Hey, it's Affirmative Action what can I tell you? I've been neutered, made to sing soprano and rendered powerless, also my hands have been tied. But I want you to know, I'll always have you in my heart."
"Same for the other four hundred and thirty-two people who've also let it be known that they'd like the job. Not a bunch of fireballs; most of them look to me like they need their rest and generally manage to get it. I will tell them you got me in a hammerlock, ignored my piteous cries, and ordered me like the Nazi you are to give it to this fine young gentleman of color. So now they can stop calling me and start calling you day and night to threaten you with death for giving it to Amos. Or was it Andy you just said? Whichever, doesn't matter;
I can't wait 'til he gets here."
Senator Green until his entry into politics in 1981 had for several years taught social studies and coached the jay vee football and basketball teams at Cambridge Ridge and Latin High School, where he had encountered Tyrone Thomas. Thomas had been the youngest son of a single mother whose two elder boys, by different footloose fathers, had both been in trouble with the law before apparently getting themselves straightened out as US Army volunteers. Tyrone had not been a standout as student or athlete, but he was a genuinely nice kid, and he had become one of Green's favorites, using his average intelligence as diligently in the classroom as he did his body and his average skills when playing sports, cheerfully doing what Green, his mentor and after a while his surrogate father told him to do. He earned a B+ average and varsity letters as a second-stringer in football, basketball and track, and received a need-based scholarship from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester.
Correctly assessing as poor his prospects of even a brief career in professional sports, and believing that the practices and games took too much time away from his studies, Thomas dropped football midway through his first season and basketball after his sophomore year at the Cross, slightly disappointing one of the basketball coaches who had hoped he might develop into a capable substitute small forward, but gratifying Green. Green said Thomas's decision was a mature judgment, confirmed by his subsequent graduation with a 2.7 grade-point low B average in sociology, and his subsequent admission to the New England School of Law in Boston.
Thomas earned his J.D. while partially supporting himself and two children his wife, Carol, also worked, as a $17,000-a-year clerk-typist in the State Department of Revenue as a $24,000-a-year assistant manager of the Great American Inn motel on Fresh Pond Parkway in Arlington. When he graduated he had firm assurances from GAI upper management that his record in Arlington coupled with his college and law degrees put him on the fast track for early promotion to the national executive offices in Alexandria. He was flattered and inclined to stay with the company.
Senator Green told him not to do it. He said: "If you do that, Tyrone, if you sell yourself to them, you will be a big fool. Because that is how they do it now. They don't sell us in the markets any more to white planters who will own us 'til they decide it's time to sell us again. What they show us now is this tinhorn fantasy of a great career so that we will sell ourself on it; do it to ourselves. What they will do with you is they will take you down there to Virginia, and give you some hocus-pocus about how grand you're going to be, if you stay with Good Kind Massa Company.
"What that grandness will be, Tyrone, when you finally achieve it and your head has cleared enough so that you can see what you have got, will be a desk and a chair outside of the office where the white boys go inside and shut the door to run the store, and that is where you'll always be, no matter where they send you. And send you they will. They will make you move and move, and then they'll make you move again, all around this great big country, anywhere they need to put a black man's face where folks can see it. No matter what they call it, that will be your purpose. That's what you'll be for. A mannequin, store-window dummy, nothing more 'n that; and you and Carol and your kids will have one lousy life. You wont ever be, anywhere, son.
"You'll always be where you happen to be now, on the way to someplace else. Not where you were before and not where you're going next, never anywhere. And then one day you'll get old and be retired, and you wont know where you want to be, or even where you've been. That's what they've always done to us, kept us on the move. "Noplace" will be your home. And that's no way to live.
"No, you listen to me, Tyrone. I've never let you down. I will find something for you. I will find you a good place."
