Are You Doubting Thomas? : Having used affirmative action to reach the top, the justice would pull up the rope and dare others to follow him.

When Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas attended a roundtable discussion recently with a small, carefully chosen group of black men and women, he startled his select audience with this pronouncement: “I am not an Uncle Tom.”

Taken literally, he’s absolutely right. Uncle Tom, you’ll remember, was the dear and faithful servant to Little Eva’s family in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s abolitionist novel, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” When one considers his character’s portrayal, there is one huge and salient difference between Uncle Tom and Thomas: Uncle Tom loved his own people.

Even though his body was owned by white folks, Uncle Tom’s soul was also always mindful of the community from which he came. With the limited resources at his disposal, he did what he could to protect and nurture the members of that community. The same, alas, cannot be said of Thomas. And his powers are considerably greater.

The modern definition of Uncle Tom is hardly complimentary; it means a black person whose primary concern is being well thought-of by white people, often to the detriment of himself and other blacks. And in that sense, the good justice’s assertion that he is not an Uncle Tom will probably be recorded in the annals of contemporary American history--on the same page with Richard Nixon’s “I am not a crook” disclaimer.

Thomas received his opportunities for undergraduate and graduate educations because he was black and qualified and because the law recognized that not so long ago, institutions such as his alma maters (Holy Cross and Yale Law) often overlooked bright students of color because there was no penalty attached to excluding them. He was, in fact, a beneficiary of the same affirmative-action programs he sneers should be eradicated today. How ironic that his present job is exactly the result of the affirmative action that nobody, including most African Americans, wants: the window-dressing affirmative action that gave the policy such a bad reputation for so many Americans. It has since been demonstrated that there were other, more distinguished, thoughtful, conservative judges than Thomas who also happened to be black, and who would have made better choices for a seat on the Supreme Court--a position usually seen as the capstone to a stellar career. The Bush Administration, apparently, preferred a black justice who could be counted upon to be indifferent, even hostile to black people. It chose well.

Thomas draws on his own impoverished childhood and early adolescence to credit his stringent self-reliance and reasons that if he can transcend such formidable barriers, so, too, should most other blacks. Evidently, the court’s highest-profile justice is laboring under the delusion that his accomplishments are solely attributable to his own efforts and that the sacrifices of his ancestors and support of his community count for naught. Using affirmative action as his rope, he has scaled a wall, then pulled the

rope up after him. He now taunts others to try to follow.

It is indeed strange how the same circumstances can shape two men so differently. Across the country, at about the same times Justice Thomas was struggling in Pin Point, Ga., Charles Ogletree was working in the produce fields of Northern California, helping his migrant-farmer parents pick crops. He attended public schools, entered Stanford University (quite possibly because given the then-new affirmative-action policies, the school was more inclined to diversify its student body), graduated Phi Beta Kappa and went on to receive a master’s from Stanford and a law degree from Harvard. Today, he teaches constitutional law and social ethics at Harvard Law School. Like Thomas, he has scaled walls that at times seemed insurmountable. But unlike Thomas, Ogletree took the time to retain the rope, fashion of it a ladder, throw it over the wall and, via mentoring and extensive community service, encourage others to follow.

Thomas told those assembled that he planned to be around for another 40 years; if they didn’t like that, he snapped, they should “get over it.” I only hope that Ogletree’s life will be as long and as healthy, and that the many people whom he has helped to scale the walls to reach prominence in the legal and other professions will provide a potent antidote to our only black justice’s poisonous self-hatred.