Only because of the intervention by Holy Cross Jesuit Father Brooks, Diane Brady, a senior writer for Business Week, secures a rare interview with Clarence Thomas. She finds him in a frank, feisty mood that makes for a very revealing article.Thomas is particularly miffed by Brady's depiction of his undergraduate enrollment at Holy Cross as a gift of affirmative action, an obstinate error on the part of the media that has continued throughout Thomas' brilliant career. I print below 1) a few excerpts from the interview and then 2) I quote from the confirmation hearings of the Senate Judiciary Committee back in 1991. I do so to show you just how long this deal about recruitment/affirmative action has been circulating even though it was clearly debunked even then.
1) Excerpts from the Business Week interview:
Q: Thank you for meeting with me.
A: Father Brooks asked me to do it. One of the reasons I don't do media interviews is, in the past, the media often has its own script. One reason these stories are never told is that they are contrary to the script that people play by. The media, unfortunately, have been universally untrustworthy because they have their own notions of what I should think or I should do....
...Q: Father Brooks made a point of trying to recruit a lot more African Americans to campus in the months before you came. Do you think that recruitment drive helped you?
A: Oh no. I was going to go home to Savannah when a nun suggested Holy Cross. That's how I wound up there. Your industry has suggested that we were all recruited. That's a lie. Really, it's a lie. I don't mean a mistake. It's a lie...I had always been an honors student. I was the only black kid in my high school in Savannah and one of two or three blacks in my class during my first year of college in the seminary. I just transferred. I had always had really high grades so that was never a problem. It was the only school I applied to. It was totally fortuitous.…The thing that has astounded me over the years is that there has been such an effort to roll that class into people's notion of affirmative action. It was never really looked at. It was just painted over. Things were much more nuanced than that….You hear this junk. It's just not consistent with what really happened...
...Q: Why do you think some people are so eager to cast you as a beneficiary of affirmative action?
A: That was the creation of the politicians, the people with a lot of mouth and nothing to say and your industry. They had a story and everything had to fit into their story. It discounts other people's achievements. Ask Ted how many all-nighters he pulled. It discounts those. It's so discouraging to see the fraudulent renditions of very complicated and different lives of people who were struggling in a new world for them. Everything becomes affirmative action. There wasn't some grand plan. I just showed up...
...Q: Were you treated the same?
A: There was no requirement that we all be the same. There were faddish things, like you wear an Afro. Father Time takes care of the Afro. Holy Cross never once required us to be anything other than ourselves and good people.
Q: Doesn't every college want that?
A: Oh no. I think there are different points of views that are not acceptable. I go around this country and the poor kids who want to dissent from a prevailing point of view have no room. There's no room for them.
Q: Because of political correctness?
A: Oh yeah. Come on, that's obvious. You don't even have to ask. That's obvious. Otherwise, there are people who have set notions of what blacks should think. But I rejected that years ago. I rejected that back when I was considered radical... 2) Excerpts from the confirmation hearings:
Q: Father Brooks, how would you characterize Clarence Thomas as a student?
Father Brooks: Clarence was an excellent student. He pursued his academic life very, very seriously. He was very deliberative in terms of selecting courses, selecting his major, and he was well known throughout the college community as being very, very serious about his studies and was very successful at them, also.
Senator BROWN. Thank you. We are advised that Holy Cross has sought out through a recruitment program a diversity of ethnic groups to join the student body. If Clarence Thomas was not black, knowing him as you do, would he have been a student, would he have been admitted to Holy Cross?
Father BROOKS. I think he probably would have, for this reason: He was really not the object of our recruitment effort. I was very instrumental in the early days of Holy Cross' involvement in minority recruitment, and he was not among the students whom we identified. In fact, he came to Holy Cross—I think perhaps Sister knows more about it than I do—I think he came as a result of advice he received quite likely from Sister or some other teacher he had earlier in school. His academic record, the seminary he had been attending the previous year was very, very good, and he would have got in any under any set of circumstances, in terms of his academic achievement.Senator BROWN. Thank you. Sister, do you have anything you would like to add to that?
Sister VIRGILIUS. Yes. When Clarence was in the seminary in Savannah, our Sister Mary Carman taught him chemistry and physics, I think, but she was the one who encouraged him to go to Holy Cross, as well as Father Dwyer, and several of the high school children are pupils of Savannah, are graduates of Savannah, like William Douglas and Carleton Stewart, who were also graduates of St. Benedict's School, they have gone or were in Holy Cross or have graduated from Holy Cross, so I think it was something like that that attracted him to Holy Cross, where he would meet some more of his former Savannahans.
Senator BROWN. Thank you. One last question that I would appreciate comments from each of you, if you care to comment: Throughout this last week, the Judge has received intensive questioning, which is obviously the duty of this committee, but many of the observations that have come down from folks who I think could be fairly described as somewhat skeptical of Clarence Thomas, and evolved to a charge that Clarence Thomas simply is not being honest. I would appreciate knowing, as people how know Clarence Thomas, have seen him in action, your assessments of his integrity and his honesty.
Sister VIRGILIUS. AS far as I am concerned, Senator, Clarence Thomas is perfectly honest, and I have watched at home at the convent in Tenafly before I came down here to Washington on Monday, and I have watched and I think he stood up very well under the interrogation, he was very articulate and I think he handled himself very well, and I do not in one instant mistrust his honesty. I think he is perfectly honest, knowing Clarence from a child.
Father BROOKS. In more than 20 years, I do not think I have experienced a shred of evidence of any dishonesty or even lack of candor in Clarence Thomas. I have always found him very forthright, very clear in what he is saying to me and very cooperative. There is not a shred of dishonesty in him, I do not believe.
(Hat tip: Mark Nicodemo)
