An Elegy for Uncle Thomas

                                          "But 'tis a common proof,
                                           That lowliness is young ambition's ladder,
                                           Whereto the climber-upward turns his face;
                                           But when he once attains the upmost round.
                                           He then unto the ladder turns his back,
                                           Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
                                           By which he did ascend."
                                                                          Julius Caesar, Act 2, Scene 1

     America, it seems, is filled with such examples, one of the more prominent being Clarence Thomas, arguably the least qualified Justice to occupy a seat on the United States Supreme Court in the last century or two.        
     Thomas, who was born into a dysfunctional family in a small town in Georgia, had once considered becoming a Roman Catholic priest, but left the seminary when he was offended by a fellow student's remarks about Martin Luther King's assassination. He attended Holy Cross College instead, where he became active in political and social causes, including civil rights, and where he helped establish a Black Student Union. He admits his great admiration of Malcolm X in those days, for the Black Muslim's philosophy of "self reliance."
     He received a JD degree from Yale University Law School, and after spending several years as a lawyer for Monsanto Corporation converted to Republicanism and moved to Washington. In 1982 he was appointed to the chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) by President Reagan, a man who couldn't have cared less about race relations unless there was political gold to be mined in them.
     Although Thomas had never served a single minute as a judge, Reagan's successor, George H.W. Bush, nominated him to the U.S. Court of Appeals, and within three years nominated him to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. That's right, George H.W. Bush of Willie Horton attack ad fame. The Supreme Court nomination was understandably controversial, and received Senate approval by a very narrow margin: 52-48. I recall thinking at the time that the appointment was both a bigot's insult to the memory of Thurgood Marshall and a WASP's insult to African-Americans generally --- placing, as it did, a marginally qualified black man in a position in which he'd be certain to make a fool of himself. It was neither more nor less than a WASPish one-finger salute to the entire concept of affirmative action.

     Nor did Thomas decline to participate in the travesty. Indeed, he has played his role to perfection  since. Not only did the former EEOC Chair reject the entire concept of affirmative action; he became a rubber stamp for judicial wild man Antonin Scalia. In turning his back upon his heritage he even traded in his African-American wife of 13 years for a busty Caucasian with better political connections. His upward mobility is reminiscent of the examples given in Vance Packard's The Status Seekers, of people elevating themselves in the religious pecking order, from the storefront to the Anglican cathedral, as their social positions improve.

     One wonders what kind of distorted logic will distinguish Clarence Thomas' anticipated vote against same-sex marriage. Will he fall back on the Catholicism at which he thumbed his nose when he divorced and remarried? Or will he question the doctrine of marriage as a basic right as articulated in Loving v. Virginia --- the very doctrine that has allowed him to marry a Caucasian woman and stay  out of prison in his home state?

     It will be interesting to see just how far from the ladder he has turned his back.