book criticizes social reform by government and argues for individual action to overcome circumstances and adversity. Ayn Rand's work also influenced him, particularly The Fountainhead, and he later required his staffers to watch the 1949 film version of the novel.[32][16] Thomas acknowledges "some very strong libertarian leanings."[33]
Thomas has said novelist Richard Wright is the most influential writer in his life; Wright's books Native Son and Black Boy "capture[d] a lot of the feelings that I had inside that you learn how to repress."[34] Native Son and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man are Thomas's two favorite novels.
Spike Lee's films also appeal to Thomas, particularly Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X. Thomas has said he would like to meet Lee.
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