TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/091691/0916100.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 14.2 KB | 302 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 24

RACE

The Pain Of Being Black


The other side of Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas' inspiring
climb out of poverty was the price he paid for success

By JACK E. WHITE -- Reported by Melissa Ludtke/Boston and Don
Winbush/Savannah


    I have a lot in common with Clarence Thomas. Like his
grandfather, mine was a hero.

    Born a slave in 1856, my grandfather was a farmer who
loved learning. Despite poverty and racial oppression so harsh
it seems almost unimaginable today, he found a way for his 16
children to get an education. After he died in 1933, my
grandmother and the older children worked together to send the
younger ones to college and professional schools. My dad, the
baby of the family, graduated from Howard University's medical
school. He went on to found the country's first black-run
cancer-research center and publish ground-breaking studies about
the disease's impact on black Americans. He died three years
ago, leaving my mother, my three sisters (an interior designer,
a veterinarian, a physician), my brother (a teacher) and me, the
first black senior editor at TIME.

    As proud as I am of my family's achievements, I know there
is nothing unique -- or even uncommon -- about the strides
we've made. You don't have to delve far into the history of any
successful black American to find someone like my grandfather.
Someone, that is, like Clarence Thomas' grandfather, Myers
Anderson, who raised him from the age of seven, sent him to
Catholic school and taught him that hard work and self-reliance
could overcome any obstacle discrimination might put in his way
-- if he was willing to pay the price.

    This week the Senate will start hearings on Thomas'
nomination to fill Thurgood Marshall's seat on the Supreme
Court. Inside and outside the hearing room, Thomas' life story
and its meaning will emerge as major themes of the debate. Civil
rights groups and Democratic liberals are sharply divided over
the nomination. Some organizations, like the National Urban
League, that would fiercely oppose a white appointee who shared
Thomas' harsh opposition to affirmative action and skepticism
about racial integration have declined to join a campaign to
defeat his elevation to the high court.

    Thomas' biography -- he pulled himself up by his
bootstraps from dirt-poor Pin Point, Ga., to Yale Law School and
the federal bench -- has inoculated him against criticism of his
record: it would seem churlish and hypocritical to attack this
black Horatio Alger figure for being insufficiently sensitive
to the plight of impoverished blacks. Though he may endure some
tough questioning about his two terms as chairman of the Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission under Ronald Reagan -- and
some name calling from blacks who consider him an Uncle Tom
because of his conservative views -- Thomas is all but certain
to be approved.


    But while there may be little doubt about the outcome of
the hearings, probing Thomas' life will serve a useful purpose
by shedding light on a little-examined phenomenon: the high
psychological price some blacks have paid for the progress they
have made over the past two generations. Thomas' rise is an
inspiring example of the way many blacks have improved their
lot. But that is the only part of his story that his backers
care to talk about. They downplay the possibility that Thomas'
life may be a case study of the wrenching impact of
"integration shock" -- author Shelby Steele's name for the
intense feelings of racial inferiority and self-doubt that can
assault and sometimes overwhelm blacks who, like Thomas, were
suddenly taken from their familiar surroundings and plunged into
a previously all-white and not always welcoming world.

    Psychiatrists have identified a variety of disorientations
blacks can suffer as a result of such immersions. Depending on
the individual, the symptoms can range from an angry
repudiation of whites to an emotional identification with whites
so complete that victims undergo what University of
Wisconsin-Eau Claire professor Ronald Hall describes as a
"bleaching syndrome," in which they deny any connection with
blacks.

    One increasingly common disorder is known as the Token
Black Syndrome. According to Price Cobbs, co-author of Black
Rage, TBS often afflicts blacks who were the first of their
families to graduate from college or land a high-paying job. TBS
has become more widespread in recent years, as a white backlash
against affirmative action has swept across the nation. On
campuses and in the workplace, the prevailing view is that
blacks are not required -- and are unable -- to meet the same
standards for admission and promotion as whites.

    In the face of such assaults, says psychiatrist Alvin
Poussaint, vulnerable blacks can unconsciously accept the
negative images attributed to their race, then scurry to
distance themselves from those images by words or deeds. Denying
that luck, family support and other factors, including
affirmative action, may have helped them, TBS victims con
themselves into believing they have made it solely because they
are exceptionally gifted individuals who are innately superior
to less fortunate members of their race. They often exhibit
disdain for poor blacks, especially those who are on welfare or
have given birth to a child out of wedlock. They believe if more
blacks were "like me" -- intelligent instead of stupid, hard
working instead of lazy, educated instead of ignorant, morally
upright instead of slatternly -- racial progress would be
assured.

    Denigrating the people they left behind is not exceptional
among high achievers from any ethnic group. But for blacks the
problem is compounded because they belong to what Steele calls
"the most despised race in the human community of races."
Bombarded from infancy with signals of their inferiority from
both whites and blacks, black children all too often incorporate
negative racial stereotypes into their own self-images. The
result can be crippling self-hatred.

    Recent research confirms that anti-black stereotypes
remain pervasive among African Americans. In a 1990 survey of
racial attitudes by the National Opinion Research Center, for
example, 30% of the blacks questioned agreed that members of
their race were less intelligent than whites; 57% of whites held
the same view.

    Racially disparaging attitudes remain endemic, even among
highly educated and successful African Americans. Gloria
Johnson-Powell, a black psychiatrist at Harvard, cites a study
from the early 1980s of psychiatrists, psychologists and social
workers that found that in several areas, including sexuality,
black professionals held more stereotypical negative views of
black behavior than their white counterparts. "Some African
American professionals look down their nose at another African
American who is a `shame to the race,' " says Johnson-Powell.
"They swallow the stereotypes and often will be harder on
African Americans than whites will be."

    I know from personal experience how difficult it can be
for a black in a predominantly white environment to keep things
in perspective. Even the most self-confident blacks cannot
escape the fear that their work is being evaluated by a
different yardstick than the one used to measure work done by
whites. Worst of all is the feeling that you are participating
in an unfair experiment, in which the reputation of the entire
race is riding on your performance: if you succeed, you are
judged an exception; if you fail, well, what did anyone expect
from a black?



    None of which means that Thomas or any other black who
disagrees with racial preferences and hiring quotas is suffering
from a mental disorder. No responsible therapist would make
such a diagnosis without extensive personal contact with a
patient, and certainly no journalist is qualified to do so.
Moreover, many of the nation's leading black thinkers are
expressing growing doubts about the ability of affirmative
action to help the underclass.

    But even if Thomas emerged emotionally unscathed -- or
even stronger -- from the experiences, his recollections make
clear that he was subjected to an especially searing version of
the psychological pressures that have destroyed many other
blacks:



    -- Growing up in the 1950s, Thomas was dubbed A.B.C. --
short for America's Blackest Child -- by some blacks in
Savannah. It was the most disparaging nickname a dark-skinned
boy could have had in those days before blacks discovered they
were beautiful.

    -- As the only black student in his class at Savannah's
St. John Vianney Minor Seminary, a Catholic boarding school,
Thomas was the subject of cruel racial taunts. "Smile, Clarence,
so we can see you," a white classmate yelled after lights out.
In a long series of interviews with Washington Post journalist
Juan Williams, Thomas acknowledged going through a period of
"self-hate," during which he tried to fit in by avoiding every
form of stereotypically black behavior. But his effort failed
and left him with the conviction there is nothing a black can do
to be accepted by whites.

    --In 1968 Thomas dropped out of Missouri's Immaculate
Conception Seminary after only eight months of studying for the
Catholic priesthood. The reason: as word spread that Martin
Luther King Jr. had been shot, Thomas overheard a white
seminarian say, "Good, I hope the son of a bitch dies."

    A remarkably self-contained man, Thomas has rarely spoken
publicly about the pain he must have felt during those years or
expressed anger at the treatment he received. But his
experiences must have been a factor in his well-documented
attempts over the years to distance himself from racial issues.
At law school, he avoided classes on civil rights, concentrating
instead on corporate issues. After graduation, he turned down
bids from firms that offered to let him do pro bono work for
good causes, accepting a position in the Missouri state attorney
general's office, where he handled revenue and tax cases. He
initially resisted when the Reagan Administration offered to
name him the Department of Education's Assistant Secretary for
Civil Rights. And he became more and more critical of blacks who
accepted welfare, which he regards as a "sugar-coated" form of
slavery.

    Thomas' friends insist that he is a well-balanced
individual with a lively sense of humor, strong self-esteem and
an inquiring mind. Moreover, they say, Thomas does not fall into
the category of "OpporTOMist" -- psychiatrist Pousconflation of
the terms opportunist and Uncle Tom to describe blacks who
donned conservative mantles to get ahead in a right-wing
Republican regime. "There is no self-hatred there," says Harry
Singleton, a black Washington attorney who has known Thomas
since their first day at Yale Law School.

    Thomas' conservative views of public policy, friends say,
evolved during a long intellectual quest that built upon the
self-reliance imparted by his grandfather and a deep streak of
independence. His antipathy to welfare, for example, may spring
from a childhood trip to visit relatives who lived on welfare
in a northern public-housing project. After the visit, his
grandfather exclaimed, "Damn that welfare, that relief! Man
ain't got no business on relief as long as he can work!"

    Even during the racially turbulent 1960s, Thomas was never
as much of a radical as some earlier reports suggested. As a
student at Holy Cross College, Thomas was the only member of the
black-student association to vote against setting up a
predominantly black corridor in a dormitory. Later he moved into
the corridor -- but with a white roommate.

    Until his nomination in July, Thomas was a little-known
figure among his fellow blacks. Since then, many have sought
reassurance that despite Thomas' loyal service in the Reagan
Administration, which most blacks considered reflexively hostile
to their interests, he has not turned his back on his race.
Thomas' public comments and private talks with civil rights
leaders have convinced some of them he is "a brother" who
understands the damage racism can do. But for many others,
anguished doubts remain.

    In 1980, at a meeting of black conservatives in San
Francisco, Thomas cited his sister Emma Martin as a prime
example of everything that is wrong with liberal welfare
programs. "She gets mad when the mailman is late with her
welfare check, that's how dependent she is," said Thomas.
"What's worse is that now her kids feel entitled to the check
too. They have no motivation for doing better or getting out of
that situation."

    Thomas' version of his sister's plight was seriously
distorted. In fact, she was not getting welfare checks when he
singled her out but working double shifts at a nursing home for
slightly more than $2 an hour. Over the years, she has been
forced from time to time to accept public assistance -- once
after she walked out of a troubled marriage and most recently
to care for an ailing aunt. But even while on welfare, Martin
continued to work part time, picking crab meat at a factory near
her home. She eventually weaned herself from the dole entirely
by taking on two low-paying jobs. When asked how she feels about
her brother's attempt to portray her as a welfare queen, Martin
replies with a shrug. She comes across as a far too gentle and
forgiving person to hold a grudge.

    My grandfather would not have understood two aspects of
Thomas' conduct during that episode: one is that he publicly
humiliated his sister to make a political point; the other is
that he never offered to help her during her hard times.

    The incident raises questions the Senate should explore as
it weighs Thomas' fitness for the nation's highest court: How
wide is the gap between what Thomas preaches about self-help
and what he practices? Did his encounters with prejudice forge
him into a compassionate role model for those striving to
overcome their circumstances? Or did those experiences scar him
so badly he has nothing left to offer them but empty platitudes?
Until we know the answers, the qualms about Thomas will not fade
away.