Anita Hill reminds us why we should not forget how Ketanji Brown Jackson was treated
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In the post-Trump era, it seems like nothing can really shock Americans anymore. That is why Republican senators like Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Marsha Blackburn felt they could vomit up and spew whatever specious or scurrilous attacks that struck their fancy during the confirmation hearings for newly confirmed Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Pandering to a country with a thoroughly polarized electorate, they believed they’d face no significant consequences for their behavior, and even less from the Republican base whose votes sustain each of their perches in office. Personal nastiness has become a badge of honor among these types, ever since Donald Trump smoothed their paths with his own brand of arrogant, strutting insouciance and disrespect.
They also knew that once the hearings were over, the sheer ubiquity of our instant-gratification news media would immediately move on to the next outrage. That whatever the next shiny object du jour happened to be would swiftly relegate their shameful performance to that vast memory hole where egregious, hyperpartisan political behavior goes to die.
The sad aspect to all of this is that we are now at a point where such behavior by Republicans has become normalized. We already knew it would not have mattered whether President Biden had nominated a different Black woman to the court, one with a completely distinct background and life experience than Justice Jackson. For the vast majority of Republicans who voted against her confirmation—including the ones who simply, quietly voted “Nay” without ever making a spectacle of themselves like Cruz, Hawley, Cotton, and Blackburn—the only important thing for them was that she was nominated by a Democrat. That was all the reason they needed to oppose her, mainly because they believe Americans who make up their political constituencies would tolerate nothing less than complete rejection of an otherwise wholly, eminently, even superlatively qualified nominee. But the fact that she was also a Black woman provided the additional impetus for many of them to abandon any sense of decency whatsoever.
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Now Republicans are doubtlessly ready to move on, most perhaps even feeling invigorated by their display of fealty to the Trump ethic as they recede into the warm cesspool of backwash provided by Fox News, the only major media outlet that treats them fawningly without ever criticizing them. But perhaps there is something that those Americans not thoroughly zombified and in thrall to right-wing media can take away from this display.
Anita Hill retains a place in the nation’s collective memory precisely because her vile treatment during Justice Clarence Thomas’ confirmation hearings—at the hands of a Judiciary Committee, then an exclusively male club of U.S. senators—sparked a backlash that ultimately transformed that body and the House of Representatives as well, prompting Americans just one year later to elect five women to the Senate and 47 more to the House. The face of this country has not been the same since that time, with women advancing to the speakership, the vice presidency, and winning the popular vote for the presidency. There are now more women in Congress than at any time in history, thanks in large part to the treatment afforded to Anita Hill.
On Thursday, Professor Hill authored a piece for The Washington Post, published before Justice Jackson’s confirmation, in which she argued for revisions to the Judiciary Committee’s rules on questioning nominees. She states:
I know something about being mistreated by the Senate Judiciary Committee. During the confirmation hearing for Justice Clarence Thomas in 1991, I was subjected to attacks on my intelligence, truthfulness and even my sanity when I testified about my experience working for the nominee at the Education Department and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In a spectacularly low moment, senators sought out slanderous statements from my former students.
She knew that Jackson, much like herself, would be compelled to face not only racist but sexist attacks, as well. After initial media reports suggested “that Republicans would offer little resistance to Jackson’s confirmation,” Hill says she also knew, “from painful experience, that assessment was overly optimistic.”
Even so, I was shocked by the interrogation of Jackson, a nominee with stellar credentials and more judicial experience than any of the sitting justices when they were nominated. It was obvious that no matter how composed, respectful or brilliant her responses, her critics’ only goal was to discredit her. […]
Gotcha questions like how to define a woman, asked by Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R), have no place in the hearing room, and fall short of what should be expected of the Senate during its exercise of its advice and consent role. The same is true of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R) focus on how critical race theory is supposedly being taught in the private school on whose board Jackson sits. A confirmation hearing should be about learning how a person will judge, not how well she handles specious browbeating.
Realistically, Hill also probably knows that our political system is now so paralyzed that any change to the rules about questioning nominees is highly unlikely. She also realizes that the divisions in this country are now to a point where any transformation in the minds of the electorate about how women, particularly Black women, were treated during these hearings is likely to be measured, at best, blunted by the intractability of partisan divisions.
Still, Americans may not forget what they saw in Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination process. More Americans voiced their support of Justice Jackson than any of Trump’s Supreme Court nominees, with polls showing very high levels of disapproval of the Republicans’ tactics. Importantly, the hearings provided a firsthand reminder for Americans about what the Republican Party really stands for. Black women, in particular, took serious notice of the mistreatment and hyperbolic abuse Jackson was subjected to.
Paul Waldman, writing for The Washington Post, believes the political consequences of Justice Jackson’s hearings may turn out to be significant. Waldman observes that the GOP did itself no favors with their references to “pedophilia” and “Nazism,” QAnon-esque tropes that do not resonate with the vast majority of the electorate. While they may have pleased the most hardcore of their base, that base is not embraced by the rest of the country. Nor did the Republicans’ constant interruptions, hectoring, and grandstanding toward Jackson escape the notice of women, particularly Black women. Waldman writes:
It will be some time before we can fully judge the political impact of this confirmation, though one clue as to how this will resonate in the future will be found in whether Democrats bring up this confirmation more often than Republicans do. But it undoubtedly intensified the currents already shaping our politics: Democrats reaching for the mainstream, and Republicans running eagerly to embrace their extremist fringe.
Donald Trump may still hold sway over the Republican Party, but QAnon and its bizarre fantasies don’t appeal to the majority of the American public. Neither did the relentless, thoughtless abuse that was heaped upon Justice Jackson endear Republicans to anyone but their rabid base. Although we no longer live in a time where such tactics might galvanize an entire electorate, in the long run, the GOP’s cynical calculation may have done them much more harm than good.