Clarence Thomas

WASHINGTON -- The struggle that is the life of Clarence Thomas passed another milestone recently when the Supreme Court's youngest, most reclusive and most vilified justice turned 50.Despite the passage of time, his defining experience remains his youthful fight to escape the poverty of the rural, black South and to succeed at an elite, white college in the North, according to a recent interview."

The Miami Herald said in an editorial Sunday:WHEN the U.S. Supreme Court splits five ways from Sunday on a matter that even has justices in the majority disagreeing among themselves, Congress ought to revisit the troublesome law at issue.Recently, the court upheld a law that makes distinctions between fathers and mothers when determining the citizenship of their children. The law was written in 1940 and amended in 1986. It provides that children born abroad and out of wedlock are deemed Americans if their mothers are. But if a child is born to a non-American mother, his or her American father must acknowledge parenthood before the child reaches 18 years of age.The case before the court involved a young woman, Lorelyn Miller, born in the Philippines in 1970.

WASHINGTON -- In 1991, as Anita F. Hill's tale of being harassed by Clarence Thomas swept Washington into a fury of cross-gender recriminations, Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski deplored the silence of some of her fellow senators."

Six years ago, it was Anita Hill at the center of the frenzy that is the sex-tinged Washington scandal: the round-the-clock media reports, the leaks, the rumors, the dissection of her sexual harassment complaints against former boss Clarence Thomas, who was headed to a seat on the Supreme Court.Today, it's Monica Lewinsky feeling the hot breath of the media ** and the nation in Paula Jones' sexual harassment case against the president of the United States.While Hill has a more personal interest in the case then most, many women are equally engaged in this latest intersection of sex and politics: from women with no connection to public life, to former Colorado Rep. Patricia Schroeder, to the so-called post-feminists such as Christina Hoff Sommers.

Mfume position is praised and also criticizedI applaud NAACP national president Kweisi Mfume for coming out vehemently against the actions of the Maryland NAACP regarding Justice Clarence Thomas' recently scheduled speaking engagement at a Maryland youth group's activities.As an African-American woman who does not think ''liberal'' is a dirty word and although I am at times staunchly opposed to the social and political beliefs of Justice Thomas, it is reprehensible to think because I don't ''think'' the same way he does that he should not be allowed to exercise his right to free speech.

HE DIDN'T HAVE to say anything after the Maryland chapter of the NAACP successfully forced Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to cancel an appearance at a recent youth rally. NAACP national president Kweisi Mfume could have let people guess whether he agreed with what had happened. He has instead let it be clearly known that he didn't like it a bit, which confirms what many already knew about Mr. Mfume's character. He may not agree with Mr. Thomas on affirmative action and minority voting districts, but he's not afraid of letting people hear what an adversary has to say.Mr.

Your Jan. 9 editorial, "Clarence Thomas as a role model," is just one more occasion of the white press and some in the white communities trying to dictate to the African-American community who they should consider as their "role models" and their leaders.It has not been lost on the adult African Americans' quest for full citizenship how Clarence Thomas' controversial opinions will adversely affect them.When will the press listen to and report the many voices in the African-American community instead of trying to speak for all of them, liberals and conservatives, when they neither talk to nor listen to all of them but report the opinions of the least of them, the conservatives?

HAVRE DE GRACE -- It's certainly lucky for the young people of the Eastern Shore that the Maryland NAACP is on the job.Otherwise they might have been exposed to the Great Satan, Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court, who had been invited to commit an act of free speech in Delmar next weekend.Mr. Justice Thomas would have joined a surgeon, Benjamin Carson, and a baseball player, Delino DeShields, as the speakers at a fund-raising banquet for a Maryland-Delaware youth group.But he elected not to come after learning that the NAACP planned to engage in "protests," an activity it has developed into a sort of performance art.An NAACP personage was quoted as explaining that an appearance by Justice Thomas in Delmar would have been "an embarrassment to the community."

GEORGE WALLACE gets treated better by black people than Clarence Thomas. Even those who will never forgive the former Alabama governor for "standing in the schoolhouse door" to thwart integration in the '60s have applauded his expressions of remorse since. Mr. Thomas has not backed down from his controversial positions as only the second African-American to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. Consequently, his opinions opposing affirmative action and majority-black voting districts have vilified him in the minds of the liberal African-American leadership.

THE ANTI-Clarence Thomas hordes within black America are at it again, and this time they've gone waaaay over the line.Take, for example, the cover of the latest Emerge magazine. Mind you, Emerge is still the best black monthly news magazine on the market -- well-written, superbly edited and committed to presenting hard news stories that its competitors wouldn't dream of touching.But did the editors have to approve a cover with Clarence Thomas dressed as a lawn jockey accompanied with the headline screaming "Uncle Thomas, Lawn Jockey for The Far Right"?