All Episodes
Previous Next
Oct. 1, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:34
October 1, 2007, Monday, Hour #2
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
We're truly honored today, ladies and gentlemen, to have with us at our microphones Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Clarence Thomas.
His new book is out today, My Grandfather's Son.
It is a powerful, motivational, inspirational memoir.
And I'm so happy that you're doing all of this, Mr. Justice Thomas, because as a member of the court, you can't say much other than what you write.
It's the protocol.
And I have so, so long wanted people to get to know the man that I know and that so many people who know you because you're a national treasure and it's time to expose that to people.
So welcome to the program.
Well, thanks for having me, Rush.
I really appreciate it.
Why did you write the book?
Why now?
Well, it wasn't so much now.
I made the decision actually some years ago.
When my brother died almost eight years ago, I realized that of the four of us who were in the house, I was the last one left.
My grandparents died in the early 80s, as I record in the book.
And it was a real tragedy and a shock to have your younger sibling suddenly die while jogging.
I decided that there was something about our lives and the way that my grandparents had affected me and what they had done in our lives that others could use, that it would be important to them, or possibly important.
And I thought it would be very, very helpful.
There was another reason also.
I rarely say anything publicly.
And as a result, there's been a bit of a monopoly or oligopoly with respect to what's said about our lives.
And so much of it has been wrong, some of it has been malicious.
Whose lives, you and the justices or you and your wives?
Actually, I'm speaking more of my grandparents and my brother, me in particular.
This just wasn't accurate, and I thought it would be good to leave an accurate record.
But by and large, the most motivating aspect of reason for doing it was the possibility that there would be something in it that would be helpful to others.
So that's what you want readers to get out of the book?
Well, I want them to, I think that not only accuracy and to know more about how I came to be who I am and hopefully find something in it that would be useful to them.
All right, well, let's start early on.
Why did you go live with your grandparents?
Well, it was a rather simple story.
You know, back in those days, if your mother couldn't take care of you and your father wasn't around, the option was, the only option, was to go live with someone who could help you.
And in my case, as my mother likes to say, she earned about $10 a week as a maid.
Actually, it was $15 that included car fare, which comes about $10 a week.
And she couldn't raise us herself for a variety of reasons, so she asked her father to do it.
And in 1955, she put all of our belongings in a paper bag each and sent us to live with our grandparents.
What kind of people were your grandparents?
They were, I think, the kind of people who made this country great.
They were good, solid people.
They came from very little.
My grandfather could barely read.
My grandmother had a sixth-grade education.
They were people who were industrious, they were frugal, as he always, as he used to tell us, the reason we have is because we don't spend and we don't throw away and because we work.
And so they're basically the embodiment of the Protestant work ethic.
And they lived in a segregated world, correct?
Oh, yeah.
You just said they had little or no education.
How'd they manage just on their own amongst themselves even before you all showed up?
Oh, they managed very well.
My grandfather, as I said, was industrious.
He'd had a variety of jobs and decided sometime in the 40s that he would never work for anyone.
He was also a very independent man.
And he started cutting wood and then delivering it for fuel and added coal.
And then eventually he added fuel oil.
And when we went to live with him, and he also added, by the way, ice.
But when we went to live with him, he was just delivering ice and fuel oil.
And then we became, of course, his employees.
And then we farmed during the summer.
Now, I've heard it said, Mr. Justice Thomas, that he was harsh, that he was very strict, sometimes mean with you.
Is that accurate?
No.
So just one of the many things going around about your story that's not true.
That's exactly.
There's a difference between someone who's harsh and someone who is hard.
Life was hard.
You live in the South as my grandparents did, and you had to survive.
That is hard.
In order to respond to that, he had to become a hard man with very hard rules, very hard discipline for himself, very hard days, hard work, etc.
So yes, he was a hard man, but he was never harsh to my brother or me.
And he was very, very demanding.
But that is quite different from being harsh.
Because he had high expectations of you.
He had high expect one of the things he said, Rush, was that when we went to live with him, he said, boys, I will never tell you to do as I say.
I will always tell you to do as I do.
So in order to be able to use that as his method of raising us, he put high standards and high expectations on himself first.
And then we, by extension, had high expectations imposed on us.
Do you know whether or not he had any resentment when your mother called and asked him to take you and your brothers?
No, he had none.
My grandfather was a man, when he talked about freedom, his attitude was really interesting.
His view was that you had obligations, excuse me, you had obligations or you had responsibilities.
And when you fulfill those obligations or responsibilities, that then gave you the liberty to do other things.
So the freedoms that we talk about today, the liberties that we talk about today, were the benefits that you got from discharging your responsibilities.
So in our case, it was his responsibility to raise us, and that's what he did.
And you've given him an appropriate tribute here, but at any time when you were younger and living with him, with his rules and his methods, did you like them?
Did you rebel?
Oh, I didn't like them at all.
You know, I was a kid, you know, when he wanted you to work, and there was no end to the list of things he wanted you to do.
You come home from school.
We had to be home a half an hour after school was out and ready to go to work.
He had an endless list of things to do.
Well, what you want to do is you want to play with your friends.
And he would have very little to do with that.
Or you wanted to play team sports.
He thought that that was foolishness.
So, yes, you did bristle under it, and you didn't like it, and you did not want to work, but you had no choice.
How did he deal?
It was a segregated part of the country then.
How did he deal with you and your brothers in teaching you or informing you about race and what you faced in your future as a result of being African American?
Well, it was a reality.
I mean, you saw it around you.
Those were the days when you didn't have to sort of look hard to find discrimination.
You could look at a water fountain and see that it said white and colored, or the fact that there was no bathroom, or you couldn't go to the public Savannah Public Library.
You could go to the black library.
So it was obvious.
I think the important part was he taught us how to deal with difficult situations, that even though it was bad, there was a way we had to conduct ourselves in spite of that.
And you also had to prepare yourself to deal with a world that wasn't going to be accommodating.
In other words, if you look back, you see life or opportunities in life that still exist, even though things look bad.
And he was trying to prepare us to be able to deal with the adversity and to take advantage of whatever opportunities existed.
The racial aspect, as it related to you, was there any bitterness on your part growing up at that young age?
The quick answer to that is no.
I mean, you recognized it, but you were a kid.
You ran, you played, you had your neighborhood, and most of all, the only bitterness was, or what you thought was bitterness, was you didn't want to have to work all the time.
You wanted to play basketball or play with your friends.
But as far as the racial issue, it was there, and it wasn't something that you could ignore.
But the strongest statements about race actually came from the nuns who would have nothing to do with this notion that we were somehow so different that we could be treated differently because of race.
Their attitude – Go ahead and finish.
I want to get into the seminary questionnaire.
In fact, let me take a break right now because it's time to do that.
And I want to get into the seminary question because I'm curious about the decision you made to go there.
We're talking with Associate Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court about his new memoir, My Grandfather's Son.
We'll be right back and continue after this.
And welcome back, folks.
Again, we're talking with Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas, and his memoir out today, My Grandfather's Son.
Right before the previous break, you discussed the nuns.
And I wanted to ask you, how old were you when you entered the seminary?
What year was that?
Why did you decide to do that?
Well, actually, the year was 1964, Rush.
And I made the decision when I made the decision in the spring of 1964.
I was 15 years old.
And when I entered the seminary, I was 60 and just turned 16 that summer.
Well, the reason I did it had to do with the natural progression of altar boys.
And I was an altar boy and was very active in our church, St. Benedict's in Savannah.
And the natural progression was that you went into the minor seminary and then later on to the major seminary.
So it was a natural progression.
I had gone out there for an event.
I saw St. John Vianni Minor Seminary.
I'd always thought I had a bit of a vocation.
Actually, I thought it would be with the Mary Knolls.
And I talked to my grandfather about it.
How many black kids were there with you?
My first year, 64, 65 school year, there was another student, black student, a year behind me.
I went in as a sophomore in high school.
There was another black student there.
And he left after the first year.
And for the next two years, from 65 through 67, I was the only black student there.
And what was it that you started to say before I, as host, rudely interrupted you about the nuns?
Well, actually, the nuns were a bit earlier.
They were in grammar school in my, I was in segregated Catholic schools, St. Benedict's until the eighth grade, and then St. Pius the 10th high school through the 10th grade and repeated to 10th grade in the seminary.
But one of the things that the nuns made clear from the first day was that we were all created equal.
So from the standpoint of race, whites were no better or no different from us in God's eyes.
So that was something that was reinforced at home, and it was something that we held on to.
So from the racial standpoint, the clarity of that message always was preeminent in our lives, both at home and in our church.
Now, you, people are going to have a tough time believing this.
You taught yourself algebra one summer.
Now, you just got to telling us you want to play, and you wanted to run around and play basketball.
What in the world was it that inspired you to want to teach yourself algebra?
And how did you know that what you were teaching yourself was right?
The answers were in the back of the book.
Well, actually, it was a little more complicated than that.
When I went into the seminary, I was one of those victims of new math and had not had Algebra 1 and had no idea what we were doing in new math in the ninth grade.
Well, when I went into the seminary, they had done the traditional, gone the traditional route and taught first-year algebra.
So my classmates had first-year algebra, but when I arrived, I had not had it.
And so the head of the school before our junior year in high school said, we're going to have second-year algebra.
I said, but I haven't had first-year algebra.
He said, we're going to have second-year algebra.
So necessity being the mother of invention, or certainly something, an impetus to go get your work done, that summer when we had our breaks on the farm in the middle of the day, I began to teach myself algebra and was able to teach myself most of the Algebra I material by the end of the summer.
You know what would happen in that circumstance today?
If you walked in to a second-year algebra course and told the teacher, well, I haven't learned first-year algebra yet, the kids that had learned it would have to take it over again with you so that you wouldn't be humiliated.
Oh, I think you would be humiliated.
I'm listening to you describe your education and the teacher saying, we're taking second year algebra.
This is not done today.
And your grandfather with the rules and his high expectations of you, all of this is profoundly inspiring.
It's exactly why I'm happy you're here today because these are the things that people don't know about you.
And all of this sounds like just a pure recipe, Mr. Justice Thomas, of being really devoted to yourself.
You had some great role models, your grandfather especially.
You came from a background that was, well, I use the word unfair.
It was just unfortunate, but you didn't, none of this, you don't seem to have allowed any of it to be an excuse for not being the best you could be.
Well, you know, the rush, when I left for the seminary, again, I'm 16 and my grandfather is very clear with me.
He made me vow that I wouldn't quit the seminary, and that's something I did do later on.
How did he react to that?
Well, not very well.
But the thing he said when I left, understanding that I would be there for the first time or first member of our household among whites, he said, boy, don't shame me and don't shame the race.
So there was this obligation that you had to do well because we had lived with this assumption that if we had an opportunity, we could always, and I mean always do as well as our white counterparts in similar circumstances.
So there was always this obligation on me to perform well.
You can talk about it.
You can talk a good game.
But when you took an algebra test or when you took a physics or a chemistry test, the proof was always in the pudding.
Now, with respect to the unfortunate circumstances, I actually think that I have been fortunate to have had misfortune because the response in responding to the misfortune you develop in your own life, you develop sort of the tools you need to continue on or to do better.
And yes, it was tough.
It was difficult at the time.
And maybe there was a little bit of self-pity from time to time.
But as a result of those misfortunes, I think I've been able to develop in a way or character traits that have been helpful.
Exactly.
It's sort of like the saying, without struggle, there's no purpose.
And you clearly had struggle.
Your grandfather threw you out of the house, right?
You told him this?
Well, in 19, when I returned, I got very upset in the seminary for racial reasons and returned in 1968.
Is that why the racial reasons are why you quit?
Oh, yes.
Those were the primary reasons.
And I was very upset, and I quit in a huff in 1968 after Dr. King was assassinated and went home.
And the next day, of course, my grandfather kicked me out of the house.
I was 19 at the time, and I've been on my own ever since.
19, you got kicked out of the house.
Were you upset with him?
What did you do?
Well, he was upset because I'd broken a promise.
He'd exacted a promise from me to not leave the seminary, and I had done just that.
And he felt, as he said, that if I was going to make decisions like a man, then I should live like a man.
And that day I was to leave his house.
And yes, he was upset with me, and I, in turn, was very, very upset with him.
Were you shamed?
Were you shamed?
No, I was more, I was too self-centered to be ashamed.
I thought I was justified in both my decision to leave the seminary and in my anger and animus toward then my Catholic faith and toward others.
That's Justice Clarence Thomas, and we will be back and continue as we roll into some other areas, the court and his later life after this.
Stay with us.
And welcome back, folks, once again to the EIB Network.
Rush Limbaugh with the privilege of talking today with Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Clarence Thomas about his new book, A Memoir, My Grandfather's Son.
All right, let's move forward just a little bit.
You end up going to Holy Cross after quitting the seminary and being kicked out of your grandfather's house.
Were you recruited?
No, I wasn't.
Actually, it was serendipity.
My chemistry teacher from the seminary had asked me, Sister Mary Carmen had asked me to apply to Holy Cross when she learned I was thinking of leaving the seminary, and I refused.
And she knew I had always been a very, very good student, so that she figured it'd be no problem for me to go to Holy Cross.
Well, I wasn't really interested.
I was going to go to Savannah State or someplace near home.
And she had someone send me an application, a friend of mine who had been at Holy Cross, and out of respect for her and him, I filled it out, and I was accepted.
And so after my grandfather quickly, had so quickly kicked me out of the house, I had no choices but to go to Holy Cross.
I was accepted there.
They worked out financial aid of work study, loan, and some grant, and I went there.
But it was total serendipity, or actually, I think it was more providential than anything else.
You became a radical.
I know this from stories you've told me, but the audience would be fascinated to understand and learn how you became a radical, because that's the one thing people wouldn't associate with you today.
Well, I think in that era, in the late 1960s, if you were a young black male and you saw what was happening around our society and the race area, it was not uncommon to become angry and to feel that the sort of quiet way that you'd lived your life and the way that my grandparents had lived theirs,
that it was too little a response to such a clear immorality of racism.
And it was the era of black pride and the era of black power, and you got caught up in that, and it felt liberating.
You felt finally able to respond in a way consistent with in an appropriate way.
And so like so many young blacks of that era, I became, at least self-described, a radical and got involved in a lot of marches and protests, and I actually felt quite justified in doing so.
How long were you a radical?
And because I know you stopped being one.
What did you rethink that?
Well, actually, I started rethinking it shortly after I started it.
When I got to Holy Cross, I was involved in so many things.
I got there in the fall of 1968.
And in the spring of 1970, I was involved in a disturbance to free political prisoners in Cambridge.
It was in April, mid-April 1970.
And after I returned, I was very shaken by what I had just done.
I was out of control and felt being almost manipulated by others with larger agendas.
And I got back to Holy Cross campus in the wee hours of the morning, and I was in front of the chapel there and on my way to breakfast.
And I asked God to take the anger out of my heart.
And if he took it out of my heart, I would never hate again.
And that was the beginning of the process of trying to be far more constructive in my life and to do positive things as opposed to trying to harm others in this self-justified way.
Now, you ended up eventually at Yale.
And before I Tell me how you liked it at Yale.
There's something that I want to put on the table for you to deal with on the program as you have in the book.
One of the raps against you, one of the big criticisms of you, has been that you used all of the prescriptions of affirmative action to get to Yale and any other places you went thereafter, but that you took the latter with you once you got there and you denied it to anybody else.
Now, is it true, once and for all, that you got into Yale because of affirmative action?
Oh, well, they didn't call it that back then.
It's kind of interesting.
That's what I attempt to deal with in the book: those of us who went to school back then, and certainly only Yale in my case, the program they had at the time, they called it preferential treatment.
It was kind of odd because at the time, Yale claimed that it was accepting us on merit.
They had had apparently some difficulties.
And the way I applied was the way I had applied to every place else, and that was I came from where I came from.
And earlier in the interview, you said that I had had this misfortune, and that's what I had basically said.
I had overcome those odds and done extremely well at St. John Vianni Minor Seminary, done extremely well at Macley Conception Seminary, and then at Holy Cross.
And my hope was to have the same opportunity to do extremely well at Yale.
And when I was accepted, I thought it was on those circumstances.
But then later on, and I did fine at Yale, but later on, all of that was converted into race.
And what I blame myself for is that I should have seen that coming.
Wait, who did I have?
Who converted it into race?
Your enemies?
Well, or Yale.
Did Yale say it?
Yale never said it when I was there.
What happened was when I attempted to get a job after Yale, it was clear from the law firms that their assumption was that I had no business at Yale.
So I could not get a job after Yale Law School.
I tried Atlanta, I tried New York, I tried Washington, D.C., and the reason I wound up in Jefferson City is the only person who would look me in the eye and say that he would give me an opportunity, the same opportunity as anybody else to do my best, was Senator Dan, then Attorney General Danforth.
And as a result of that, I wound up in Jefferson City, Missouri.
So the criticism here that you, in your later life, somehow oppose affirmative action and thus deny other minority students the advantages or the opportunities you had is not true.
Oh, absolutely not.
One of the things that we were all for, even then, was to help disadvantaged kids.
I mean, who's against that?
You know, I don't care what color you are, the white kid from Appalachia, the Hispanic kid, the mixed race kids, I don't make those false distinctions and have never made those sorts of distinctions.
You help kids in the places that they are.
If they are suffering from how many kids, for example, at Yale grew up in the same circumstances that I did?
How many of them would have done as well under the same circumstances?
Our point was that there were things that we learned going through that misfortune and getting ourselves out that were intangible and that would go on and allow us to do well in life.
Well, I've proven that to be true or demonstrated that.
That was my grandfather's point.
And rather than sort of make it all racial, just simply say, look, give these kids a chance and see how well they do.
Let them perform.
In your business, you often talk about the fact that you've had all these jobs and so many people thought you weren't going to do well.
But individually, you got out there, you worked hard, you had opportunities, you took full advantage of them, and voila, you're the star you are.
Well, there are kids in the same position, and it doesn't have to be based on race.
And I think virtually any fair-minded person understands that.
And I try to, what I attempt to do in my own life, Rush, is to help others, no matter what their race is, no matter what their sex is, who are having difficulty, other people who are demonstrating that they want to do well, and if given a chance, they will do well.
But that's individual to individual.
You know, many people are unaware of your writings on the Supreme Court because most Americans probably don't have the time or inclination to read opinions and be both the dissent and the affirmative opinions and so forth.
But I read yours, and they're remarkably simple to understand.
And you, you just talked about liking and enjoying very much working with young kids who need help.
You have spent a lot of time trying to explain things to kids who are illiterate.
Now, has that probably helped you be able in your life to take the complex and make it understandable?
And you even apply that in your writings on the court.
I think so often, Rush, when we get in these positions, we tend to condescend to the rest of the population and our fellow citizens.
I don't do that.
I grew up in circumstances that weren't the best economically or the best educationally for the people around me.
I never went back home and condescended to them.
They are my family.
They're my neighbors.
They're human beings.
And so what I try to do every day, wherever I am, is to look at that person no matter what they're doing and to see a fellow human being.
So in writing opinions, you are trying to take something.
If it's complicated, you're trying to explain it in a way that every, as many people as possible can understand it.
You're making their Constitution and their laws accessible to them.
We talk about accessibility in terms of people with, say, disabilities in a wheelchair, where a curb is like the great wall of China if someone is in a wheelchair.
Well, you can use language in writing about the court or about the Constitution that sort of makes the puts a great wall of China between them and their Constitution.
My idea is simply to be able to explain it to all of my fellow citizens.
We're speaking with Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, about his memoir, My Grandfather's Son, and we've got more coming up right after this.
I'm going to ask him about the confirmation process.
Don't go away.
And welcome back, folks, to the EIB Network.
And El Rushbo, we are talking with Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas, about his new book, memoir it is, My Grandfather's Son.
I have to know this.
I want people to hear it.
And I waited until you had set the table with this brief biography of your life to ask this question: how did you and Ginny get through your confirmation process?
Because that had to be one of the toughest survival experiences of your life.
And you've, people should know this.
You went through that.
Most people cannot possibly relate to what that was like.
Even though they have hardships, that was televised, the allegations made against you.
The thing that I've noticed, and I'm not sucking up here, this is I want people to know this, the thing I've noticed is you, I don't hear any bitterness today about anything that's happened or been said about you.
I don't hear any time I've been with you, no bitterness whatsoever, and I haven't heard lingering bitterness over this, but I still am curious how in the world you got through this.
Well, first of all, Rush, I don't really have the luxury to be bitter.
I don't have the luxury of having negative things in my life.
When you are trying to do your best, you don't have that support from our backup or insurance from your family or from those around you who can sort of help you compensate or make up for your mistakes.
You don't have the luxury of having those sorts of negative things in your life.
With respect to my wife and I, my wife's my best friend in the whole world.
We had only been married four years when we went through the confirmation.
She was 34 and I was 43 years old.
Neither of us had ever been treated like that in our lives.
And to be honest with you, no one had seen a precedent for that before or since.
And ultimately, we realized that it was something that she and I, with God and our prayer partners, would have to work through.
And we saw it as spiritual warfare, and we treated it that way.
So most of our time was actually spent together, she and I, from time to time, actually on a daily basis, our prayer partners, always in prayer or surrounded by music, religious music, and hoping and praying that we could survive this and that it would turn out okay.
At what point did you decide to get aggressive in your own defense?
And I remember very vividly, your description of the whole process as a high-tech lynching and Kafka-esque that had to be strategically planned for the right time to do it.
When did you come up with that idea?
Well, I never really did, Rush.
I didn't plan anything.
You were just reacting then to what was happening to you.
I never really wanted to be on the court.
I don't like Washington.
When the President asked me, just like my call to become a priest, my vocation, I think when the President asked you to do something, you should do it.
Now, most people would say, but it's the Supreme Court.
Well, maybe they are interested in it as a personal bit of ambition, but I was not.
So it wasn't something I was trying to get.
It wasn't a prize.
What was important to me was that my family, I mean, I don't have a whole lot.
I had my good name, and I was too prideful about that, I would admit.
But my grandparents had cobbled together this life.
They had never been bitter.
They weren't upset with anybody.
They got these two little boys.
They raised them.
They were law-abiding.
They were religious people.
They were frugal.
They were hardworking.
And they made us work.
They made us adopt those things.
And here, for no reasons other than people disagreed with me or they thought that a black person shouldn't particularly have these views, they were going to set upon me and undermine or destroy the little bit we had cobbled together.
And at some point, I think that you are obligated to stand and defend that, to defend the honor.
And I think I would have shamed my grandfather if I had not stood up and defended what he had given us and defended the legacy he'd left us to provide for ourselves and for our kids.
Well, I know exactly why they opposed you, and I know exactly why they tried to destroy you.
And I also am going to mention this in our next segment, which, by the way, will set a record, Mr. Justice Thomas.
No guest has ever gone longer than one hour on this program.
You are the first.
We have a little less than a minute.
Well, it's our honor and privilege.
We have a little less than a minute here, but I need to ask you, you said you didn't like Washington.
You don't like it.
You never thought of the court.
You did it in accepting the honor and the request of the president.
You've got about 30 seconds here.
Do you see yourself as being on the court at the pinnacle of your profession?
I don't see it that way.
I am honored to be a part of defending what we think is the best country in the world and the best Constitution in the world.
And I'm honored to be in this role for my fellow citizens.
And I can't complain about it in any way.
I can't wait to comment on this when we get back.
And we will be back, folks, shortly after our top of the hour break.
One more segment, at least, with Mr. Justice Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice, United States Supreme Court.
Be right back.
▲
Export Selection