Why Clarence Thomas Blamed Affirmative Action for Job Rejections | FRONTLINE

[Music] after Holy Cross Clarence Thomas was off to a very different world once again Yale Law School it was a chance to leave pinpoint far behind defy his grandfather's prophecy and get positioned to make real money we know what the reputation of Yale is you got a network of folks in all walks of life in the legal community and all you got to say is man I'm a Yale Alum and Bam you got a job that was our perception he had thought well you know what I just go go make me a bunch of money maybe go to New York and be a lawyer he and Kathy moved into marriage student housing they made a connection with their neighbor we were both in marriage student housing and he set up his study room in what should have been you know a joint storage room his classmate John Bolton would become un Ambassador under Secretary of State and National Security advisor and we started talking and talked for the next two years basically and that's where we got to know each other over time Thomas would open up to Bolton I don't think he was Terribly Happy at the law school look people at Yale law school generically speaking are pretty arrogant group they think that they're going to rule the world for example in the year ahead of us were Bill and Hillary Clinton that was kind of the atmosphere I don't think Clarence came with that in mind for himself and I think it was kind of off-putting there are other black students there but again the black students who were there like he doesn't feel they are like him he's not part of the elite there in his mind privileged kids you know the Sons and Daughters of doctors and lawyers so he feels again like the outcast [Music] he believed that people assumed he was there as a as a beneficiary of affirmative action and it graded on him feeling of oh I'm around these white students who he senses question his presence at Yale how is it that you not just you Clarence Thomas but you all you black students are here is it because of Merit or is it because of affirmative action there was one law professor Ralph winter who in a challenging way mentioned this people don't think you know you deserve to be that kind of thing and Thomas doesn't take us a challenge he takes us a slight rather than try to fit in Thomas tried to stand out he dressed in overalls in a t-shirt it was kind of a uniform but neither one of us was terribly Rich so I didn't wear overalls but I understood what it meant for him with Clarence Thomas what you see is somebody who's isolating himself and he's kind of saying you know I don't want to try to join you maybe because he doesn't want to be rejected again after three years of Yale Law School graduation was Nearing but Clarence Thomas wasn't getting the offers he expected from prestigious law firms he was saying that he wasn't getting the kind of offers that other students were getting and and we couldn't understand it we thought that well you know you're at Yale and and if you're not getting off of something something's wrong you know because that's the whole purpose of going to those schools Thomas would never forget the sting of those rejections he said he would keep stacks of rejection letters he had gotten from law firms even when he was like a Supreme Court Justice he had these letters just to sort of remind him of those again this feeling of rejection by kind of the elite law firms he had his Yale law degree and he had a 10 cent stamp stuck to it you know like a 10 cent price tag stuck to it because he's like yeah this is what it's worth right 10 cents so I know more he came to blame affirmative action for the rejection he felt [Music] now I knew what a law degree from Yale was worth when it bore the taint of racial preference I was humiliated and desperate we thought that his degree was devalued that he didn't get the same kind of cachet out of the degree once he was looking for a job and trying to move in his career he assumed that others were assuming that it's a Yale law degree but with an asterisk next to it I disagree I disagree totally Orion Douglas had a strikingly similar academic journey to Clarence Thomas's scholarship to Holy Cross law school eventually becoming a judge [Music] I don't blame affirmative action for not getting a job when you never was offered the job for a hundred years before okay the system was still there the infrastructure for separation discrimination was still there it was still a segregated mindset of White America

Channel: FRONTLINE PBS | Official

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Id: bOAqgbh5O_8

Length: 6min 6sec (366 seconds)

Published: Tue May 09 2023