Race-ing Justice, En-Gendering Power: Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the Construction of Social Reality [Paperback]

Toni Morrison (Editor), Jr. A. Leon Higginbotham (Contributor), Andrew Ross (Contributor), Manning Marable (Contributor), Michael Thelwell (Contributor), Claudia Brodsky Lacour (Contributor), Patricia J. Williams (Contributor), Gayle Pemberton (Contributor), Nell Irvin Painter (Contributor), Carol M. Swain (Contributor)

Book Description

Release date: October 6, 1992

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.

In Race-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, 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

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

As Morrison (Jazz) writes in her pointed opening essay, the Thomas controversy last year both raised and buried issues of profound national significance. This collection of 19 essays, mostly by academics, powerfully advances the debate, though Thomas's defenders will find little solace. Most telling is federal judge A. Leon Higgonbotham's open letter to Thomas, cordially but relentlessly laying out the legal history of the civil rights movement and showing how Thomas's own public and private life has benefited. Manning Marable, describing the crisis in the response by black organizations, skillfully skewers the neoaccommodationist support of Thomas among black liberals. Gayle Pemberton writes that Hill exemplifies James Baldwin's observation that white Americans don't know how to deal with a black who falls outside of their expectations. Christine Stansell notes Catharine MacKinnon's initial embrace of Thomas for his life experience while ignoring his ideas as an example of how even militant feminists can be snookered when the issue is racial identity. Some essays cover the same ground, and a few are jargon-heavy, but the collection remains valuable.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Inside Flap

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.

In Race-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, 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

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon; 1st edition (October 6, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679741453
• ISBN-13: 978-0679741459
• Product Dimensions: 1 x 5.2 x 7.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,081,079 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Issues just as important today as they were then. January 15, 2001

By "samira"

Format:Paperback

Take one overwhelmingly male-centered and predominantly white society, add huge portions of power, racism, sexism, a misinformed public and gross displays of injustice, and you've got a recipe for the American way. This collection of essays written at the time of the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings holds every bit of relevance now as it did nine years ago. Highlighting earlier civil rights legal battles and connecting their influence to the hearings themselves, each essayist examines in progressive detail just how pervasive--indeed, how dangerously latent--racism and sexism are in our society. How the volatile and often avoided issue of race can blind the equally volative and often dismissed issue of sexism in any race. In these essays, we are given a shockingly clear image of the circus that was the mishandling of the hearings. Explosive, revealling, and thought-provoking, this book yanks the proverbial rose-colored glasses from our collective American conscience and dares us to think for ourselves.