{"id":1411,"date":"2024-05-16T02:11:42","date_gmt":"2024-05-16T06:11:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/gender-journal\/online\/volume-xxv-online\/normalizing-injustice-thomas-hill-and-the-necessity-of-intersectionality-in-rhetorical-criticism\/"},"modified":"2025-05-12T11:10:28","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T15:10:28","slug":"normalizing-injustice-thomas-hill-and-the-necessity-of-intersectionality-in-rhetorical-criticism","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/gender-journal\/online\/volume-xxv-online\/normalizing-injustice-thomas-hill-and-the-necessity-of-intersectionality-in-rhetorical-criticism\/","title":{"rendered":"Normalizing Injustice: Thomas, Hill, and the Necessity of Intersectionality in Rhetorical Criticism"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThis is the new normal for me,\u201d Professor Anita Hill said while speaking in front of an audience with The New York Times<\/em> in 2019. Nearly 30 years earlier, on September 25th<\/sup>, 1991, the trajectory of Hill\u2019s life and career would change forever. As a former employee of Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, Hill would come forward with an extensive recollection of sexual harassment allegations against the then-appellate judge that marred her tenure with Thomas at the Department of Education and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (\u201cEEOC\u201d). \u00a0During that final chapter of the confirmation hearings, Hill testified in front of an overwhelmingly male and white Senate. Decades later, her testimony and bravery for bringing her allegations public continue to influence conversations regarding sexual harassment, holding lawmakers accountable, and accountability for future and current Supreme Court Justices. From a rhetorical standpoint, Thomas\u2019 hearing also sheds light on the unique obstacles women of color, particularly black women, face when making allegations against black men\u2014especially ones who are high-profile figures. Thomas\u2019 weaponization of racism and usage of negative black women archetypes during his confirmation proceedings demonstrates the ways in which a male-centered conception of racism in America is not only problematic, but dangerous. Thomas famously referred to the allegations of sexual harassment leveraged against him by Hill, a black woman, as a \u201chigh-tech lynching\u201d in which he would be \u201ccaricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate, rather than hung from a tree.\u201d<\/p>\n

This paper will attempt to deconstruct Thomas\u2019 testimony in response to Hill\u2019s claims to discern what rhetorical methods were used to persuade a majority of the Senate Judicial Committee to approve Thomas\u2019 confirmation despite Hill\u2019s allegations of sexual harassment. To account for Hill\u2019s identity as a black woman, and Thomas\u2019 identity as a black man, this paper will use an analysis that combines elements from both the racial and feminist approaches of rhetorical criticism. By adopting Kimberle Crenshaw\u2019s theory of intersectionality, which was created as a critique of the dominant \u201csingle-axis framework\u201d of racial and feminist rhetorical criticism, this paper seeks to reveal how racism and misogyny operate rhetorically in a public setting between two members of the same race with different genders. First this paper will provide an overview of the rhetorical artifact, Justice Thomas\u2019 confirmation hearing transcript, focusing on the testimony immediately following Hill\u2019s allegations. Second, the analysis will first give an overview of racial tropes associated with black women, and how Thomas weaponized these to undermine Hill\u2019s credibility as a victim. Next, there will be a discussion on how Thomas used antiracist rhetoric and America\u2019s gruesome history of lynching to brand himself as a victim of racism during his testimony. Finally, this paper will analyze how Thomas claims to be a victim of negative black male stereotypes by using common antiracist rhetoric to defend misogyny, despite subjecting Hill to similarly negative archetypes based on her gender and race.<\/p>\n

Keep Reading Normalizing Injustice: Thomas, Hill, and the Necessity of Intersectionality in Rhetorical Criticism<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThis is the new normal for me,\u201d Professor Anita Hill said while speaking in front of an audience with The New York Times in 2019. Nearly 30 years earlier, on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9731,"featured_media":0,"parent":1267,"menu_order":4,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"abstract.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":"","_tec_slr_enabled":"","_tec_slr_layout":""},"class_list":["post-1411","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"ticketed":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/gender-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/gender-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/gender-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/gender-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9731"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/gender-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1411"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/gender-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1808,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/gender-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1411\/revisions\/1808"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/gender-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/gender-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}