OPINIONSrnThe Real Clarence Thomasrnby Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.rnThe Real Anita Hill:rnThe Untold Storyrnby David BrockrnNew York: The Free Press;rn438 pp., $24.95rnBitter attacks, tenacious defenses, andrngreat promotion—not to speak ofrnthe best TV in a generation—have madernDavid Brock’s book on The Real AnitarnHill a best-seller. As Brock admits, hernproves neither Clarence Thomas’s innocencernnor Anita Hill’s perfidy. But byrnscouring the transcript of the Senaternhearings, he does show that Hill’s reputationrnas victim-martyr of male sexualrnharassment is overblown. This may havernshocked those who tried to canonize her,rnbut conservatives have known it allrnalong. What they have not known isrnwhat Brock shows about Thomas. Despitern”efforts to portray Thomas as arnright-wing ideologue,” Brock writes, “hisrnviews on race relations were not conventionallyrnconservative.” To put it mildly.rnAlthough Thomas called segregationrnas it existed in the Georgia of his youthrn”close to totalitarianisnr,” he himself ledrnLlewellyn H. Rockwell, ]r., is presidentrnof the Ludwig von Mises Institute inrnAuburn, Alabama.rna privileged life. He recei’ed, from racialrneons, free education at a Catholicrnparochial school near his home in Pinpoint,rnat a minor seminary near Savannah,rnand at a major semmary in Missouri.rnAlthough Catholic parishionersrnhad spent a lot of money on him, Thomasrndropped out of seminary when hernoverheard one seminarian whisper to anotherrnafter Martin Luther King, Jr., wasrnshot: “God, I hope the s.o.b. dies.”rnThomas called this a manifestation ofrnracism, and Brock agrees. Or mavbe itrnwas the unconsidered remark of a college-rnage kid sick of secular hagiography.rnIn any event, Christianity hardly requiresrnus to venerate a fellow traveler, habitualrnplagiarist, and world-class adulterer.rnThomas then attended Holy CrossrnCollege and Yale Law School on plushrnaffirmative-action scholarships. “Onrngraduating,” writes Brock, “Thomas interviewedrnwith a number of high-pricedrnlaw firms but found the process dispiriting.rnEven though his law school gradesrnwere among the highest in his class, hernwas grilled about his academic performancerngoing back to grade school, onrnthe presumption that he couldn’t haverngotten through Yale on sheer brain-power.”rnAgain, Brock describes this attitudernas “veiled racial discrimination.” Thomasrnconcurs. But why shouldn’t a prospectivernemployer be skeptical of the qualificationsrnof an affirmati’e-action baby?rnGrades in these cases seldom tell thernwhole story. As Brock notes, the schoolsrn”employed recruitment-type affirmativernaction, actively seeking out minority applicantsrnwho were fully qualified.” (Thisrnis, of course, civil rights doublespeak.rnFully qualified applicants don’t needrnspecial privileges.) Offended by impudentrnprivate-law evaluators, Thomasrntook a job with liberal John Danforth,rnthen attorney general of Missouri, andrnmoved to Washington in 1979 to joinrnhis Senate staff.rnIt was at this point that Thomas beganrnto feel estranged from the civil rightsrnmovement, says Brock. It seems his reasonsrnwere political (“he had views independentrnfrom theirs”) and cultural (“thernblack elite also tended to be lighterskinnedrnthan Thomas, who often recalledrnhow he had been called ‘America’srnblackest child’ in his youth”). Butrnjust how did Thomas’s views differ fromrnthose of the black establishment? AsrnBrock explains it, “Though Thomas opposedrnracial preferences to guaranteernequal results, he also supported affirmativernaction designed to encourage equalrnopportunit}’.” Translation: both Thomasrnand the civil rights movement believedrnthat blacks are entitled to specialrntreatment.rnNo civil rights group admits to supportingrn”racial preferences to guaranteernequal results.” That may be the unspo-rn30/CHRONICLESrnrnrn