Justice [Thomas] says law degree 'worth 15 cents'

Source: AP

NEW HAVEN, Conn. - U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has a 15-cent price tag stuck to his Yale law degree, blaming the school's affirmative action policies in the 1970s for his difficulty finding a job after he graduated.

Some of his black classmates say Thomas needs to get over his grudge because Yale opened the door to extraordinary opportunities.

Thomas' new autobiography, "My Grandfather's Son," shows how the second black justice on the Supreme Court came to oppose affirmative action after his law school experience. He was one of about 10 blacks in a class of 160 who had arrived at Yale after the unrest of the 1960s, which culminated in a Black Panther Party trial in New Haven that nearly caused a large-scale riot.

The conservative justice says he initially considered his admission to Yale a dream, but soon felt he was there because of his race. He says he loaded up on tough courses to prove he was not inferior to his white classmates but considers the effort futile. He says he was repeatedly turned down in job interviews at law firms after his 1974 graduation.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071021/ap_on_re_us/yale_justice_thomas

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Gee, you think the reason Clarence couldn't find a job was because he didn't play well with others? That's a trait highly prized by human resource managers everywhere, don'tchathink?

The only way he'd have gotten into Yale Law School without affirmative action is if he'd gotten a job as a janitor there.

That's how closed things were until Johnson rammed the legislation through that blew the doors open.

... would you be a Supreme Court justice today?

Yale law degree: 15 cents
Pubic hair and Coke: 85 cents
Apponting the loser candidate of right-wing neo-cons to the presidency over the will of American voters: priceless!

In Thomas's case, .15 cents is probably inflated.

I don't think she blamed it on the value of her degree. She knew she was facing discrimination and just kept applying, and working, and eventually ran for office, became a judge, and became a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. I don't think I've ever heard that she carried grudge for the discrimination she had to deal with, though I'm sure she recognized what it was.

Clarence is just a pissed-off little boy.

for the same reason that he couldn't get into Yale without Affirmative Action. Or maybe he was turned down because he's such an obvious idiot.

about Justice Thomas. Thomas might read Franz Fanon for some insight.

If he felt he was turned down at law firms because people were discriminating against him because of race, he should be fighting FOR affirmative action.

However, looking at his bio, I'm confused. He got his degree in 1974. From 1974 to 1977, he was an assistant attorney general of Missouri. Then he was an attorney for Monsanto. 7 years after getting his law degree, he was Assistant Secretary of Education for the Office of Civil Rights in the US Dept. of Ed.

If there is some reason he should feel bitter about his career opportunities, I'm missing it.

He did not actually deserve to receive a degree from a prestigious university?

Color me surprised. :eyes:

I sat across from him at a dinner when we were both in our twenties-he had just graduated Harvard and was clerking at a firm in Dallas, I had just completed medical school. He railed non-stop about the evils of equal opportunity, in spite of being the beneficiary of a full ride to Harvard undergrad and law. I wished him well in his career, and considered him an unthinking ungrateful prick incapable of self-awareness. Turns out my SAT scores were a tiny bit higher than his, but I got diddly-squat from Uncle Sam. I certainly don't begrudge levelling the playing field-but then to turn his back on the very successful program that made him what he is today is beyond the pale. Thirty years later, we seem to be sliding backwards into the goo and slime of the fifties as millions of poor minority kids go under-educated do to bastards like CT and AG. He is still incapable of self-examination and gratitude.

They both resent that they were not accepted by their "privileged" peers in law school and so they adopted the "privileged" mindset to cover up the resentment. They both need to look in the mirror. They are still not WASPs. Not White, not Anglo-Saxon, not even Protestant in a WASP way. Clarence Thomas was raised a Seventh Day Adventist and became an Episcopalian and then became a Catholic. He should have stuck with being an Episcopalian. Al Gonzales was born a Catholic and became an Evangelical Christian. WASPs are either Episcopalian, Lutheran, Methodist or Presbyterian. As in "European non-Catholic." Both cannot even convert correctly in their attempt to become a part of that which has always rejected them. And always will. Like it or not, the WASPs for the most part consider them "token" minorities. Nothing more.

Both reveal the resentment when they rail about affirmative action - as have millions of others, including women, affirmative action does not mean you will be accepted. Only admitted. Just the same, both did very well by affirmative action. And both are shameful in their attack on it.

White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, Male. Others get a chance to get into the door, but that doesn't mean they can (easily) get a place at the table.

-speaking as a former WASPF, now WASBuddhistF

for White Anglo Saxon Protestant Heterosexual Male.

They are only Protestant on a technicality.

and Old Father McGinty letting us have the barn -- um -- church for the evening!

"The Bishop of Rome hath no power in this realm of England," as the statute saith. We've got a cool Archbishop of Canterbury, Sarum, and St. John the Divine in NYC. Always a really good organist, and female priests and deacons, and heaven forbid, even bishops!

We have no theology, no eucharistic theory, and only are united by the prayer book -- what's not to like?!

We don't even have to go to confession -- we get absolved just like the Papists, only with a lot less fuss and bother, just kneel and pray the general confession. We can be transubstantiating Anglo-Catholics, memorialist Zwinglists, and as Arminian or Calvinist as we wish. Just act with decorum and sit back and enjoy the show! Hint: put the kneeler down when the service gets to "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord," and be prepared to stay on your knees for another 15-30 mins.

Oh, and on the Great Vigil of Easter, be prepared to get splashed with a lot of water as the baptismal vows are renewed! And on Maundy Thursday, be sure to wear clean socks/stockings, because you might be chosen to get your feet washed! Wouldn't want to go pulling a Wolfowitz on the congregation, now would you?

It was obiously an affirmative action choice on Poppy Bush's part to get a black conservative on the court. No one really believed he was the most qualified candidate and he certainly did not have the experience of a Thurgood Marshall.

That he feels ever slighted him. Never, ever could accept that maybe, just maybe, all his problems are self-inflicted.

The chip on his shoulder could be sawn into a nice redwood deck.

bitter because he got in . . .
bitter had he not gotten in . . .

out to blame everyone because he was born black . . .

Probably the most unqualified supremo ever seated. How the fuck can he even walk with that redwood tree he's carrying around on his shoulder.

We were fighting for equal opportunity and access to education then and because of SCOTUS this year we will continue this fight.

Stop bitchin'.

He's there because Bush41 wanted a reliable conservative on the court, and the best way to get one past the Senate is to find one who was a member of some minority group. Bush 41 not only gets his reliable conservative, he gets undeserved credit for being "colorblind" while setting back race relations by decades in the process. To sum up, "playing the race card" is not the same as "affirmative action."

because potential employers recognized that he was a nasty crude idiot without a thought in his head, except whatever he'd copied from the boy next to him (on the Supreme Court, this has generally meant Scalia).

?

most important acceptance one can strive for is one's own. If on your deathbed you can say that you did the best you could for yourself, family, and the human race then you have the ONLY acceptance you need.

What a nasty, bitter, selfish, undignified, ungrateful pissant.

in Senator Danforth's book he said that he went to Yale to recruit Thomas for a job when Danforth was the Attorney General of Indiana. So Rich is saying that Thomas had a job offer before he left Yale and working as an Asst. Attorney General right out of college ain't bad. Thomas in his book said his degree was worthless after Yale because no one would hire him and he made it seem like he had to settle for the crummy job Danforth offered him after his Yale years as Thomas states happened.

and thus never would've had the credentials to even apply for the jobs he was turned down for.

I wonder how he determined empiricallly that affirmative action was the reason he was turned down for jobs rather than because of his black skin.

...because of affirmative action, then why the hell didn't he transfer to Howard?

Or...he could have joined the Peace Corps, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, NAACP, or even CORE.

I guess there's more money in quashing civil rights than promoting them.

Yaas, those so-called "Liberal, elite" schools sure do turn out reactionary, ingrate a-holes.

publicly.
All bullies are really cowards inside, and this disgusting display of bitterness and inability to take responsibilty for one's own shortcomings just fits the mold perfectly.

Now, look at him. He's rich and you're not.

Thomas could become a rap star in the local whore house.

Mike Tyson has a ton more class than this fucking idiot. And that ain't no compliment.

Thomas is many things, but you can certainly include "jerk" as one of them.

Talk about the ultimate practitioner of victimology. Second only to Rush Limbaugh as America's Perpetual Victim.

He needs to get over himself. What a jerk.

It is incredible that this type of language and characterization is being used on a progressive site against a black person. Grow up and get out of the grade school mentality.