Race-ing Justice, En-Gendering Power: Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the Construction of Social Reality

Description

It was perhaps the most wretchedly aspersive race and gender scandal of recent times: the dramatic testimony of Anita Hill at the Senate hearings on the confirmation of Clarence Thomas as Supreme Court Justice. Yet even as the televised proceedings shocked and galvanized viewers not only in this country but the world over, they cast a long shadow on essential issues that define America. In Race-ing Justice, En-gendering Power, Toni Morrison contributes an introduction and brings together eighteen provocative essays, all but one written especially for this book, by prominent and distinguished academicians—black and white, male and female. These writings powerfully elucidate not only the racial and sexual but also the historical, political, cultural, legal, psychological, and linguistic aspects of a signal and revelatory moment in American history. With contributions by: Homi K. Bhabha, Margaret A. Burnham, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Paula Giddings, A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., Claudia Brodsky Lacour, Wahneema Lubiano, Manning Marable, Nellie Y. McKay, Toni Morrison, Nell Irvin Painter, Gayle Pemberton, Andrew Ross, Christine Stansell, Carol M. Swain, Michael Thelwell, Kendall Thomas, Cornel West, Patricia J. Williams Front Cover......Page 1 Contents......Page 9 Introduction: Friday on the Potomac......Page 11 An Open Letter to Justice Clarence Thomas from a Federal Judicial Colleague......Page 37 The Private Parts of Justice......Page 74 Clarence Thomas and the Crisis of Black Political Culture......Page 95 False, Fleeting, Perjured Clarence: Yale's Brightest and Blackest Go to Washington......Page 120 Doing Things with Words: "Racism" as Speech Act and the Undoing of Justice......Page 161 A Rare Case Study of Muleheadedness and Men......Page 193 A Sentimental Journey: James Baldwin and the Thomas–Hill Hearings......Page 206 Hill, Thomas, and the Use of Racial Stereotype......Page 234 Double Standard, Double Bind: African-American Leadership After the Thomas Debacle......Page 249 A Good Judge of Character: Men, Metaphors, and the Common Culture......Page 266 White Feminists and Black Realities: The Politics of Authenticity......Page 285 Remembering Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas: What Really Happened When One Black Woman Spoke Out......Page 303 The Supreme Court Appointment Process and the Politics of Race and Sex......Page 324 Black Ladies, Welfare Queens, and State Minstrels: Ideological War by Narrative Means......Page 357 Strange Fruit......Page 398 Black Leadership and the Pitfalls of Racial Reasoning......Page 424 Whose Story Is It, Anyway? Feminist and Antiracist Appropriations of Anita Hill......Page 436 The Last Taboo......Page 475 About the Contributors......Page 505 Back Cover......Page 514