Friends, Foes Examine Thomas Quotes

WASHINGTON —  Some of the best legal minds in Washington--on both sides of the fight for confirmation to the Supreme Court of Judge Clarence Thomas--are examining his speeches and writings in search of strengths and weaknesses.

They have discovered a nominee with some unusually strong opinions who rarely has been shy about expressing them. “There is no way anybody was going to shut me up,” Thomas once said.

As a result, even before the Senate Judiciary Committee begins its confirmation hearings, some of Thomas’ controversial remarks seem certain to be raised by several of the 14 senators on the committee. Some Thomas quotations that could prompt requests for further explanation:

School prayer--”As for prayer, my mother says that when they took God out of the schools, the schools went to hell. She may be right. Religion is certainly a source of positive values and we need as many positive values in the schools as we can get.”

School integration--”It has been said that I would turn the clock back. That’s true--I would turn it back in time but forward in progress when we (blacks) had our own schools taught by our nuns who loved us and believed in us.”

Government’s role--Asked to justify the existence of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which he headed for eight years, Thomas said: “Well, in a free society I don’t think there would be a need for it to exist. . . . Unfortunately, the reality was that, for political reasons or whatever, there was a need to enforce anti-discrimination laws, or at least there was a perceived need to do that. Why do you need a Department of Labor? Why do you need a Department of Agriculture? Why do you need a Department of Commerce? You can go down the whole list--you don’t need any of them, really.”

Individual rights--”If the things that are being done to the individual in this city (Washington) were being done by one person, we’d all think that we were living under a dictatorship. We’d all be thinking in a rebellious way about how we were going to get out from under this dictatorship. The erosion of freedom is incredible.”

Natural law--”The rule of law in America means nothing outside constitutional government and constitutionalism and these are simply unintelligible without a higher law. Men cannot rule others by their consent unless their common humanity is understood in light of transcendent standards provided by the Declaration (of Independence), laws of nature and of nature’s God. Natural law provides a basis in human dignity by which we can judge whether human beings are just or unjust, noble or ignoble.”

Affirmative action--”I think that preferential hiring on the basis of race or gender will increase racial divisiveness, disempower women and minorities by fostering the notion that they are permanently disabled and in need of handouts and delay the day when skin color and gender are truly the least important things about a person in the employment context.”

Racial prejudice--”There is nothing you can do to get past black skin. I don’t care how educated you are, how good you are at what you do--you’ll never have the same contacts or opportunities, you’ll never be seen as equal to whites.”

Integration--”The whole push to assimilate simply does not make sense to me.”

Job discrimination penalties--”One such approach would be for courts to impose heavy fines and even jail sentences on discriminators who defy court injunctions against further discrimination.”

Public housing--”Don’t shuttle them (blacks) off into public housing, which in some instances amounts to concentration camps.”