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Joe Biden Apologizes To Anita Hill

Let's hope all of us complicit men do better.

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Anita Hill (Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Time)

I feel there are two lasting consequences of the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings:

* George Bush got a more conservative justice than he could possibly have confirmed at that time, because the nominee was black. Thomas was/is an arch-conservative, far outside the mainstream, but because he was black and nominated to fill Thurgood Marshall’s seat, people acted like his mere color was a compromise.

* Women who were willing to step forward to accuse powerful men of sexual misconduct were shown that they would be demeaned, harassed, and ultimately not believed by enough people to keep those men out of power anyway. All these years later, the women who accused Donald Trump of sexual assault know that the world hasn’t changed all that much.

Joe Biden, as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee during Thomas’s confirmation, was complicit in the degradation of Anita Hill. So were all the other white men on the Committee. So was I, as a 13-year-old boy who didn’t know my testicles from my brain, was still pretty sure that Hill was “exaggerating” innocent behavior (and “distracting” people from Thomas’s manifestly conservative and biased political views).

The hearing should have been about Thomas’s fitness for a lifetime appointment. Instead, it devolved into a an examination into Anita Hill’s sex life. Now, Thomas is still on the bench, and women are still fighting to be believed.

This week, Biden apologized to Anita Hill.

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Glamour’s editor-in-chief, Cindi Leive, who was moderating the discussion, added a follow-up question: “Professor Hill has said herself that she expected a fair process and did not feel that she had one. Given your leadership on these kinds of issues, do you have any message to her now?”

Said Biden: “The message I’ve delivered before is I am so sorry if she believes that,” he said. “I am so sorry that she had to go through what she went through. Think of the courage that it took for her to come forward.”

An arch-conservative like Clarence Thomas could easily be confirmed today, as the Neil Gorsuch process proves.

A nominee who was dogged by allegations of sexual assault could be easily confirmed today, at least if that nominee were Republican.

But what happened to Anita Hill wouldn’t happen today, I don’t think. Not on the floor of the Senate, at least. That’s the only shred of progress I can hope for.

Joe Biden Says He’s ‘So Sorry’ For What Anita Hill Went Through [Huffington Post]

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Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

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