Our small, soft hands blistered quickly at the start of each summer, but Daddy (the maternal grandfather of Clarence Thomas) never let us wear work gloves, which he considered a sign of weakness. After a few weeks of constant work, the bloody blisters gave way to hard-earned calluses that protected us from pain. Long after the fact, it occurred to me that this was a metaphor for life–blisters come before calluses, vulnerability before maturity.
He never praised us, just as he never hugged us. Whenever my grandmother urged him to tell us that we had done a good job, he replied, “That’s their responsibility. Any job worth doing is worth doing right.”
The family farm and our unheated oil truck became my most important classrooms, the schools in which Daddy passed on the wisdom he had acquired in the course of a long life as an ill-educated, modestly successful black man in the Deep South. Despite the hardships he had faced, there was no bitterness or self-pity in his heart. As for bad luck, he didn’t believe in it.
Justice Clarence Thomas, My Grandfather’s Son
Justice Thomas has called his barely literate grandfather, the late Myers Anderson, who raised him and his brother after his father ran off, the greatest man he has ever known. He taught him the value of hard work, self reliance and a striving to achieve against the odds, essential lessons that too many Americans, no matter how well educated, fail to ever learn.
What a contrast to the present occupant of the White House, and his Dreams of My Father stuff.
White liberals who ridicule Clarence Thomas are never called racist.
.
But white conservatives who ridicule Barack Hussein Obama are always called raacist.
The problem with discerning good from evil is that they both do their battles among fallen men.
Clarence Thomas, was merely a darker–skinned Bork, and thus even more dangerous to the cause.
So, racism didn’t cause poverty in the Thomas household. Maybe government should look into his upbringing, since it sees racism everywhere and has no idea how to combat it without making matters worse.
‘ Long after the fact, it occurred to me that this was a metaphor for life–blisters come before calluses, vulnerability before maturity.
He never praised us, just as he never hugged us. Whenever my grandmother urged him to tell us that we had done a good job, he replied, “That’s their responsibility. Any job worth doing is worth doing right.” ‘
Most of the degenerate social situation is a result of laws emphasizing vulnerability and festering its blisters, with no mandate for responsibility and maturity. Good work is not a legal mandate. Good is not definable in a godless society. The loss (or unbridled ridicule) of men, such as Clarence Thomas and Robert Bork, began the spoil. Stoplights and speed limits are good, law knows that much, and takes the responsibility to develop proper ways to safely proceed through intersections with due consideration for all kinds of society found at intersections.
Hands down my favorite jurist. If we could just get 8 more like him on board.
Funny thing…before the internet, I didn’t know he was black. Not like Supreme Court Justices were a big topic of conversation, but it did come up a few times, and nobody cared. What mattered is he prods tailbone, so to speak.
There’s some economist whose name escapes me at the moment who is also black, and I’m pretty sure my mom still doesn’t know. Even more sure she doesn’t care, other than in the sense that it’d make her laugh because folks assume she must be racist.
That book about black rednecks comes to mind… his grandfather did a very good job of making sure his family escaped it.
Foxfier: I believe Thomas Sowell might be the economist you’re thinking of.
The man is a national treasure.
I think the quotation is an illustration of how admirable and disagreeable qualities co-exist and, to some degree, feed off each other. There is something wrong with regarding such a person as admirable in an unqualified way.
Funny thing…before the internet, I didn’t know he was black.
I know somebody who’s young enough to have been blissfully unaware of Thomas’s confirmation fight.
And don’t forget Walter E. Williams
I was seven.
By the time I heard about it, it was more of a focus on using it to promote “see, women are abused” or countering Clinton’s…um… activities than the whole tired saw of “black men are rapists” that amazingly shows up every time there’s a conservative black male getting too upity.
Sorry, 8, wrong confirmation.
“I think the quotation is an illustration of how admirable and disagreeable qualities co-exist and, to some degree, feed off each other. There is something wrong with regarding such a person as admirable in an unqualified way.”
I disagree Art. When his grandsons came to live with him his first words to them were, “The damn vacation’s over.” Myers Anderson was called upon to raise his grandsons and he did so in a manner that so many people would be better off if their own fathers were more like him. Myers was a devout Catholic and he paid $30.00 per year each back in the Fifties, that he could ill afford, to have his two grandsons attend a Catholic school run by nuns. He ran a hard school for his grandsons at home and he gave them the best education available when they weren’t and it paid off for both of them. I can fully understand the deep admiration and love Thomas has for the man who transformed his life.
The old saw (I think it’s in The OT), “Spare the rod, spoil the child.” may also be translated, “Spare the rod, hate the child.”
Foxfier, Both Thomas Sowell (85) and Walter E. Williams (79) are brilliant economists who happen to be black conservative/libertarians. You may have read their columns or heard them on conservative talk radio as guests or in Williams’ case as a guest hosts. He has a good sense of humor where Sowell is more serious. Both have written books on a variety of subjects. Sowell’s Black Rednecks and White Liberals is a collection of 6 essays, and Late- Talking Children and the Einstein Syndrome dispel myths about such children’s intellectual abilities.
+1
Explains why I’m having such a time– they’ve both got nice, English names, both old style college professors, both have nice voices, a generation before my folks and they talk sense.
https://youtu.be/b4Ubp7U9Dq4
90% sure it’s Sowell that mom’s a fan of, but could very well be both. The only person I can remember that she knew and cared the color of is Charley Pride, and that’s because she laughed herself sick when some lady called up a show he was on to chew him out for, per the lady, not talking like a real black guy.
Foxfier, Both Thomas Sowell (85) and Walter E. Williams (79) are brilliant economists
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Not checked his publication record. As far as I am aware, Walter Williams is a rank-and-file economist who is a biting wit as a producer of topical commentary. Sowell was a teacher of economics, but his dissertation and scholarly publications were on the history of economic thought, not economics per se. His most scholarly work is in intellectual history. He has produced some syntheses on historical topics as well. His topical commentary is the best there is and he’s an astute a diagnostician of the pathologies of public discussion as any you’re likely to find. Vision of the Anointed, which his derived from more scholarly work, is full of aha! moments and more illustrative than Alvin Gouldner’s The New Class.
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People who produce seminal work in economics are not writing for general audiences bar Krugman, and Krugman is semi-retired as a teacher and a scholar and not producing professional papers anyone would care much about anymore. His topical commentary is embarrassing (and, one suspects, written by his horrid red-haze wife).
I disagree Art.
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You might admire someone in aspects. You might admire someone generally. If you admire them in an unqualifed way, it’s likely there’s something about them that you’ve used the trick mirrors of your mind to make go away. There’s some distance between a critique of contemporary child-rearing (which artificially delays entry into the workforce and puts the young in far too much contact with the sort of squish-head who substitutes her own sense of emotional equilibrium for academic and moral education) and the late Mr. Anderson’s septicemia-R-us hostility to his grandsons. Mr. Thomas has to make his peace with his past and get through the day. The rest of us need not pretend what’s in front of us in black letters is not there.
“and the late Mr. Anderson’s septicemia-R-us hostility to his grandsons.”
Oh please. If working without work gloves was the worst thing that happened to the Thomas boys, they were blessed indeed. I grew up in a rural environment like Thomas and his grandfather is rather like several men I knew and admired while growing up. (Most of the agricultural labor I did was normally without work gloves because I had a better grip without them.) I am sure that Myers Anderson had his flaws as all of us do, but in his role as parent I think Thomas was right to celebrate him, especially considering the havoc that growing up fatherless has spread among blacks and is now doing the same among whites.
Also grew up as an ag kid, also didn’t wear gloves.
Same reason, hands work better without ’em.
Gloves are good for jobs that either you can’t develop a resistance to (barbed wire) or that’s short term (manually stacking the entire hay harvest in square bales) or where there’s some other risk, not for protection against normal callus-building exposure. (Say, frostbite.)
****
Most of the folks I knew who were missing fingers lost them due to either gloves or rings.
Mr. McClarey, I don’t admire you for the pose you insist on striking, but I will say no more.
No pose Art. We simply see things differently in regard to Myers Anderson.