JUSTICE THOMAS STANDS UP FOR PRINCIPLES

With courage all too rare in public life today, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas recently confronted his critics. Thomas had been invited to speak at the annual meeting of the National Bar Association, a group of black lawyers.

The speech was met with placard-carrying protestors out front of the conference hall in Memphis, along with much more disrespect inside it. Thomas had to sit and listen to more than an hour of non-humorous roasting of his record before rising to speak.

He was undeterred. After turning aside the churlishness of his opponents with a judgelike quip -- "I've heard the criticism, and I'll take it under advisement" -- Thomas unleashed an eloquent defense. Some excerpts:

"There now seems to be a broad acceptance of the racial divide as a permanent state. While we once celebrated those things that we had in common with our fellow citizens who didn't share our race, so many are now triumphal about our differences. ... In fact some go so far as to to all but define each of us by our race and establish the range of our thinking ... if not by deeds, by our color. ...

"I for one have been singled out for particularly bilious and venomous assaults. I have no right to think the way I do because I'm black.

"Having had to accept my blackness in a cauldron of ridicule as a youth ... I had few racial identity problems. I knew who I was and needed no gimmicks to affirm my identity. Nor, might I add, do I need anyone telling me who I am today. ...

"Despite some of the nonsense that has been said about me, I am a black man, an American. ...

"It pains me, more deeply than any of you could imagine, to be perceived by so many members of my race as doing them harm.

"I have come here today not in anger or to anger, ... but rather to assert my right to think for myself, to refuse to have my views assigned to me as though I was an intellectual slave because I'm black.

I come to state that I am a man, free to think for myself and do as I please. I have come to assert that I am a judge, and I will not be consigned to the unquestioned opinions of others.

"But even more than that I have come to say isn't it time to move on? ... Isn't it time to acknowledge that the problems of race have defied simple solutions and not one of us ... can lay claim to the solution?

Amen to that. For standing for true American principles against one of the fiercest assaults ever directed against any public figure, Justice Thomas is an American hero.