
<DOC>
<DOCNO>
WSJ910709-0115
</DOCNO>
<DOCID>
910709-0115.
</DOCID>
<HL>
   Clarence Thomas:
   To Be Young,
   Gifted and Black
   ----
   By Peggy Noonan
</HL>
<DATE>
07/09/91
</DATE>
<SO>
WALL STREET JOURNAL (J), PAGE A16
</SO>
<IN>
LAW AND LEGAL AFFAIRS (LAW)
</IN>
<NS>
LAW &amp; LEGAL ISSUES, HEARINGS, RULINGS, LEGISLATION (LAW)
</NS>
<GV>
CONGRESS (CNG)
JUSTICE DEPARTMENT (JUS)
</GV>
<RE>
NORTH AMERICA (NME)
UNITED STATES (US)
</RE>
<LP>
   Judge Clarence Thomas is about to become a lesson. This is
rather a burden to put on any man or woman but it is
inevitable in his case because he is young, gifted and black
and now the center of one great row. His life's story is a
moving one, with its beginnings not in the black bourgeoisie,
as Thurgood Marshall's were, but in the hardluck South, his
mother a maid, the grandparents who scrimped and saved to put
him in school.
   A question is which lesson his life best demonstrates.
Some say that he is living proof that in America anything is
possible, and that's true, and some note his rise to eminence
demonstrates again the progress we have made as a nation in
terms of race, and that's true too.
</LP>
<TEXT>
   But the lesson that should not be lost is the transcendent
one: Clarence Thomas made it in America because he was loved.
His mother loved him. And when she could no longer care for
him she gave him to her parents to bring up, and they loved
him too. And they cared enough to scrape together the money
every year to put him in a Catholic school where they hoped
the nuns would teach and guide him and they did. He got love
and love gave him pride and pride gave him confidence that he
had a place at the table.
   This is something we in the age of
the-family-that-is-not-a-family forget: the raw power of love
and how it is the one essential element in the creation of
functioning and successful people, and how its absence twists
the psyche and the heart. (The children of the mother on
crack are not consigned to lives of uselessness and pain
because AFDC payments are low; they are so consigned because
crack has broken the maternal bond that brings with it caring
and succor.) Lives like Judge Thomas's remind us of this
simple truth.
   ---
   It was once thought that to choose a conservative black
for a high appointment put liberals in an uncomfortable
position, but we will learn in the Thomas hearings that this
is no longer so. Not that the hearings will be color blind,
it's just that senators are going to use Mr. Thomas's race to
prove things about themselves with it.
   Senators of the left will use him to prove they are not
minority-whipped. They will demonstrate through measured
abuse that they are able to treat a black man as their equal.
Their ferocity, they will think, is proof of their
sophistication, a compliment: "Our party doesn't patronize
minorities." This will be cloud cover for their real
intention, which is to serve the interests of the interest
groups -- the pro-abortion lobby, the civil rights lobby,
labor -- that control their careers.
   Some on the right will use Mr. Thomas's race to
demonstrate again that ours is the party of true racial
progress, that not a trace of racism clogs the conservative
heart. Expect an especially spirited defense from Jesse
Helms.
   The left will be tough not only because Mr. Thomas
represents ideological insult. Those on the left are unmoved
by Mr. Thomas's climb from nothing to something because he
didn't do it the right way -- through them and with their
programs. His triumph refutes their assumptions; his life
declares that a good man of whatever color can rise in this
country without the active assistance of the state. This is a
dangerous thing to assert in a highly politicized age.
   And to make it worse, Judge Thomas didn't "make it on his
own." He has been helped all his life by affirmative action,
but the kind liberals do not see and cannot accept: the
uncoerced, unforced affirmative action that Americans tend to
take when someone at a disadvantage -- race, physical
disability -- needs help.
   When Mr. Thomas made his moving statement at Kennebunkport
last week he thanked the people who had helped him along the
way, including the nuns who taught him. (What a touching and
old-fashioned thing to do. If Sandra Day O'Connor had thanked
the nuns it would have been a skit on "Saturday Night Live"
and an issue in her confirmation.) The nuns' affirmative
action for Clarence Thomas was the only effective, meaningful
kind: the kind we perform for individuals, not because it is
state-mandated but because it is right, not because we love a
race but because we care for people and love our country.
   One strategy to be expected from Mr. Thomas's opponents:
deference and respect. Expect phrases of rolling sympathy as
senators of the left bring up for him his humble origins and
congratulate him on his grit and determination. Already I can
see Joe Biden's telegenic tick of a smile, the one he uses to
show how civil he is in spite of his growing moral
exasperation. He will celebrate Mr. Thomas's gifts and use
them against him. "But what, Judge Thomas, about those who
were not born with your advantages, and by that I mean not
wealth and comfort but brilliance and determination and a
family. What about those poor blacks not greatly gifted or
guided -- what about them?"
   ---
   For Judge Thomas's proponents, two great hopes: One is
that the administration will hit America where it lives and
go over the heads of the talking suits and straight to the
people, presenting as witnesses on television the affirmative
action crew that lifted a young boy with nothing to great
heights -- the mother who was a maid, the grandmother who
saved up the tuition and the nuns who helped open his eyes.
The force of their presence will remind us that real change
in a democracy comes from the people up, not from the
government down.
   The second hope: that the administration will demonstrate
moral confidence in its choice and not go into a defensive
crouch. In 1980, '84 and '88, the American people voted
overwhelmingly for presidents who promised to appoint
conservative jurists. The left calls the Thomas appointment a
hijacking, a right-wing coup for the court, but this is the
opposite of the truth. Mr. Thomas's appointment is not a
traducing of the people's will but a fulfillment of their
directive.
   ---
   Miss Noonan is a writer in New York.
</TEXT>
</DOC>

