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Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts or at Pushkin dot Fm. I'm Anita Hill.
Speaker 1: This is Getting Even, my podcast about equality and what
Speaker 1: it takes to get there. On this show, I'll be
Speaker 1: speaking with trailblazers, people who are improving are imperfect world
Speaker 1: people who took risks and broke the rules. But I
Speaker 1: have to start off this series by addressing the historic
Speaker 1: moment we're in right now. As a lawyer and a
Speaker 1: former witness at a Supreme Court confirmation hearing, I've been
Speaker 1: laser focused on President Biden's recent nomination. On February twenty fifth,
Speaker 1: I watched anxiously as he stood at the podium with
Speaker 1: Vice President Kamala Harris on one side and on the
Speaker 1: other Judge Katanji Brown Jackson. The announcement that was weeks,
Speaker 1: actually centuries in the making finally became real. It's a
Speaker 1: first for our country and speaks to so much of
Speaker 1: my work and what I'm talking about on this podcast.
Speaker 1: The whole country will be watching as Judge Katanji Brown
Speaker 1: Jackson goes before the Senate Judiciary Committee. I'm very familiar
Speaker 1: with that committee. They're the same body that I stood
Speaker 1: in front of in nineteen ninety one when I testified
Speaker 1: about sexual harassment I experienced working at the Equal Employment
Speaker 1: Opportunity Commission under Clarence Thomas. My name is Anita F. Hill,
Speaker 1: and I am a professor of law at the University
Speaker 1: of Oklahoma. Back then, the committee was made up entirely
Speaker 1: of white men, and the chair in nineteen ninety one
Speaker 1: with Senator Joe Biden, the same Joe Biden who's making
Speaker 1: history today as President. My nominee for the United States
Speaker 1: Supreme Court is Judge Katangi Jackson, who brings extraordinary qualifications,
Speaker 1: deep experience and intellect, and a rigorous tradicial record to
Speaker 1: the Court. I wanted to have a conversation with someone
Speaker 1: who I know appreciates the significance of this moment, so
Speaker 1: I called up Mark Lamont Hill. He's a journal social
Speaker 1: critic and professor, and no, we're not related. We spoke
Speaker 1: a few days before Judge Jackson was announced as a nominee,
Speaker 1: which is why you won't hear us refer to her
Speaker 1: in our conversation, but the larger conversation remains unchanged. Mark
Speaker 1: Lamont Hill and I set out to discuss what this
Speaker 1: moment means for justice, what it means for a representation,
Speaker 1: and the benefits to everyone of this historic nomination. Professor
Speaker 1: Anita Hill, it is so good to see you. It
Speaker 1: is so good to talk to you. This is a
Speaker 1: big deal. Then you're certainly no stranger to big deals
Speaker 1: around Supreme Court nomination, so I know you understand how
Speaker 1: important it is, Oh absolutely, and I'm looking forward to
Speaker 1: the really positive things that can come out of this.
Speaker 1: Nineteen was a moment where the Senate Judiciary Committee had
Speaker 1: an opportunity to listen to the voice of a credible
Speaker 1: black woman, and not only did they not do it,
Speaker 1: but their attitude seemed to reflect an inability to recognize
Speaker 1: a black woman as intellectual and capable and balanced and fair, etc.
Speaker 1: And so I'm wondering if they can't even do that
Speaker 1: at the level of a witness, if they're able to
Speaker 1: think about a black woman jurist, and now it's been
Speaker 1: thirty years, how do you think about the ability of
Speaker 1: the Senate Judiciary Committee to even assess the qualification of
Speaker 1: a black woman for this job. Well, fortunately, the Senate
Speaker 1: Judiciary Committee has changed so it is much more diverse
Speaker 1: than it was thirty years ago. I think that there
Speaker 1: is so much to be gained from this nomination and
Speaker 1: the public discussion about our sense of justice in this
Speaker 1: country and the importance of the Supreme Court in representing
Speaker 1: our sense of jobs death. The first place where the
Speaker 1: conversation about justice emerged was when President Biden said that
Speaker 1: he was going to honor his campaign trail commitment to
Speaker 1: choosing a black woman. And this is something that I
Speaker 1: think was left out of the public conversation to some extent,
Speaker 1: is that the decision to consciously select a black woman
Speaker 1: is not the first moment where there was a conscious
Speaker 1: intent to choose people. The hundreds of years where the
Speaker 1: courts were all white male didn't happen by happenstance. It
Speaker 1: wasn't a meritocracy that somehow being interrupted. They were very
Speaker 1: intentionally not choosing Jewish people at one point, very intentionally
Speaker 1: not choosing black people, and then somehow the subtext keeps emerging,
Speaker 1: and that's one around qualification. Yeah, I think again that's
Speaker 1: a part of our history that we want to pretend
Speaker 1: to us on excess. Those judges are there, they have
Speaker 1: been their constant. Spaker Mobley, who was on the Second Circuit,
Speaker 1: wanted a kid stout who was one of the first
Speaker 1: black woman appointed to a state supreme or back in
Speaker 1: the eighties, Paully Murray, who wrote Richard Nixon and laid
Speaker 1: out her resume and all her credentials for being on
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court, and told him that he should nominate her.
Speaker 1: And she was right, of course, I mean she's I mean,
Speaker 1: she was a brilliant legal theorist. But we have so
Speaker 1: erased that history it is though we're invisible. In other words,
Speaker 1: Joe Biden isn't the first person to identify qualify black women.
Speaker 1: And this isn't the first generation of qualified Black women
Speaker 1: by any stretched. Every women for decades, and certainly it's
Speaker 1: not centuries who have been equally qualified and deserved a
Speaker 1: place on the court, they simply didn't have the opportunity.
Speaker 1: I think that's an important piece to add, particularly against
Speaker 1: the backroom of this public outcry that that Joe Biden
Speaker 1: is suddenly going rogue and being selective or intentional about
Speaker 1: who he's selecting for Supreme Court, as if again for
Speaker 1: centuries that hadn't been qualified black women who were intentionally
Speaker 1: left to offabilities. My worst fear in this conversation is
Speaker 1: that we will resort to racist tropes, sexist tropes, and
Speaker 1: we are going to miss this opportunity to ask some
Speaker 1: really important questions today. What are those questions? Well, I
Speaker 1: think we should be asking who's missing from positions of
Speaker 1: power and influence in our political systems, and that includes
Speaker 1: our judiciary. What do we do to step out of that?
Speaker 1: How do we imagine equality in the future. You know,
Speaker 1: we have been operating for a while from what I
Speaker 1: think is a nineteen sixty four version of equality, and
Speaker 1: it has worked very well, but it has not finished
Speaker 1: the job of creating equality. For one, what is the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty for context right? Because there were people who
Speaker 1: are saying, well, that sounds like a good idea. We
Speaker 1: didn't have access to public accommodations, we didn't have access
Speaker 1: to civil rights. We needed to be in places that
Speaker 1: wouldn't let us in. What's wrong with the nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: four vision or what's limiting about it? There's nothing wrong
Speaker 1: with it. In fact, I've benefited from it, so I
Speaker 1: would not say that there is anything wrong with it.
Speaker 1: But what we know is that we still have huge
Speaker 1: disparities on many, many fronts. So we need to be
Speaker 1: thinking about if our goal is equality, what more can
Speaker 1: we do. We have been having challenges over the last
Speaker 1: few years, things like the Me Too movement and like
Speaker 1: Black Lives Matter, and I think at the core of
Speaker 1: those movements is a cry for new ways of thinking
Speaker 1: about justice and equality. And so far we have people
Speaker 1: who are buying into the messages of those movements, but
Speaker 1: we haven't had the leadership that follows, and we haven't
Speaker 1: had any changes in the structures that are limiting our
Speaker 1: advances toward this new way of thinking about equality inclusively
Speaker 1: and broadly as fundamental to our democracy. When we come back,
Speaker 1: Mark Lamont Hill and I get into the question of
Speaker 1: objectivity in judging and whether or not it's possible. You're
Speaker 1: listening to getting even my podcast about equality and what
Speaker 1: it takes to get there. I'm Anita Hill. A few
Speaker 1: days before Biden announced Katangi Brown Jackson as his pick
Speaker 1: for our next Supreme Court justice, I called up Mark
Speaker 1: Lamont Hill. We spoke about what it means to the
Speaker 1: country to have a black woman nominated to the highest court.
Speaker 1: One of the things that will definitely come out of
Speaker 1: the conversation is whether the person can be impartial, and
Speaker 1: rather than simply proving that black women have the same
Speaker 1: capacity to be impartial as white men, or to make
Speaker 1: the case that everybody's impartial on some level, is this
Speaker 1: an opportunity or should we take this as an opportunity
Speaker 1: to reshape the language around impartiality and objectivity rather than
Speaker 1: to try and wedge ourselves into the framework that always
Speaker 1: has the world looking at us like we're short. This
Speaker 1: is just like the questions about competence. They only come
Speaker 1: when you have a person of color, and they come
Speaker 1: up for the purpose not of finding the right person
Speaker 1: for the bench, but they come up to discredit thinking
Speaker 1: yep and ideas in resistance to the status quo. And
Speaker 1: so I think we're at a moment where we know
Speaker 1: that if we are going to move us as a
Speaker 1: country to expand our thinking about the role that the
Speaker 1: law can play in creating a more just and equal society,
Speaker 1: then we have got to resist those old ways of
Speaker 1: eliminating people by simply saying they're not qualified or they
Speaker 1: can't be objective, assuming that there is one standard or
Speaker 1: qualification or one standard of objectivity. You know, there's an
Speaker 1: interesting story about Constance Baker Motley, who I mean, she
Speaker 1: may have been considered, but she was certainly never nominated
Speaker 1: to be on the Supreme Court work. But she was
Speaker 1: a judge in a case. It was an employment discrimination case,
Speaker 1: and what the council defending against the lawsuit asked was
Speaker 1: that Constance Baker Motley recuse herself, and this was in
Speaker 1: the papers that were submitted to the court, because her
Speaker 1: race and her gender would make her suspect and unable
Speaker 1: to be objective in this case. I love her response
Speaker 1: because she said, if that is the standard we began
Speaker 1: to hold, then we must recognize that everybody on the
Speaker 1: bench is incapable of being objective, because everybody on the
Speaker 1: bench has both the quality of a race and agenda.
Speaker 1: But we only see that when we see people of color.
Speaker 1: Of course, she did not recuse herself, but I think
Speaker 1: she made the best argument. That is our best response.
Speaker 1: When we start talking about the objectivity of black women,
Speaker 1: then we have to start talking about the objectivity of
Speaker 1: all of the white male judges and the black male judge.
Speaker 1: I mean, is anybody ever objective? You're pointing to something
Speaker 1: very interesting, right. That's beyond partisan politics, and that is
Speaker 1: a question of political imagination, of judicial imagination, the ability
Speaker 1: to take different approaches to the law, different traditions, different beliefs,
Speaker 1: different worldviews, and to incorporate them into one's practice. These
Speaker 1: are things that aren't limited to the Democrats or the Republicans.
Speaker 1: This is about a worldview that comes across them both.
Speaker 1: And so diversifying the Supreme courtnel on some level allows
Speaker 1: us to push back against that trend. And it doesn't
Speaker 1: seem like we even realize many of us don't even
Speaker 1: realize that that's a trend to push back against. One
Speaker 1: of the things that Ruth Bader Ginsburg did was it
Speaker 1: very often called out her colleagues for not understanding the
Speaker 1: experiences of women. We talk about the judicial imagination. Her
Speaker 1: imagination for what justice is is quite different from her colleagues,
Speaker 1: and she was not afraid to say so. Yes. And
Speaker 1: this nomination and the way that it was announced was
Speaker 1: intentional challenge to the status quo, an opportunity for us
Speaker 1: to say, we need a judiciary that reflects the population
Speaker 1: that is going to come before it, that reflects ideas,
Speaker 1: new ideas based on different lived experiences in terms of
Speaker 1: deliberations and decision making, and even their new ideas or
Speaker 1: new experiences about the path to becoming a judge and
Speaker 1: what judging is and how it happens, and the value
Speaker 1: that can be brought in where new ideas about how
Speaker 1: to define justice are allowed to be considered. It's an
Speaker 1: intersection again of gender and race, right because when Trump
Speaker 1: said I'm electing a woman, no one thought that he
Speaker 1: meant anything other than a white woman. When Reagan made
Speaker 1: the same determination, no one thought that he was considering
Speaker 1: anything other than a white woman. And when Joe Biden says, well,
Speaker 1: I'm going to choose a black woman, I think it's
Speaker 1: that intersection that was just untenable for so many people.
Speaker 1: And the wonderful thing about the moment is that we
Speaker 1: not only have a chance to look at intersectional bias
Speaker 1: against women of color, but in this case black women,
Speaker 1: we have a chance now to look at the intersectional value,
Speaker 1: the value that having lived experiences as both a female
Speaker 1: and a black person is really something that can contribute
Speaker 1: to the thinking that goes into judging and that goes
Speaker 1: into our definitions of justice today. And if we if
Speaker 1: we don't, if we don't see that as this opportunity.
Speaker 1: If the Senate Judiciary Committee isn't asking questions about those
Speaker 1: two things, then there's a missed opportunity for the entire
Speaker 1: American public. And the problem is they don't know what
Speaker 1: to ask, They don't even have the self awareness to
Speaker 1: ask those questions, and they didn't understand the thing that
Speaker 1: you're that you're speaking to now, which is it's not
Speaker 1: just a nice act of liberal generosity to diversify the court,
Speaker 1: but that there's some inherent value to diversity, that there's
Speaker 1: something that it's an added value to say this court
Speaker 1: should look different. It offers differences in terms of what
Speaker 1: the judges talk about in their deliberations, what is the
Speaker 1: conversation like in their deliberations, And those conversations are driven
Speaker 1: by experiences. Even as I say that our thinking is
Speaker 1: not unilateral, I know very few black women who cannot
Speaker 1: tell you how race and gender, separately and combined have
Speaker 1: impacted their life experiences. But we know that diversity in
Speaker 1: those kinds of conversations can lead for a richer understanding
Speaker 1: of what the law is and how it impacts people.
Speaker 1: And I'll go back to Santra Day O'Connor, who talked
Speaker 1: about how Justice Marshall influenced her thinking about the law
Speaker 1: and maybe that's how we got affirmative action, because she
Speaker 1: wrote the opinion and maybe she was influenced by listening
Speaker 1: to just this Marshaw. But if you don't have someone
Speaker 1: bringing that to the conversation, not only do you not
Speaker 1: have a chance to change the outcome, you don't have
Speaker 1: a chance to change the reasoning. And judging is more
Speaker 1: than about outcomes. It's about the reasoning. It's about the
Speaker 1: explanations for the law and telling the people why decisions
Speaker 1: are made in the way that they are. And I
Speaker 1: think those need to be filled with experiences from multiple perspectives.
Speaker 1: I have to ask you, what's the smoke clears and
Speaker 1: a black woman has been confirmed to the US Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: how will you given everything you've been through, everything you've witnessed,
Speaker 1: your entire set of experiences, how will you feel? I
Speaker 1: will be absolutely elated, absolutely elated. Now I typically think
Speaker 1: of myself as a glass half full, but one of
Speaker 1: the things that I want to be cautious about is
Speaker 1: that we don't start seeing this as well. We have one.
Speaker 1: That's it. That's all wherever you know the black women,
Speaker 1: please check the box. This is not about checking the box.
Speaker 1: This is about a judiciary that represents our country and
Speaker 1: the best in our country and the values of equal
Speaker 1: protection under the law and justice being blind. And so
Speaker 1: I will relish in that moment, and then I will
Speaker 1: hopefully suggest some other ways that we can get some
Speaker 1: of the work done that needs to be done. I
Speaker 1: like that attitude, and that's that's what it means to
Speaker 1: be black in this country. In so many ways, we
Speaker 1: celebrate the victories that we struggle for what we understand
Speaker 1: that the work is undone. It's understand that you get
Speaker 1: to keep fighting. That's right, absolutely, because it was a pleasure, pleasure,
Speaker 1: pleasure talking to you. Thanks so much for let me
Speaker 1: hang out with you. Oh listen, this was great. I
Speaker 1: couldn't have asked for a better partner to have this conversation.
Speaker 1: Of course, Mark Lamont Hill and I don't know what
Speaker 1: the outcome of this historic confirmation hearing will be, but
Speaker 1: we have hopes about how the process will go and
Speaker 1: hopes that we can learn from the mistakes made throughout
Speaker 1: the history of the Senate and the Court. We can't
Speaker 1: shy away from difficult questions about what equality under the
Speaker 1: law means, what it really looks like, and more importantly,
Speaker 1: how diversity on our courts could change people's lives and
Speaker 1: our country. On the next episode of Getting Even, you're
Speaker 1: going to hear new revelations about a familiar piece of history.
Speaker 1: When you heard Mark and I refer to in our
Speaker 1: conversation the nineteen ninety one Supreme Court nomination hearing for
Speaker 1: Clarence Thomas. It was not unusual for Clarence to act
Speaker 1: that way with people and especially black women at the commission.
Speaker 1: Like I said before, he was like a fox in
Speaker 1: a hanhouse, and I wanted to make the committee aware
Speaker 1: of the fact that you were not lying to them
Speaker 1: or making up statements, that this, in fact is what
Speaker 1: was happening at the EOC. Later in the season, I'll
Speaker 1: be speaking with w Kamal Bell, Kimberly Crenshaw, Nicole Hannah Jones,
Speaker 1: Misty Copeland, and many others about the realities that keep
Speaker 1: us up at night and what it takes to get even.
Speaker 1: What we're looking for is outcomes. We want results, measurable
Speaker 1: outcomes in the way that people live every day. Getting
Speaker 1: Even is a production of pushkin in this Streets and
Speaker 1: is written and hosted by me Anita Hill. It is
Speaker 1: produced by Molaborg and Brittany Brown. Our editor is Sarah Kramer,
Speaker 1: our engineer is Amanda kay Wang, and our showrunner is
Speaker 1: Sasha Matthias. Luis Gara composed original music for the show.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Vicki Merrick for her help with this episode.
Speaker 1: Our executive producers are Mia Lobel and le tal Malaud.
Speaker 1: Our director of Development is Justine Lane. At Pushkin thanks
Speaker 1: to Heather Fane, Carly Migliori, Jason Gambrel, Julia Barton, John Schnars,
Speaker 1: and Jacob Weisberg. You can find me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: Anita Hill and on Facebook at Anita Hill. You can
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