American Supreme Court: Thurgood Marshall Vs Clarence Thomas

Introduction

On October 11, 1991, the nation sat glued to their televisions as they watched Anita Hill, a young African American woman, step bravely before “an all-white, all-male Senate Judiciary Committee,” to recount her trauma to these fourteen men and to the rest of the world. Hill was calm and collected as she gave a riveting testimony about her alleged harassment by Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. The senators asked her degrading questions and demeaned her experiences, all the while Thomas frantically denied her claims. Hill stated that “telling the world is the most difficult experience of my life, but it is very close to having to live through the experience that occasioned this meeting”. The Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings put a public face on victim shaming, highlighted the bias that results from a lack of diversity in the government, and was one of the first big sexual harassment cases on a long list of similar cases that continue today, which often produce the same results and prove that if people cannot trust those in power, it will have a chilling effect on allegations.

Background

On June 28, 1991, at the age of 82, Thurgood Marshall, who was the first African American justice on the Supreme Court and a hero of the Civil Rights movement, announced his resignation after 24 years of service. He planned to stay on the Supreme Court for the rest of his life, but over the years had experienced a “growing dissatisfaction and isolation in a court where a solid conservative majority had been eroding some of the principles that he helped establish in three decades as a civil rights lawyer”. On July 1, 1991, President Bush revealed his nomination of Clarence Thomas to make Thurgood Marshall’s seat on the Supreme Court. There were two big factors that played into this decision. One was the pressure to nominate an African American judge to maintain the racial makeup of the court. President Bush, a Republican, also wanted to add another conservative judge to the Supreme Court, as there were vital decisions to be made about both Affirmative Action and abortion. Thomas, 43 years old at the time, fit both profiles. Bush’s decision was immediately met with resistance from women’s groups, including the National Organization for Women, who feared Thomas would rule against legal abortion. The nomination was also opposed by many legal groups, as Thomas had only been a federal judge for two years. In addition to this, Bush received backlash from Civil Rights organizations such as the NAACP, who feared that Thomas’ “inconsistent views on civil rights policy make him an unpredictable element on an increasingly radical conservative court”. However, despite the backlash, Thomas’s nomination was moving forward.

Anita Hill attended Oklahoma State University, where she received her bachelor’s degree in psychology. In 1980, she graduated from Yale Law School with Honors and began working at the Washington, D.C. firm of Wald, Harkrader, & Ross. She met Thomas for the first time in 1981 when she worked as an attorney-advisor to him at the United States Department of Education. In the beginning, her relationship with Thomas was on good terms. She held a great deal of responsibility, and Thomas seemed to respect her and the work she did. However, after working with him for three months at the United States Department of Education, he asked her on a date. She said no, as she wanted to keep their relationship professional. However, Thomas continued to pressure her, and she continued to deny his invitations. Thomas started to become angry. Hill became extremely uncomfortable when Thomas began calling her into his office for private meetings, where he would force her to engage in “unwanted conversations about sex and pornography”. She explained to him several times that she was uncomfortable with the situation, but he did not stop. In 1982, Thomas was named the Chairman of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. He invited Hill to come with him as his assistant. Hill did not want to go but had no alternative jobs available to her. At the time, a hiring freeze was in place in the government. Thomas held a lot of power, and Hill feared that if she came forward with her allegations, he would make it impossible for her to ever find another job in the subject that she is so passionate about civil rights. Then Thomas started to comment on her appearance, and continued to ask her out and force her to engage in inappropriate and uncomfortable situations. In February 1983, Hill “was hospitalized for five days on an emergency basis for an acute stomach pain which was attributed to stress on the job”. In July 1983, Hill finally found another job: teaching at Oral Roberts University. Thomas insisted on taking her to dinner to celebrate and promised to keep it professional. She reluctantly agreed. When the dinner ended, Thomas told her that “if she ever told anyone of his behavior, it would ruin his career'.

In July 1991, two months before the Senate confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas would begin, the Senate Judiciary Committee began hearing rumors about a woman who was sexually harassed by Clarence Thomas. On September 10, 1991, the Judiciary Committee sessions on Thomas’ nomination began. Thomas avoided stating his opinion on controversial issues during these sessions, and all signs pointed to him being elected. On the same day that these hearings begin, the Judiciary Committee reached out to Anita Hill. Hill told the Committee she did not want to testify in public but asked the Committee to launch an investigation to see if any other women had similar experiences with Thomas. On September 20, 1991, she agreed to speak to the FBI about her allegations, as long as her written statement would be presented alongside the FBI report that would be given to the Judiciary Committee. She was interviewed by James Brundy and the report was sent to the Judiciary Committee. On September 27, the Judiciary “split 7-7”, so Thomas was sent to the full Senate without a recommendation. Soon after, Hill started to be contacted by the media and realized that her non-public testimony to the Senate had been leaked. Senator Biden contacted Hill on October 8 to notify her that the second round of hearings would be held and asked her if she wanted to testify. She agreed. The same day, Thomas made a public statement where he denied Hill’s claims. On October 11, the hearings were reopened and continued over the course of three days, where “more than 20 million TV viewers” followed along.

Argument

Before the Clarence Thomas Confirmation Hearings, “sexual harassment” was not a household term, as the phrase had only been coined 16 years earlier and was rarely used out of government settings. Statistics show in the years leading up to the hearings, millions of women experienced sexual harassment in the workplace, yet only 5% of incidents were reported. Furthermore, the cases that were reported were often worked out privately between the employer and the victim, resulting in few cases ever becoming public. However, when Anita Hill decided to come forward with her own allegations, privacy was not an option for her. Thomas was about to be nominated to one of the highest positions in the United States and now his reputation was seriously in question. The hearings were televised live and millions of Americans were following along, unfortunately making Hill an easy target for public harassment. News outlets portrayed Hill as untrustworthy and immoral and the Judiciary Committee treated her in a very dismissive way, which only confirmed many Americans’ blame-the-victim mentality. Before the hearings even started, Hill began receiving phone calls from strangers who accused her of victimizing herself or being overly dramatic. One man called her the morning she was scheduled to testify to tell her that “Thomas was only acting the way any man would act with a woman”. While many Americans believed that Hill was the victim, they thought the situation was her own fault. The hearings seemed to be not a debate about Thomas’ alleged innocence or guilt, but of Hill’s. Their questions made Americans believe that Hill did something wrong because she didn’t fit their stereotype of a “perfect victim.” She was asked a variety of irrelevant and embarrassing questions, including Senator Howell Heflin’s question, where he asked Hill if she was a “scorned woman”. 

It was obvious Hill felt both humiliated and frustrated when the senators asked her several times to repeat the grotesque statements Thomas made to her, despite the fact that they already had the statements on record. When Hill passed her lie detector test, Simpson suggested that the reason was because she was mentally unstable, saying “if a person suffers from a delusional disorder he or she may pass a polygraph test” so that “in this context, the test has absolutely no bearing on whether the events at issue are true or untrue”. The way that the questions were framed and the dismissive way that the Judiciary Committee treated her only confirmed many Americans’ beliefs that Hill was the one on trial, not Thomas. This not only humiliated Hill, but it discouraged other victims of sexual harassment from coming forward. At first, Hill’s bravery might seem to have the opposite effect, but as victims watched the hearings unfold, they saw that the public, and even the United States Senate, had no intention of taking Hill’s allegations or Thomas’ actions seriously. This encouraged many victims to suffer in silence rather than to seek justice. When the hearings ended, the harassment towards Hill did not stop. When she returned to her home in Oklahoma, she found herself at risk of losing her job. The media completely misrepresented Hill and tarnished her reputation, publishing articles calling her “a little bit nutty and a little slutty”. She received “messages on her machine where males ... made jokes about this” and described to her “that this was only normal male behavior,” “the way any man would act with a woman”. To this day, bomb threats and hate mail from Thomas’ sympathizers fill Hill’s mailbox and she has to live in constant fear of her life just because she stood up to inappropriate and unfair treatment. These hearings publicized the issue of sexual harassment, and unfortunately, the culture of victim shaming. Because of this culture, the world is still not a safe place for sexual harassment victims to come forward. Hill’s life, and the lives of many other victims, will never return to normal.

In addition to the culture of victim shaming, the Thomas hearings proved the bias that results from a lack of diversity in the government. When Hill testified, it was in front of a group of 14 white male senators. Although some men also experience sexual harassment, the issue disproportionately affects women. A study in the late 1970s showed that 80% of women had experienced some kind of sexual misconduct while at work, compared to 15% of men. None of the men of the Senate that day had ever experienced anything even close to what Hill had experienced. In fact, several of the men had been accused of sexual misconduct themselves before the hearings began. Furthermore, because of their lack of experience with sexual harassment, it was clear that they did not fully understand the issue. When Hill stated that Thomas had commented on her breasts, Senator Arlen Specter replied that “this is not too bad … that is a word we use all the time”. From the statement, it is not only clear that Specter has never been a victim of unwanted sexual advances, but that he is a part of the problem. Whether he made comments like these himself or just is unable to see how inappropriate they are, especially in a work setting, it is palpable that he did not understand why sexual harassment was a problem and was not fit to confirm Thomas. In addition to their obvious lack of knowledge of what sexual harassment is, it was evident that many of the senators were not ready to take on Hill’s case seriously or with an open mind. Shortly before the case, Senator Alan Simpson made a comment about all that “sexual harassment crap”. Not only does this show the bias towards Hill during the hearings, but it shows the bias the Supreme Court had, and still continues to have with the makeup of mostly white men, on a daily basis. It is hard to create laws that protect all people when the people that are making these laws have never experienced the difficulties that many Americans, especially minorities, experience every day. Considering all of the statements made by the senators during the hearings, it is no surprise that the senators found it easy to overlook the allegations and admit Thomas into the Supreme Court.

The victim shaming and bias that plagued the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings are still very prevalent in society today. Despite people’s opinions on the truth of Hill’s allegations, most people can agree that the way the situation was handled was not fair to her. From the moment that Anita Hill came forward, the United States failed her, starting with the careless FBI investigation. During the FBI interview, Hill described to James Brundy in great detail her encounters with Thomas and the grotesque comments he made to her. However, when Hill mentioned these same things to the Senate in her non-public testimony, she lost credibility because these facts were not in the FBI report. Hill turned to the FBI agents, who were present at the hearings in order to conform to the Judiciary committee what was and was not said during the interview. However, the agents went ahead and signed documents claiming Hill did not share the same details about Thomas in her FBI interview, as the agents feared that their investigation and report would have been undermined if they told the truth. It was later discovered that the details Hill stated in the hearing were in fact provided in the FBI interview, as “they were in Brundy’s interview notes, proving that Hill’s story had been consistent all along”. 

The Senate Committee let Hill down again during the questioning, as she was constantly interrupted and asked degrading questions that pertained little to the case. Hill was forced to repeat herself countless times, still failing to explain her experiences to the senators, as they just did not seem to understand. They failed her yet again when another of Thomas’ colleagues, Angela Wright, came forward with sexual harassment allegations against him but was never called to testify. Last, Hill was failed by the United States public through the hate mail and death threats she still receives on a daily basis. Although we would hope that the government learned from their mistakes, history shows only to repeat itself, most notably with the Kavanaugh vs. Ford case in 2018. This case took place 27 years later, but it proved that very little, if nothing, has changed to make the world a safer place for victims. The situation was almost identical. Brett Kavanaugh was about to be nominated to the United States Supreme Court when Christine Blasey Ford made allegations that Kavanaugh attempted to rape her in high school. Again, the FBI investigation was lacking. They led a short investigation and never even interviewed Kavanaugh. Furthermore, among the senators on Kavanaugh’s hearings were three of the same senators on Hill’s case, and the majority of the rest were still white men. After Ford came forward with her allegations, two more women claimed that they had similar experiences with Kavanaugh but, again, neither were called to testify. Again, the hearings were televised, and Ford received constant harassment from the public. She received so many death threats that she had to move out of her home. Like Thomas, Kavanaugh was ultimately admitted to the Supreme Court, and the votes were almost identical. With Thomas, the final votes were 52-48, and with Kavanaugh, they were 50-48. These two cases, among many others, prove that in a “he-said/she-said” situation, America will always choose his word over hers, proving to the world that sexual harassment allegations will not be taken seriously by the United States Senate.

Opposing Argument

Some argue that because government officials are democratically elected, they will be voted out if they are not fit for the job. They argue that hearings are open forums, designed to test the evidence, find the truth, and provide due process to both sides. Although this is the ideal setup, the process often strays from its intended purpose. Although senators not fit for the job can be voted out, many Americans are apathetic to the democratic process and pay little attention to politics and which senators they side with and which they do not. Voter turnout is extremely low. In the election that took place in 2016, “only 56% of eligible voters cast a ballot”. Furthermore many voters enter the booth with little to no knowledge on the candidates. Of the mere 56% of voters who showed up, there were “170,000 blank, spoiled, or otherwise null ballots”. This allows biased senators like those present during Hill’s hearings to stay in their position for a long period of time, simply because not enough people are paying attention to recognize the bias they hold. For example, three of the senators who gave Anita Hill an unfair trial were present at the Kavanaugh vs. Ford trial, giving Ford the same disadvantage that they gave Hill 27 years earlier. Next, by stating that their actions do not matter because they will be voted out anyways completely disregards the victims and the trauma they have gone through because they were not given a fair and unbiased trial. Voting them out does not undo the damage the senators caused to victims who never were able to get justice on their perpetrators. Also, saying that hearings are open forums is not completely accurate because victims do not have any control over the collection and presentation of the evidence. In the Thomas hearings, there are many details that could have helped Hill’s case but were completely ignored. The incomplete FBI report and the second victim who was never allowed to testify are only two of many factors that the senators were aware of but never presented during the hearings. These are two vital pieces of evidence that could have greatly helped Hill’s case, but when the senators chose not to include them, Hill could do nothing about it. The democratic process is not perfect and it is not true to state that it is completely unbiased. Corrupt senators are able to hold onto their positions of power for many years because of Americans’ lack of participation in the democratic process, and hearings are not as open as they are meant to be. Ultimately, they are at the hands of the senators, who are often elected carelessly and at random by the majority of Americans who show up to the polls unprepared.

Conclusion

The Clarence Thomas Confirmation Hearings jumpstarted America’s toxic victim-shaming culture, proved that a lack of diversity in the government leads to biased results, and was one of the first big sexual harassment cases on a long line of similar cases that continue today, typically producing the same results. This shows victims they will not receive a fair and impartial venue and proves to the offenders there will be no repercussions for their actions. It’s been almost thirty years since the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, yet little has changed. This proves that if Americans are not active in the democratic process, biased senators who do not represent a true cross-section of society will remain in office causing history to repeat itself over and over again. In order for the government to protect all people in the laws it creates, the actions it pursues, and the cases it judges it needs to be truly diverse. This can only be achieved if every American exercise their right to vote. Through the teaching of history, America’s youth can learn from the mistakes of our past, and in the future victims of sexual harassment can will receive fair and impartial treatment.