I'm Sure They'd be Glad To Buy It Back

Clarence Thomas says he keeps his law degree from Yale in the basement with a 15-cent price tag sticker on it. Seems he's still angry that Yale's admissions office decided to accept him back in the 1970's because it took him a few months to find a job after graduation in 1974. He thinks it's because he was an affirmative-action admission. I'm sure it had nothing to do with the less-than-great economic conditions in the early 70's or the racism that permeated hiring practices at the time. Gee, maybe it was the giant-size chip on his shoulder that persists to this day.

Thomas says the white people at the law firms where he interned while at Yale didn't believe he'd really earned his grades, and he blames that on affirmative action. What he refuses to see is that without affirmative action, the good to excellent students who happened to be black or female wouldn't have had the same opportunities that the white males did. I hate to break it to him, but there is something inherently unfair in insisting that only the most exceptional blacks and women could be admitted to the top law schools when mere mortals of the white, male, and frequently well-connected variety were admitted without question.

Of course the white attorneys of the day doubted his intelligence and abilities. They had, for the most part, been raised to think blacks were inherently inferior. If Yale hadn't given him the opportunity for an excellent legal education, he might not have been able to challenge their assumptions.

So apparently he's still mad that the system in the 70's was overtly racist -- and that Yale tried to change that, giving him a hand up and a chance to prove himself in the process. He won't even let the school hang his portrait along with other graduates who have become Supreme Court justices.

Justice Thomas, you are not an inferior black man who somehow fooled Yale and everyone else who ever gave you a shot. You are, however, a Whiny Ass Titty Baby^tm, and that designation knows no color. Get over it already.

Cross-posted at If I Ran the Zoo.