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Hill's request came during an interview about his experience facing a panel of white men in 1991 during confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas, then a Supreme Court candidate.
Hill, who publicly accused Thomas of sexual harassment, said that during the auditions, it seemed "that I had no race" because Thomas, who had repeatedly denied the charges, had attracted him. pay attention to its color. to a "high-tech lynching".
Yet Hill thought his race was more relevant than his.
Although many comparisons have been made between the Ford and Hill hearings, few have asked a question that highlights a significant difference between the two: the race.
Will people treat Ford differently than Hill because it's white?
"Of course, Ford will be treated differently because it's white," says Ravi Perry, a political scientist at Virginia Commonwealth University. "In fact, she has already been."
Why color, not just gender, matters
Perry was one of many political scientists – including a black woman who took a controversial public position 27 years ago to defend Hill – who spoke of Ford's perception of color, not just sex.
A white woman does not carry the same burden of proof as a woman of color, says Perry, author of "The Little Rock Crisis: What Segregation Policy Says About Us".
"People perceive a white, middle-class woman with blonde hair in a particular way, and this image has been marketed to a large part of the model industry," says Perry.
"If Anita Hill had been white or black with fair skin or maybe even Latina or a fair-skinned Asian woman, people would have seen it differently," says Perry. "Dark skin, for many people, is associated with what is not reliable."
Ford's whiteness also helps her in another way – she evokes more empathy, others say.
"There is a lot of information on her education – even on Fox News, they had a story where someone said, I understand why she did not show up earlier," she said. said Foss. "It's not something you've seen with Anita Hill – this kind of empathic vision is a big difference between what we've seen in the '90s and now."
The isolation Hill faced
The dominant visual image of Hill reinforces another point: the unique sense of isolation she felt, says Moya Bailey, assistant professor at Northeastern University in Boston, whose work focuses on representations of race and gender in her work. the media.
Bailey has a word for this type of isolation: "misogyny". It's a term she's coined to describe the dual combination of racism and sexism that many women of color experience.
When Bailey thinks of Hill, one image dominates: Hill in front of his male interrogators in Congress in his teal dress, an air of exhaustion and grief engraved on his face.
"She seemed visibly alone," Bailey said. "I remember this vision of Anita Hill being herself with this group of Caucasian men wanking her about the sexual harassment that she suffered from Thomas."
Hill was isolated by her skin color in another way: even many members of her own community rejected her.
Today, Hill, a professor at Brandeis University of Massachusetts, has become a heroine of the #MeToo movement. She has publicly supported Ford, as well as many people mobilized by the growing awareness of ubiquitous sexual harassment in America.
His testimony was considered a "black-on-black crime," says Doreen Loury, a sociologist at Arcadia University in Pennsylvania.
"You had this whole group of black men and black women saying, the sister is out of your pocket," says Loury. "Many blacks did not like what she said."
Racial stereotypes that women of color face
While Thomas might have evoked a racial stereotype of the past – the violent black man who needed to be repressed – the reality was that Hill was confronting another racial stereotype during the auditions: the hypersexual "Jezebel ".
There were those who blamed Hill for his alleged sexual harassment by Thomas. They evoked the stereotype of the overexcited black woman who attacked men. According to Loury, this image was a form of projection – white men who raped black women during slavery projected their own desire on their victims.
"You justify the rape by making it lose," says Loury. "Many of these slaves rape these women and have biracial children, and they say at the same time that she wanted him."
Ford will not have this racial story to handle. But it's still possible – and ironic – if the media and the public ignore the meaning of his race and treat it in the same way that Hill claims he was treated.
Perry, the political scientist, says that, for one, he does not expect Ford to be subject to the explicit and embarrassing questions Hill has faced, but sexism will always be a factor.
"Given the stakes, Ford risks being mistreated," he said, "but not as bad as Hill."
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