For anyone who was watching the news 27 years ago, the last few weeks might seem like a bad case of deja vu. In 1991, Americans were gripped by the confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas, George H.W. Bush’s pick to succeed Justice Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court. After accusations from multiple of Thomas’ former employees that he had sexually harassed them, his nomination was up in the air. Ultimately, Thomas was confirmed to the court by a 52-48 vote (one of the narrowest margins for approval of a Supreme Court pick in over a century), but the legacy of the hearings never left him.
When the #MeToo movement ended the careers of Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, Les Moonves, and others due to allegations of sexual assault, some wondered whether Thomas could have survived his confirmation hearings in the modern political climate. Enter Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump’s pick to the Supreme Court, who has been accused of sexual assault by now two different women when he was in high school and college.
While it’s easy to look at Kavanaugh’s confirmation process as “Thomas in the Me Too era” some, like Reverend Emmett Price don’t think the outcome will be different, unless there is more diversity in Congress.
“If there were more intersectional or inclusive people making the decision — not necessarily race, but more women, or more of a class differential, or more people who are not necessarily binary and into the whole two party system — then this whole Kavanaugh saga probably wouldn’t last as long as it would because you’d have some other voices,” Price said on Boston Public Radio Monday morning.
Joining him was Reverend Irene Monroe who agreed with Price. While Monroe has been encouraged by the groundswell of popular protest against the Trump Administration, she agreed with Price, that Congress needs some new faces.
“When you have many of the same men who questioned Anita Hill in 1991 [there in 2018], you have to say ‘what’s wrong with his picture?’” Monroe said.
