Personal Highlights from an Outstanding Conference on Thomas Sowell

Involving mainly Clarence Thomas

On Monday and Tuesday, I was one of many participants at a two-day conference at a Hoover Institution conference honoring my colleague Thomas Sowell. It was titled “The Sowell Legacy: Ideas, Impact, and Intellectual Freedom.” The organizer was Steven Davis, a relatively recent addition to Hoover as a senior fellow in economics and director of research. A number of people I talked to wondered why it took so long for Hoover to do something like this. Well, Steve did it.

I was on a panel titled “Economic Contributions.” The moderator was John Cogan and the other participant was Michael Boskin. Michael addressed Sowell’s early foundational work on the history of economic thought, focusing on Say’s Law. I addressed Sowell’s popular work on economics. I had a blast.

There were two highlights for me. One was my presentation. I poured a lot of energy into it and one young member of the audience asked me afterwards if I had been an actor. He meant that as a compliment. (I answered that, apart from 3 lines when I played Fred in “Cheaper by the Dozen” in high school, the answer was no. I did tell him the story that I told here recently about singing Allan Sherman’s “Hungarian Goulash” a cappella in front of 300 students.)

The second highlight was getting to know Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas. The conference started with Hoover’s Peter Robinson interviewing Clarence Thomas. Peter really has mastered the art of the friendly interview. Two stories from that interview stand out.

The first involves Thomas’s grandfather, who raised him. When Clarence would say to his grandfather, “I can’t” do something, his grandfather would reply, “Old man can’t is dead. I buried him.” His grandfather used that line a lot, and it stuck.

The second involves something he often heard later in life from white people who disapproved of his views. They would tell him that he wasn’t really black because “black is a state of mind.” Thomas said that he remembered a Ku Klux Klansman coming up to him and asking him, “What’s your state of mind.”

It turned out that when Thomas was not participating, he sat one seat away from me. He has a great laugh. It’s from the belly and it’s so real. I told him later that my favorite laugh is my daughter’s and his is my second favorite. We almost always laughed at the same things and sometimes our laughs were probably the two loudest in room full of a few hundred people.

We also often had similar reactions to amazing stories told by other panelists. One panelist in the afternoon was Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the Conservative opposition. (She has, by the way, a beautiful smile.) I probably shouldn’t tell her story. If the video of the panel comes out and the story is on it, I will tell it. But one thing she said about a false preconception she had carried before she learned the truth was so striking that Clarence Thomas and I looked at each other and, in unison, said, “Wow.”

It should go without saying but I’ll say it anyway. My regard for Clarence Thomas is not based on agreement with all his stances on issues that come before the Supreme Court. I have often agreed with him and sometimes disagreed with him. (An opinion I strongly agree with him on is United States v. Bajakajian.) But what I mainly like is the human he is—a man who loves life, has a strong sense of justice, and loves to laugh.

Note: Clarence Thomas gave me permission to post the picture above.