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It is Thomas' record as chairman of the EEOC starting in 1982 that troubles liberals most. Juan Williams, a journalist who conducted a series of interviews with Thomas over five years, wrote in the Atlantic in 1987 that Thomas was a "sad, lonely, troubled, and deeply pessimistic public servant." As the second highest ranking black in the Reagan Administration, Thomas was earning $71,000 a year, moving about in a chauffeured government car (which stopped most mornings at a Catholic church so Thomas could pray alone for a few minutes). Beside his desk he kept a flag bearing the motto "Don't Tread on Me."
Early in Reagan's first term, Thomas battled with Reynolds over the Justice Department's go-slow approach to civil rights cases. But at the EEOC, Thomas angered civil rights organizations by shifting the agency away from class- action cases to focus on specific acts of discrimination. He rejected the use of statistics on the number of minorities hired by an employer to prove discrimination. Thomas once asked a congressional committee whether anyone would ever suggest that Georgetown University was discriminating against white basketball players because its team was all black.
In 1990 Bush named him to a federal appeals court in Washington, which has often been a spawning ground for Supreme Court Justices, but Thomas has only ruled in 27 routine cases.
Though civil rights groups are understandably cautious about attacking a black, Thomas' appointment could spark a debate among African Americans about the best means for their race to progress. Though most blacks harbor an instinctive mistrust of anyone who worked with Ronald Reagan, not all of Thomas' views are as far from the black mainstream as some civil rights spokesmen would have it. For example, a growing number of black parents now send their children to historically black colleges in the belief that such institutions do a better job of nurturing young blacks' self-confidence.
Thomas' strong antiabortion views are another matter. As a Senate Democratic aide puts it, "If you were a committee liberal, would you rather oppose a sharecropper's son on the issue of civil rights or on the issue of abortion rights?" Unlike David Souter, who escaped scrutiny on abortion, Thomas has a paper trail. Abortion-rights advocates have seized upon a 1987 speech in which Thomas praised an article in the American Spectator that called for the constitutional protection of the "inalienable right to life of the child- about-to-be-born."
There are a few wild cards in the confirmation process. No one knows how Thomas will come across on television, although his private tale of triumph over high odds is likely to win better ratings than daytime soap operas. Thomas also has a respected political godfather in Danforth, who has an unblemished civil rights record and has been trying to persuade the Administration to accept a compromise version of the current civil rights bill.