And He Forgot What Diversity Means

By Nana Dadzie Ghansah

Return to the root and you will find the meaning.”
- from the Chinese poem, “Xinxin Ming”

The only way he could get into Holy Cross College, one of the Catholic “Ivies”, was because of a scholarship set up for minorities.

During his 1991 confirmation to the Supreme Court (SC), officials from Yale University said Clarence Thomas was admitted to their law school in 1971 through a program that was created to maintain 10% minority enrollment.

In November of 1983, while at the federal Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC), Justice Thomas gave a speech to his staff in which he called affirmative action “critical to minorities and women in this society.”
“But for them (affirmative-action laws), God only knows where I would be today. These laws and their proper application are all that stand between the first 17 years of my life and the second 17 years.”

And yet 2 days ago, as the SC heard the case against how Harvard and University of North Carolina used of affirmative action, the learned judge asked,

“I’ve heard the word diversity quite a few times, and I don’t have a clue what it means.”

Really? Wow!

Dear Justice Thomas, diversity is what happened when you showed up at lily-white Holy Cross College in the 1970s. Diversity is what happened when you succeeded Justice Thurgood Marshall on the SC…