Justice Thomas's Life A Tangle of Poverty, Privilege and Race --Review

[Demeter]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/21/AR2007042101475.html?referrer=email



Justice Thomas's Life A Tangle of Poverty, Privilege and Race

By Kevin Merida and Michael A. Fletcher
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, April 22, 2007; A01



Adapted from the book "Supreme Discomfort:The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas"

by Kevin Merida and Michael A. Fletcher, Doubleday, New York, © 2007.


Drugs have been a persistent problem in Pin Point, Ga., a tiny rural settlement best known as the birthplace of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas...One of the local dealers was Clarence Thomas's nephew. Until his 30-year prison sentence began in 1999, Mark Elliot Martin, the son of Thomas's sister, had been part of Pin Point's drug problem. He had been in and out of trouble, and in and out of jail -- at least 12 arrests, according to court records. In 1997, the year Martin was convicted of pointing a pistol at another person, Thomas assumed custody of his nephew's son, with the nephew's permission. Mark Elliot Martin Jr. -- "Marky," they called him -- was a precocious, curly-haired 6-year-old. The justice promised to give Mark what Thomas's grandfather had given him at the same age -- opportunities to succeed beyond what the boy had in Pin Point...When he began raising Mark -- Thomas has one adult son from a previous marriage -- he altered his Supreme Court schedule. He sent Mark to private schools, gave him extra homework to improve his math and reading, taught him to dribble with his left hand. And Mark responded. He excelled in school, became a Harry Potter fan and took up golf, and as a teenager he is comfortable around some of the most brilliant legal minds in the country.


And being Clarence Thomas's nephew has no benefits in prison. "I try to avoid letting people know who he is to me because they might want to do something to me because of him," Martin (Sr.) said...Thomas is not popular among the other inmates, the nephew emphasized. Most consider the justice a sellout, believing that a black jurist should not support draconian penalties but should question why the nation's drug laws hit low-level dealers and African Americans disproportionately hard. On the court, Thomas has largely backed the government's position on drug crimes and incarceration, including on questions of inmate property forfeiture, visitation rights and maximum sentences for repeat offenders.....

But the truth is that Thomas's rise was never anchored in Pin Point, as White House advisers led the public to believe. His family's house had burned down when he was 6, and for most of his young life he was raised comfortably in Savannah by his grandfather Myers Anderson, one of the black community's leading businessmen....Some who have visited Thomas in his chambers at the court have noticed how much he broods -- about the slights of his childhood, the teasing he absorbed over his dark skin, the racism he encountered in seminary, the rejections he faced coming out of law school. Struggle is a theme he returns to again and again, even in public appearances....Thomas hails from a family in which he has no peers -- no one educated at a leading university, no one who eats out at four-star steakhouses, no one who travels to Italy to lecture or commands $1.5 million for a memoir. Given a generous boost from his grandparents, Thomas flourished. The ambivalence -- at times, perhaps shame -- he felt about some members of his family has been hard to shake.

Emma Mae Martin, who was once publicly singled out by her brother as an example of the debilitating effects of welfare dependency, is a high school dropout who later earned her diploma in night school as an adult. She and her brother don't talk politics or law or philosophy. Their conversations tend to be about, "well, not much really," Martin said. "Find out how I'm doing, what I'm up to, that's about it." She lives her life and lets him be. "He's supposed to be a judge," she said, "but you can't judge anybody unless you judge yourself. I've never judged anybody, but people judge me all the time."
For many years, Thomas and his mother were not close, either. Her favorite son was Myers Thomas, Clarence's younger brother, who died in 2000 of a heart attack suffered during a morning jog. "Myers was the kindest-hearted one," she said. He called often, came to visit when she was lonely, took her for rides. "I had more dealing with Myers," she explained. "Me and Myers were more really open and close together."



HEARD THEM MOANING AND GROANING OVER POOR THOMAS ON NPR, PROMOTING THIS HAGIOGRAPHY/PORNOGRAPHY OF A BOOK. IT'S A LITTLE LATE FOR PUMPING UP ANY GOP FIGUREHEAD, THOUGH!