Column

One man's humiliation; Another's exhilaration

Like Justice Thomas, I was an "affirmative action baby." Unlike him, I was not ashamed. I pinched myself for the opportunity.

By BILL MAXWELL
Published October 14, 2007

Clarence Thomas put "15-cent sticker on his Yale law degree because of the "taint of racial preference."
	[Getty Images]

I read Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' memoir, My Grandfather's Son, at the urging of several of my graduate school classmates at the University of Chicago. They wanted to know what I thought of Thomas' views on affirmative action because, like Justice Thomas, I am what is pejoratively referred to as an "affirmative action baby."

Thomas got into Holy Cross and Yale University Law School through affirmative action programs. I got into the University of Chicago the same way.

In his book and elsewhere, Thomas condemns affirmative action, arguing that it stigmatizes those it is intended to help, the same argument used by whites who oppose preference programs. Let me make clear that I oppose any program that gives unqualified people of any group an unfair leg up.

After Thomas earned his law degree from Yale, he unsuccessfully applied for work at several high-powered law firms. Of this experience, Thomas writes: "Now I knew what a law degree from Yale was worth when it bore the taint of racial preference. I was humiliated and desperate."

Even after being nominated to the Supreme Court, Thomas could not cast off the yoke of affirmative action. "Once it is assumed that everything you do achieve is because of your race, there is no way out," he told ABC News. "It is irrefutable and it is proved true. In everything now that someone like me does, there's a backwash into your whole life is because of race."

Thomas hated his degree from Yale Law School so much, he writes, that he stuck a "15-cent price sticker" on and it banished it to his basement because it reeked of the "taint of racial preference."

As I have said, I, too, am a product of affirmative action, but I do not share Thomas' hatred and shame of it.

In fact, I am eternally grateful that one of the world's most prestigious universities admitted me. After all, I was not a legacy. I attended Jim Crow-era public schools, and I earned a bachelor's degree from tiny Bethune-Cookman, a historically black college in Daytona Beach, which was not distinguished for academic excellence.

Chicago did not require the Graduate Record Exam or the Miller Analogies Test. I was admitted solely on the word of one of my undergraduate professors, who was a Woodrow Wilson fellow and a University of Chicago doctoral student.

I was awarded a full fellowship and stipend. For the first time in my life, I did not have to work. I simply had to study.

Before I left for Chicago, my professor told me that although I was intelligent, wrote well and read voraciously, I would "have to work extraordinarily hard just to keep up" with the students from the likes of Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia and the other heavyweights.

Instead of being humiliated, like Justice Thomas was at Yale, I was exhilarated to be on Chicago's beautiful campus in Hyde Park, where intellectuality was in the air. Each morning, I pinched myself before going to class. I was part of the famous Chicago School of Criticism.

I threw myself into my studies. The third-floor Joseph Regenstein Library became my home. That was where the English majors studied and where our professors had research offices. When I was not in class, I was in the library. I was never alone. My classmates were there, their heads buried in books. When we were not reading, we talked with one another about what we were reading. On weekday nights, I rarely went home before 2 o'clock. During my second quarter, as I read for the dreaded 100 Book Examination, I wound up in the hospital for exhaustion.

I could feel myself getting smarter. My writing quickly improved because it had to improve if I wanted to keep up. I read about how to write. I practiced writing. I rewrote, revised and rethought my papers until I felt that I had the ideas and the words right.

In class, I was not afraid to ask questions. I was not ashamed. Affirmative action had been my ticket into this great place, and I was determined to be worthy and to measure up to the school's expectations.

I attended every play and concert and lecture on campus. Off campus, I imbibed the city's culture. I went, for example, to the Art Institute at least twice a month, and I missed few plays at the Goodman Theatre.

Affirmative action had opened up this rich world to me, a young black man born into Southern poverty. I was proud to be at the University of Chicago. I wore a "U of C" sweatshirt everywhere.

Clarence Thomas' Yale diploma may be worth 15 cents to him. My degree from the University of Chicago is priceless.

[Last modified October 13, 2007, 20:08:34]