While speaking to a group of high school students last week, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was
asked why he rarely asks questions from the bench.
"Oh, boy, that's a good question," Thomas replied.
His answer, however, was not good at all.
"When I was 16," Thomas said, "I was sitting as the only black kid in my class, and I had grown up speaking a
kind of dialect. It's called Geechee. But some people call it Gullah now, and people praise it now. But they used
to make fun of us back then. . . . And the problem was that I would correct myself mid-sentence. I was trying to
speak standard English. I was thinking in standard English but speaking another language. So I learned that--I just started developing the habit of listening."
Here was a grown man, a member of the highest court in the nation, telling students that he doesn't ask
questions because he got his feelings hurt back in high school.
And the other reasons he gave were even more troubling.
"I also believe strongly, unless I want an answer, I don't ask things," he told the kids. But how can a Supreme
Court justice not strongly want answers-- unless, of course, he has a closed mind?
"I don't ask to give people a hard time," he added. What does asking for information have to do with that?
"Usually, if you wait long enough, someone will ask your question," he concluded. How can the only black judge
on the court really believe that?
The Q&A eventually got around to his decision of the previous
day.
Although usually a proponent of states' rights, the Rehnquist court had conjured up two Supreme Court rebukes
of racist, Jim Crow-era state courts as precedents for rejecting the Florida court's attempt to make sure all
legally cast votes were counted--including thousands by otherwise disenfranchised blacks.
It was a truly perverse 5 to 4 ruling.
And yet, when Thomas was asked by a student if he brought anything unique to the bench, he had the nerve to
cite his race.
"Not only am I a different race," Thomas said, "I'm from the Deep South. I was born and raised under a different
system that I hope never to return to our country."
Fortunately, Thomas was addressing some smart kids, advanced placement students from Maryland and
Pennsylvania, some of whom did not seem particularly impressed.
"Justice Thomas," one of them asked, "how does the court handle a justice that has become mentally incapable
of serving the court?"
Thomas replied with a straight face. "Hopefully, that doesn't happen here," he said. "But there are statutory
provisions for that."
Then it hit him.
"Are you thinking about something?" he asked. "Did I say something to suggest. . . ?"
