The American Dream in Black and White: The Clarence Thomas Hearings

"Part of the fascination of the [Clarence] Thomas hearings is watching what happens when issues that have historically been excluded or denied erupt into the center," says psychotherapist and Howard University political scientist Jane Flax. "What," she asks, "could we learn about contemporary American politics ... if the transcripts of these hearings were the only available evidence?"

Using tools gathered from contemporary thinking on sexuality, feminism, and race, as well as from psychoanalytics and political philosophy, Flax takes apart the language with which the Senate Judiciary Committee and Clarence Thomas himself established his fitness for a Supreme Court seat during his 1991 confirmation hearings. She then considers how, after Anita Hill's allegations were introduced, the Senate and Thomas protected their original assessment against conflicting evidence. From Thomas's pandering ("I think it is important that when one becomes a member of the judiciary that one ceases to accumulate strong viewpoints") to Alan Simpson's Shakespearean phrasings (referring, for example, to Hill's charges as a "foul, foul stack of stench,"), Flax hears in these transcripts evidence of a judicial system seriously ill-equipped to deal fairly with issues raised regarding race, gender, and sexuality. This is a provocative new reading of one of the most important hearings to take place in this century, one in which Senator Orrin Hatch himself declared, "This is not ... the nomination of a justice of the peace to some small county.... This involves the very integrity and fabric of our country." --Maria Dolan