Anita Hill Says Joe Biden’s Apology Is Not Enough & We Agree
Since it was rumored that former Vice President Joe Biden would enter the 2020 presidential race, the specter of his treatment of Anita Hill, along with inappropriate touching allegations, hovered over him. Hill’s story has definitely gained more attention with both HBO’s movie about the event, Confirmation, and the disturbing déjà vu with the testimony of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford last year.
For those unfamiliar with the case, here is a summary of it from a piece I wrote about Hill two years ago:
Clarence Thomas was nominated by George H.W. Bush to fill the seat on the Supreme Court that was previously occupied by Thurgood Marshall, the first black Supreme Court Justice. The election of Thomas a deeply controversial decision because he was largely appointed because he was black (despite what they said at the time) and Bush Sr. wanted to fill in the spot that would skew the court into a more conservative way. An action that led to outrage from both feminist and black activist groups who were aware they were being pandered to.
During his confirmation hearing, Anita Hill was asked about her previous work experience with Thomas and if that included sexual harassment from Thomas. She said that it did occur and ended up writing an affidavit on the issue. When Anita Hill was called to testify before a Judiciary Committee that was called to deal with the accusations before a final confirmation vote, it was a shit show from the very beginning.
Joe Biden was the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and his actions allowed, as Hill would put it later, the stage to be set for Brett Kavanaugh to become a Justice under similar circumstances to her own. Biden has tried to get ahead of this issue, but it has not gone over well. Thursday, he shared that he had called Ms. Hill to express, according to the New York Times, “his regret for what she endured” those 28 years ago.
Ms. Hill says the call from Mr. Biden left her feeling “deeply unsatisfied,” and during an interview, she apparently declined to characterize Mr. Biden’s words to her as an apology because “she was not convinced that he has taken full responsibility for his conduct at the hearings—or for the harm he caused other victims of sexual harassment and gender violence.”
Biden went to The View today, the first stop on his presidential campaign, and was actually asked about what he thinks about his actions then. The result is very underwhelming.
Biden says that he was against Clarence Thomas’s confirmation and worked to do everything he could to make sure that he didn’t get confirmed, and while the confirmation did still happen, it was by the smallest margin possible. He reaffirms that he is sorry for Hill and how she was treated, and that he did all that he could for her that was in his power. Biden does, in fairness, praise Hill and says she’s the reason that we have the MeToo movement, and that his experience is the reason he made sure no Judiciary Committee he held after was all-male.
Ana Navarro said, “I don’t know why it took you so long to call her. I wish you had done it earlier,” to which Biden responded that the reason for that was not wanting to “invade her space” and thinking that his public statements were enough. Joy Behar suggested that Biden should say, “I’m sorry for the way I treated you, not for the way you were treated.”
“I’m sorry for the way she got treated,” he said before defending himself. “If you go back to what I said, I never treated her badly.”
Despite being critical of Biden, she did say that she didn’t find his conduct disqualifying. “I’m really open to people changing,” she said. However, the Times reports that “she cannot support Mr. Biden for president until he takes full responsibility for his conduct, including his failure to call as corroborating witnesses other women who were willing to testify before the Judiciary Committee. By leaving them out, she said, he created a ‘he said, she said’ situation that did not have to exist.”
“I cannot be satisfied by simply saying, ‘I’m sorry for what happened to you,’” said Ms. Hill, now a professor of social policy, law and women’s studies at Brandeis University. “I will be satisfied when I know there is real change and real accountability and real purpose.”
“The focus on apology, to me, is one thing,” Ms. Hill said. “But he needs to give an apology to the other women and to the American public because we know now how deeply disappointed Americans around the country were about what they saw. And not just women. There are women and men now who have just really lost confidence in our government to respond to the problem of gender violence.”
Joe Biden has a lot of baggage as a candidate, and this isn’t an issue of “purity testing” Democratic candidates. It’s about really seeing where candidates stand on the issues, if they are holding themselves fully accountable for past mistakes, and how they want to make this country better. Biden is, despite a lot of issues, a candidate many people are rooting for right now, but if Black women and women of color are the voters Democrats need to win (and they are, in a lot of ways) dealing with this issue the right way could be a make it or break it for that important wing of the party. There are plenty of options.
(via The New York Times, image: JENNIFER LAW/AFP/Getty Images)
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