thom w Loc: San Jose, CA

Thomas still hasn’t figured out that he didn’t lift himself by his own bootstraps. If you think it can be done, get yourself a pair of boots and try it.

thom w Loc: San Jose, CA

Please explain your statement.

jcboy3

I don't know why you chose to post part of the article, not provide a link, and not provide an attribution. For those that want to know, this is an article by Robert Ringer:

http://robertringer.com/is-it-time-for-r********ns/

Civil and institutional r****m have denied much from African-Americans. Most notably, an accumulation of wealth upon which black businesses and a middle class would be based. Declaring that the government should just let things be ignores the massive and chronic r****m in this country.

R********ns would not be sufficient to solve the problems; giving people money when they are not used to having it will not build wealth. Look to lottery winners. In addition, paying r********ns could be used to absolve society of the guilt for past wrongs.

Instead, the government must compensate for centuries of ine******y by striving to correct those past wrongs with increased opportunity as well as punishment for future discrimination.

soba1 Loc: Somewhere In So Ca

His urban renewal bill. It’s a start
I would have to look the name up

soba1 Loc: Somewhere In So Ca

Urban Renewal

http://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2016/12/09/trumps-new-deal-for-urban-renewal-could-work.html

Trump and HBCU’s
Historically black colleges

http://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wusa9.com/amp/article%3fsection=news&subsection=local&topic=verify&headline=verify-has-trump-given-more-money-to-hbcus-than-any-other-president&contentId=65-543185506

It’s a start

Blurryeyed Loc: NC Mountains.

What a r****ded thing to say, Thomas grew up in Atlanta during the time where r****m there was strong, and yes, he charted his own course and did the hard work necessary to become the man he became. You have no idea the challenges the man faced, confronted, and overcame. You and Obama can take that "You didn't build that" crap and shove it up your hind ends.

Blurryeyed Loc: NC Mountains.

Ringer's article is flawed, it does not account for the condition of black communities all across the nation and the reasons we find them in the conditions they are in. You touch on these points in your post.

thom w Loc: San Jose, CA

Clarence Thomas Benefited From Affirmative Action He Now Disdains
By Daily Editorials
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Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is a conundrum to many Americans. Widely considered the court's most conservative member and only the second black justice, Thomas campaigned for civil rights and benefited from affirmative action as a young man. He now decries government policies based on the ideals that shaped him as a youth, saying they amount to racial discrimination.

Thomas rarely speaks from the bench and is disinclined to give interviews, but he spoke Friday in St. Louis, Missouri, saying his law career began here in May 1974 when he limped into town in his aging Volvo on the way to join Missouri Attorney General John Danforth's staff in Jefferson City. Thomas spoke to an annual gathering of The Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis.

The justice's success in life stemmed from the many opportunities that opened for b****s because of the civil rights movement. He piggybacked on the sacrifices of others yet, from the bench, seems more inclined to pull away the ladder for those who follow. At what point did Thomas allow conservatism to cloud his sense of compassion?
Thomas' path from Pin Point, Georgia, to the United States Supreme Court is a striking example of how all citizens benefit from equal opportunity and access to education. Thomas, 68 years old, was born into poverty and raised by his grandfather, who encouraged self-reliance and urged him to pursue a religious life. He did for a time, graduating in 1971 from the College of the Holy Cross, a private Jesuit school in Worcester, Massachusetts, and then heading to Yale law school.

Thomas acknowledges that he was accepted into law school partly because of race-conscious admissions programs but has blamed those policies for devaluing the achievements of black graduates. He contends that his law degree is worth only "15 cents" because of it.

Thomas says affirmative action is discriminatory and as wrong as segregation or s***ery. He dissented from the court's landmark 2003 decision in Grutter v. Bollinger upholding the use of race as a factor in state university admissions decisions. But Thomas might not be a Supreme Court justice if the government had not used social engineering to redress discriminatory practices of the past.
Danforth, a moderate Republican credited with helping nudge the longtime blue state of Missouri into the red zone, introduced Thomas on Friday. He did not characterize Thomas' political views but showed that some wounds may never heal when he said he stood by Thomas during "the dreadful ordeal of his confirmation." The comment was a reference to sexual harassment accusations by Thomas' former aide, Anita Hill, that nearly derailed his Supreme Court confirmation in 1991.

Our nation is richer because of Thomas' court participation. Sadly, he now embraces philosophies that could close the door for those who aspire to follow in his footsteps.

REPRINTED FROM THE ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

thom w Loc: San Jose, CA

Clarence Thomas: Poster Boy For Affirmative Action
By Jeff Cohen, Norman Solomon

Creators Syndicate, Inc.

THERE is something unseemly about a guy who has just built a house on the beach and is now leading the charge to stop all further beach-front construction.

Or a recent immigrant who climbs the soapbox to call for a halt to further immigration.

Or a beneficiary of affirmative-action programs who climbs the ladder of success by attacking affirmative action.

That kind of unseemliness was demonstrated this month by Justice Clarence Thomas. But few reporters took note - even though it should be the media's job to spotlight hypocrisy.

Thomas cast the deciding v**e in the Supreme Court's 5-to-4 decision to narrow federal affirmative-action programs. But Thomas went beyond even fellow conservatives on the bench - he argued for an immediate end to affirmative action.

There's an obvious contradiction here: Clarence Thomas benefited enormously from the kind of affirmative-action programs he now seeks to k**l.

Indeed, Thomas' rise from his dirt-poor upbringing in rural Georgia into an elite Ivy League law school is an affirmative-action success story. But don't take our word for it. Take his.

In a November 1983 speech to his staff at the federal Equal Employment Opportunities Commission, Thomas called affirmative action "critical to minorities and women in this society."

Then, his remarks got personal: "But for them (affirmative-action laws), God only knows where I would be today. These laws and their proper application are all that stand between the first 17 years of my life and the second 17 years."

As an undergraduate at Holy Cross College, Thomas received a scholarship set aside for racial minorities. He was admitted to Yale Law School in 1971 as part of an aggressive (and successful) affirmative-action program with a clear goal: 10 percent minority enrollment. Yale offered him generous financial aid.

Affirmative action can't guarantee success, but it can open doors previously closed to women and people of color. The rest is up to those who walk through the doors.

By all accounts, Thomas was a hard worker who studied long hours. But his place at Yale Law School - his key to later success - was opened by a race-conscious admissions program, the kind he is now intent on outlawing.

After this month's Supreme Court decision, few news outlets explored the sharp contrast between Clarence Thomas' obsession with destroying affirmative action and his own personal history.

One wonders what Thomas believes about his past. Maybe he prefers the fairy-tale account provided by Rush Limbaugh, whose talk show he listens to each day: "Clarence Thomas escaped the bonds of poverty by methods other than those prescribed by these civil-rights organizations."

The t***h is that Thomas owes thanks to the civil-rights movement - whose decades of lawsuits, protests and lobbying removed barriers for individuals like Thomas. Yet, he seems to relish his role as one of the movement's main enemies.

Since the early 1980s, Thomas' career soared thanks to a perverse form of racial preference. It was his race, as Thomas has admitted, that got him two civil-rights posts in the Reagan White House; the jobs came because he opposed the civil-rights movement. So did his boss, President Ronald Reagan, whose opposition dated back to the years of Martin Luther King Jr.

President Bush - who, like Reagan, had opposed the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act - later chose Thomas to fill the Supreme Court seat of civil-rights legend Thurgood Marshall, the only other African American to sit on the highest court.

In his recent Supreme Court opinion blasting affirmative action, Thomas could find no moral difference between "laws designed to subjugate a race" and laws that benefit a race "in order to foster some current notion of e******y."

Thomas went on to complain that affirmative-action programs stigmatize the beneficiaries - an argument not raised by the plaintiff in the case, a white building contractor who says he unfairly lost federal work to a Latino-owned business.

Responding to Thomas, Justice John Paul Stevens pointed out that if beneficiaries of affirmative action feel stigmatized, they can simply "opt out of the program."

It's worth considering. If Thomas feels traumatized or stigmatized for having benefited from affirmative action, he could give back his law diploma.

Such a move would be absurd - since Thomas earned his degree by studying hard and passing all required exams.

Even more absurd, though, is Thomas' current mania for closing doors to others that the civil-rights movement helped open for him.

(Copyright, 1995, Creators Syndicate, Inc.)

The Media Beat column by syndicated columnists Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon appears occasionally on editorial pages of The Times.

Copyright (c) 1995 Seattle Times Company, All Rights Reserved.

Blurryeyed Loc: NC Mountains.

So you post two opinion pieces that say he didn't achieve his own success, just how sick are democrats? Yup! the only reason Clarence Thomas ever made anything of himself is because demonics and their policy built him into what he is today.

soba1 Loc: Somewhere In So Ca

For sake of argument, let’s say affirmative action did help Clarence Thomas get his foot in the door which is highly likely.
But the question to ask is, what was his GPA?
What was his track record as an attorney after he left college.
To me it’s not that affirmative action got someone’s foot in the door.
It should be what was their performance there after

soba1 Loc: Somewhere In So Ca

I recommend the Ben Carson movie.

WNYShooter Loc: WNY

"There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs–partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, be-cause they do not want to lose their jobs.

A story told me by a coloured man in South Carolina will illustrate how people sometimes get into situations where they do not like to part with their grievances. In a certain community there was a coloured doctor of the old school, who knew little about modern ideas of medicine, but who in some way had gained the confidence of the people and had made considerable money by his own peculiar methods of treatment. In this community there was an old lady who happened to be pretty well provided with this world’s goods and who thought that she had a cancer. For twenty years she had enjoyed the luxury of having this old doctor treat her for that cancer. As the old doctor became–thanks to the cancer and to other practice–pretty well-to-do, he decided to send one of his boys to a medical college. After graduating from the medical school, the young man returned home, and his father took a vacation. During this time the old lady who was afflicted with the “cancer” called in the young man, who treated her; within a few weeks the cancer (or what was supposed to be the cancer) disappeared, and the old lady declared herself well.

When the father of the boy returned and found the patient on her feet and perfectly well, he was outraged. He called the young man before him and said: “My son, I find that you have cured that cancer case of mine. Now, son, let me tell you something. I educated you on that cancer. I put you through high school, through college, and finally through the medical school on that cancer. And now you, with your new ideas of practising medicine, have come here and cured that cancer. Let me tell you, son, you have started all wrong. How do you expect to make a living practising medicine in that way?”

I am afraid that there is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don’t want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public."

Excerpt from: The Intellectuals and the Boston Mob

Author:Booker T. Washington

RichieC Loc: Adirondacks

Thomas benefited from a strong intact family life in his Grandparents house, where he was placed in good schools and received good marks- was attended to and watched over by family . He attended Yale because of their financial package- in part or completely by affirmative action. He still had to have the marks- that part was not needed to be lowered to have him accepted. That's the danger in affirmative action that blindly needs bodies. You gotta wonder if Ortize was a minority "body"- she went to the same school I speak about below. So if the point is that good schools are too expensive and good students can't attend without financial help- there is a point to be had there. Affirmative action that helps good and smart kids is paramount AND effective. Affirmative action that promotes a body because of the amount of melanin in their skin where it can't perform- does not.

My daughter was accepted at BC, which is difficult to be accepted at- after her financial package was figured out, they told us the parent contribution was to be $50,000 additional a year. We said "we don't have that laying around and we have three kids in college" they replied " you should have been saving then" $200,000 over 4 years for a bachelors degree in a field that demands a doctorate? Imagine if all three had similar packages! Anyways- I digress. She ended up going to a school that offered a very generous package - was based on her marks.

We need to figure out how to keep family units intact and healthy. The programs that came about to "help" back in the late 50's completely destroyed what was the black communities most admirable and strongest attribute- better back then than poor white families... fantastic strong family units. Sad that anything done now to fix this s would not reveal its effect for one and a half or two generations--- it has been so broken.

Finally, libs' now hold Thomas up as an example when they opposed him then and still oppose him now- did their utmost best to "high-tech" lynch him. And it took Republicans to place him there. The Orwellian hypocrisy is both expected as an common trait among the left and yet still astounding.

soba1 Loc: Somewhere In So Ca

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