Juan Williams on Clarence Thomas

This used to be for subscribers only, but The Atlantic has just made available a fascinating 1987 article on Clarence Thomas: A Question of Fairness, by Juan Williams.

The President's director of the EEOC is something of a black nationalist, as well as a sad, lonely, troubled, and deeply pessimistic public servant.

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Clarence Thomas, in sum, is a man who does not see integration as the panacea for the problems of black America. The familiar integrationist agitation of black civil-rights leaders leaves him cold. He agrees with Reagan's characterization of the civil-rights leaders as old men fomenting discontent to justify their own "rather good positions." "The issue is economics—not who likes you." Thomas has told me. "And when you have the economics, people do have a way of changing their attitudes toward you. I don't see how the civil-rights people today can claim Malcolm X as one of their own. Where does he say black people should go begging the Labor Department for jobs? He was hell on integrationists. Where does he say you should sacrifice your institutions to be next to white people?

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Read the whole thing.