Yale Affirmative Action Didn't Hurt Clarence Thomas, Classmates Say
Although a Yale Law School diploma didn’t prevent Clarence Thomas from getting a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court bench, it didn’t help him much either, he has said. In particular, the African-American justice has blamed Yale’s affirmative action program for stigmatizing black graduates, and contends his law degree is worth only “15 cents” because of it.
However, that just isn’t true, in their experience, fellow African-American graduates of the law school say. Although Thomas has complained that he couldn’t get a job as a starting associate at a major law firm because of the devaluation of his law degree by Yale’s affirmative action program, classmates suggest other factors may have been the issue, reports American Lawyer in a lengthy article. Possibilities include Thomas’ grades (they aren’t publicly known), his then-counterculture persona and his apparent lack of knowledge and interest in networking effectively in the corporate world.
Although racism in in law firms and elsewhere was a problem, a number of black classmates tell the magazine, their Yale law degrees nonetheless opened doors for them. Those who graduated around the same time as Thomas (who was in Yale Law’s Class of 1974) now account for at least four federal judges, two law professors at major ivy league institutions, a college president and several BigLaw partners.
Hence, Thomas’ “belated attempt at creating a fantasy world is not the story,” says Daniel Johnson, Jr., who graduated from Yale Law in 1973 and is now a partner at the San Francisco office of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius. “The story is how extraordinarily successful the blacks from that class have been. How could that be the case if our law school degree was worth 15 cents?”
