Did Progress for Clarence Thomas Really Represent Progress for Anyone Else?

In 1991, civil rights leader Thurgood Marshall announced his retirement from the Supreme Court. In his place, President Bush appointed Clarence Thomas, who was also black but was very conservative. In fact, Thomas was part of a small but growing wave of black conservatives, and he believed that African Americans were being hurt in the long run by government policies such as welfare and affirmative action, which he argued made them feel inferior.

Clarence Thomas was the second African American Supreme Court justice. Yet, while his achievements may symbolize the advancement of civil rights in a sense—especially considering he entered a space that was left open for him by Marshall, who had advocated for civil rights—and the expansion of opportunity for African Americans, his journey to where he is today demonstrates how sexism has been present not only in mainstream culture but also throughout civil rights milestones. Further, while progress has been made in some areas, the issues that arose when Thomas was appointed are frustratingly similar to issues of sexism that have continued to exist, as even the most recently appointed Supreme Court justice has clearly illustrated.

When the Clarence Thomas nomination reached the Senate, University of Oklahoma law professor Anita Hill, who had once worked for Thomas, accused him of sexual harassment. The FBI investigated only to provide an inconclusive report, and Thomas denied the allegations. When Anita Hill testified before the Senate, she was asked to detail, and sometimes repeat multiple times, the instances of sexual harassment. Many people did not take Hill’s testimony seriously, even accusing her of a racist plot to damage the reputation and career of Clarence Thomas (even though she was also black) and suggesting that she was delusional. In addition, another woman who had worked for Thomas had also been prepared to testify about her similar experiences regarding sexual harassment by Thomas, but she was never given the chance. The majority believed the word of Clarence Thomas over the word of Anita Hill, and Thomas was confirmed to the Supreme Court by the Senate in a 52-48 vote.

When Thomas was given a chance to speak before the Senate, he not only rejected Hill’s recounts of sexual harassment but also expressed his disgust with the situation. He first stated, “How would any member on this committee, any person in this room, or any person in this country, would like sleaze said about him or her in this fashion? Or this dirt dredged up and this gossip and these lies displayed in this manner? … I think something is dreadfully wrong with this country when any person, any person in this free country would be subjected to this.” He then went on to compare Hill’s allegations to a “high-tech lynching,” further vilifying Hill by saying, “And from my standpoint as a black American, as far as I'm concerned, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. -- U.S. Senate, rather than hung from a tree.”

While it is not surprising that Thomas would try to defend himself and his reputation, his statement is outrageous both because of the irony of his accusations and because of his disturbing comparison between being what he sees as victimized by a woman’s decision to come forward with detailed sexual harassment allegations and being an actual victim of lynching. His statements were intended to increase his own status and protect his reputation at the expense of that of a woman, whose word people would value far less and whose reputation would certainly be destroyed. Moreover, his words were also an injustice to the very racial group that he was initially appointed to the Supreme Court to outwardly represent. Overall, the ostensible progress that Clarence Thomas was seemingly supposed to symbolize as a Supreme Court justice was largely undermined by the selfish claims he made to get there— claims that demonstrated his intentions to further himself, despite the potential for his advancement to create setbacks for the entire movement for which Justice Thurgood Marshall had worked.

Sources

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/20/us/politics/anita-hill-testimony-clarence-thomas.html

http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/122/hill/hillframe.htm

https://www.oyez.org/justices/clarence_thomas

https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/cnsnewscom-staff/flashback-clarence-thomas-denies-anita-hill-allegations-calls-senate

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/us/anita-hill-metoo-houston.html