Do Bad Morals Cause Bad Leaders: Clarence Thomas
Clarence Thomas: Morals and Leadership Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, an extremely controversial African-American justice of ten years, is frequently criticized as an inconsistent judge, but one cannot blame any shortcoming due to his chain of reason on decayed ethics. Justice Thomas holds an exceedingly lengthy history of contradicting opinions and unpopular outlooks that discredit him among the public. He has been accused of only one moral fault, which was never proven and, in fact, was doubted by the majority of the populace. Any moral inadequacy that the justice may boast only adds to the citizens' mistrust. Although Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas may be an inadequate justice, his personality and principles make him so, not any immorality that he may possess. Clarence Thomas was born in 1948 in Pinpoint, Georgia, a coastal area named for the plantation that had previously been on the land. His mother Leola cared for him and his siblings for a while after his father M. C. Thomas left. Their house burned down and Leola married a man who didn't want to raise her children so she sent her two boys to live with her parents, Mr. And Mrs. Myers Anderson, and her daughter to live with her Aunt Annie in Pin Poi
tered a seminary to study for priesthood ("Clarence Thomas: Supreme Court Justice" 1). One of only four black students in the seminary, Thomas left when he heard a fellow student celebrate the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. ("Clarence Thomas: Supreme Court Justice" 2). From the seminary, Thomas attended a Jesuit college where he joined the Black Student Union and became involved with the Black Panthers. Even during this period, he was a skeptic and often disagreed with his more liberal associates ("Clarence Thomas: Supreme Court Justice" 3). In 1971, Clarence Thomas married Kathy Grace Ambush; their son Jamal was born in 1973. After Thomas's graduation in 1971, he was incapable of serving in Vietnam due to the physical exam. This left him to decide between Harvard, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania for law school; all three accepted him. He "decided on Yale because of the financial support it offered him" ("Clarence Thomas: Supreme Court Justice" 3). This financial aid was the result of an affirmative action program that Yale had recently instituted, one very similar to the ones he has adamantly opposed since his appointment ("Clarence Thomas: Supreme Court Justice" 2). Judge Thomas has argued against such racial politics because he believes they only benefit middle-class minorities and that they are harmful to the self-esteem of the beneficiaries because one never knows whether one has succeeded on one's own merit. In fact, Justice Thomas has made many contradicting statements on the subject. " ! "Clarence Thomas Profile." Online. http://oyez.nwu.edu/justices.cgi?justice_id=106. "Justice Clarence Thomas." Online. http://law.upenn.edu/fac/bwoodhou/vsc/thomas02.htm. 1 May 2001. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ . . . In a 1983 speech to Equal Employment Opportunity Commission staffers, he said, as quoted in several sources, 'But for [affirmative action], God only knows where I would be today" ("Thomas, Clarence" 3). He also stated, "I don't think black people are indebted to anybody for anything. Nobody has done us any favors in the country, buddy. This thing about how they let me into Yale-that kind of stuff offends me. All they did was stop stopping us" ("Thomas, Clarence" 3). While attending Yale, his specialty was tax and anti-trust law ("Clarence Thomas Profile"). After graduation commenced, Clarence Thomas found that few law firms were hiring. "The pay they offered was demonstrably lower than what white graduates would have been offered, and they tended to assume Thomas wanted to do social rather than corporate law" ("Clarence Thomas: Supreme Court Justice" 3). Most firms expected him to do pro bono work, which offended Thomas. From there, he went to Missouri to for ! No one has been able to prove Clarence Thomas morally corrupt, therefore making it impossible for corrupt morals to be the cause of his inability to effectively lead. Clarence Thomas is an inconsistent judge who possesses unpopular views among people of his race and whose pride seems to be the cause of the majority's disdain for his general personality. His unsympathetic persona and supercilious statements produce a negative atmosphere about him. In addition, his inability to disregard comments made by the media and various civil rights leaders and his necessity to insult them and make long speeches with quotable passages that may or may not completely contradict earlier such speeches make him an easy target for any person looking for someone to criticize. Finally, his contradictory nature and tendency to change direction in accordance with the conservative power inspires suspicion among the populace. Clarence Thomas's moral deficiencies, if there are in actuality any, a! "[Thomas] has claimed that his conservatism grew from lifting himself out of poverty by h
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