Easily the most moving moment during the confirmation hearings of

Clarence Thomas came on the first day, when Thomas quoted his

grandfather, who raised him. Thomas spoke briefly about the decent,

hardworking old man and then paused before quoting him -- Thomas is

a well-spoken man who obviously could have made his granddaddy sound

like Barbara Jordan if he'd wanted to -- but he quoted the old man

in Southern, black dialect, just the way he must have sounded --

"Y'all gone have mo' of a chance than me."

And there's a grandson, up for confirmation to the Supreme Court of

the United States. Enough to bring a lump to one's throat. No one

has ever claimed there was much science to selecting Supreme Court

justices. Ol' Earl warren, the subject of innumerable impeachment

billboards in my childhood (at one time, one cold not drive across

this state without seeing "Impeach Earl Warren" signs every 20

miles), was appointed by the impeccably Republican Dwight

Eisenhower. Nixon, entirely by accident, added a couple of justices

who are now considered liberals.

OK, so no one except Jeanne Dixon is in a position to forecast how

Thomas will vote as a Supreme. Fact remains, the oldest rule in the

political book is still, "Look at the record, and then look at the

record again." And Clarence Thomas's record is grim for both civil

rights and civil liberties. Thomas has been duckin' his record in

these hearings.

Great honor is due those who, like Clarence Thomas, scale the walls

of prejudice and poverty that impede black Americans in this

country. Listening to Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah smarmily recounting

how he, too, had been born into a family that had no indoor plumbing

when he was young, one was tempted to reply, "Yeah, but you were

never black, Jack." Isn't it amazing how many white Americans still

think that because they have known poverty, they have experienced

what it is to be black in America?

The larger question about Thomas is not whether he has made it

against the odds -- he clearly has, with a lot of help from Thurgood

Marshall, Martin Luther King, et al -- the question is whether he

stands ready to help dismantle those hurdles that still tower in the

way of the others who will come after him.

In this instance, I am 90% sure Thomas will be put on the Supreme

Court no matter what we do, and 99% sure he will vote to reverse Roe

vs Wade when he makes it. I have never been the kind of feminist who

thought men were the enemy -- I'm very fond of the dears, personally

-- but I must confess to real resentment listening to the Thomas

hearings. Everyone involved in these hearings is male. There's not a

damn one of them [that] will ever get pregnant!

Early on in the Thomas proceedings, it seemed slightly comical that

we would all stand around in solemn debate trying to figure out how

the man would vote on abortion -- he trained to be a Catholic

priest, give me a break -- who thinks there's a question here?

During the colloquy between Biden and Thomas concerning a woman's

right to appeal against sex discrimination, the discussion indeed

became theological in the sense that it concerned no scientifically

observable phenomenon. Like medieval church academics debating how

many angels can dance on the head of a pin, those gents had at it

over an issue that is in reality a dead letter -- you can't find a

lawyer who will take a sex discrimination case anymore because so

many recent court rulings have made it impossible to win no matter

what the facts are. There is no practical recourse against sex

discrimination.

An entire generation of young American women is now faced with the

prospect of watching eight men plus Sandra Day O'Connor decide

whether and whose children they will have to bear. My feeling is

that there will be hell's own backlash when it finally sinks in. One

young woman listening to hearings on television asked in

bewilderment if she was actually understanding this correctly --

were they sitting there debating whether single adults have a right

to use contraceptives? Yes, they were. Welcome to the feminist

movement!

As for Judge, soon to be Justice Thomas, he sounds as though he will

turn out to be a judicial clone of Scalia, that terrifying legacy of

the worst of Reaganism. But one never knows for certain in these

cases. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we were all wrong and one day

Justice Thomas were to look at the poor black children of Pin Point,

Ga., and say, "Y'all gone have mo' of a chance than me."