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The Thomas Decade By Kathryn
Jean Lopez, NRO Executive Editor |
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Kathryn Jean Lopez: What was your motivation for a book on Clarence Thomas? Andrew Peyton Thomas: The book grew out of an article I wrote for The Weekly Standard about Justice Thomas entitled "America's Leading Conservative." When I learned that nobody had written a full-length biography of him, I thought it was time to fill the void with a book sympathetic to his life and work. Lopez: Goodness knows there have been enough negative books on Justice Thomas. How many "friendly" ones are out there? Thomas: Not many. David Brock authored the most famous one, The Real Anita Hill, portions of which Brock is now repudiating to gin up publicity for his newest book, a broadside against the same conservative movement that made him a wealthy man. Lopez: Tell me about Thomas and affirmative action. It's a crucial part of his story, isn't it? So why isn't he a big pro-preferences guy? Thomas: Thomas benefited from affirmative action throughout his career; a bright and ambitious young black man of his era could not have failed to. He supported affirmative action as a college student, but soured on racial preferences after learning that some of his classmates and faculty at Yale Law School questioned his intellect because of this assistance. As he became more conservative in later years, he concluded that racial preferences were harmful to the black community and even unconstitutional. Lopez: Thomas has slaves in his background, doesn't he? Bet that would irk Jesse Jackson! Thomas: Thomas's family history goes back to two plantations in Georgia on respective sides of his family. I thought it was important to relate his family history against the backdrop of slavery and the Civil War — including Sherman's march through Georgia, which touched both plantations — to recall just how horrendous those conditions were and the legacy of poverty and Jim Crow that Thomas had to overcome. Lopez: How much access did you have to Justice Thomas and his confidants? With his enemies? Thomas: Although aware of my Weekly Standard article, which was friendly, Justice Thomas declined to participate in the biography. Only after I began to interview his relatives and friends and study his life more fully did I come to understand why he reacted this way. He still bears many emotional scars from his confirmation hearings and Anita Hill's historic defamation of him. Thomas also is an extremely private man. Fortunately, many of his close relatives and friends did participate, including both parents (the first interview granted by his father), his sister, and friends and colleagues from childhood to the Supreme Court, including fellow Justice Antonin Scalia. A number of Thomas's detractors and Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee also granted interviews. Lopez: After researching and writing Clarence Thomas, what's your opinion of the confirmation hearings and all that followed after? Has it changed any from before you started the book? Thomas: I was struck by how divided the Left was over Thomas's confirmation — namely, the rift between the black and feminist lobbies. The former by and large either supported Thomas or were neutral for the straightforward reason that he was a fellow African American. The latter were viscerally hostile throughout the hearings — they feared, rightly, that Thomas would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade — and the engine behind Anita Hill's reluctant appearance on the national stage. The Thomas hearings caused the first major schism between these groups at the national level since right after the Civil War, when white feminists, led by Susan B. Anthony, insisted on the right to vote at the expense of blacks, led by Frederick Douglass. I also found it fascinating that polls of black voters were circulated in the Senate Democratic caucus right before the final vote — and that those polls, showing huge support for Thomas following his "high-tech lynching" speech, secured his confirmation. Lopez: What's the most surprising thing you learned during the course of book writing? Thomas: Thomas is one of those rare individuals who move easily among all races, classes, and intellects. He can converse with fellow Supreme Court justices about the finest points of constitutional law, then walk outside into the hallways and chat with the security guards just as easily and meaningfully about last Sunday's football game. This is quite a rare quality, one that distinguishes him as a man who could have been a great politician had he chosen to pursue a different route. Lopez: Any one message you want to get across to people about Thomas, politics in America, law, or anything else in the book? Thomas: Say what you will about his philosophy or court opinions (I happen to admire both), Thomas is no man's "clone." Far from a mere reflection of Scalia's work, his jurisprudence is entirely the result of his own considerable mental labors and powers. Thomas is, in my opinion, the most fiercely independent person serving in high public station today. Lopez: Do you have any reason to believe legal and political historians will view Thomas differently than the media has over the last ten years? Thomas: Fifty years from now, the feminist TV executives and journalists who have trashed Thomas's reputation and burnished Anita Hill's will be long gone, but Thomas's jurisprudence still will be cited and debated — and will continue to be as long as there is a U.S. Constitution. History's view of Thomas will be corrected accordingly. |
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t
was ten years ago this October that the nation's eyes were fixed
on, of all things, a Senate confirmation hearing. On October 15,
1991, Justice Clarence Thomas was confirmed for the Supreme Court,
despite the rabid attempts to keep him off the bench. NRO spoke
with writer and lawyer Andrew Peyton Thomas (no relation), author
of the recently released book Clarence Thomas about the biography,
the justice, and the commentary surrounding him, ten years later.
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