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

by MORRISON, TONI

• ISBN13: 9780679741459
• ISBN10: 0679741453
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1992-10-06
• Publisher: Pantheon

Summary

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. InRace-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, Kimberle 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

Author Biography

TONI MORRISON is the author of ten novels, from The Bluest Eye (1970) to A Mercy (2008). She has received the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize. In 1993 she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. She lives in New York.

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

Table of Contents

Introduction: Friday on the Potomac
An Open Letter to Justice Clarence Thomas from a Federal Judicial Colleague	p. 3
The Private Parts of Justice	p. 40
Clarence Thomas and the Crisis of Black Political Culture	p. 61
False, Fleeting, Perjured Clarence: Yale's Brightest and Blackest Go to Washington	p. 86
Doing Things with Words: "Racism" as Speech Act and the Undoing of Justice	p. 127
A Rare Case Study of Muleheadedness and Men	p. 159
A Sentimental Journey: James Baldwin and the Thomas-Hill Hearings	p. 172
Hill, Thomas, and the Use of Racial Stereotype	p. 200
Double Standard, Double Bind: African-American Leadership After the Thomas Debacle	p. 215
A Good Judge of Character: Men, Metaphors, and the Common Culture	p. 232
White Feminists and Black Realities: The Politics of Authenticity	p. 251
Remembering Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas: What Really Happened When One Black Woman Spoke Out	p. 269
The Supreme Court Appointment Process and the Politics of Race and Sex	p. 290
Black Ladies, Welfare Queens, and State Minstrels: Ideological War by Narrative Means	p. 323
Strange Fruit	p. 364
Black Leadership and the Pitfalls of Racial Reasoning	p. 390
Whose Story Is It, Anyway? Feminist and Antiracist Appropriations of Anita Hill	p. 402
The Last Taboo	p. 441
About the Contributors	p. 471
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