The Black Men Who Identify with Brett Kavanaugh Understand the Stakes nationalreview.com/2018/10/brett-…
Freshly minted Atlantic writer @JemeleHill published a piece that broke new ground in the Kavanaugh debate. She revealed that, in her experience, black men were more sympathetic to Kavanaugh than she anticipated.
“Tuesday night, I was in an auditorium with 100 black men in Baltimore, when the subject pivoted to Brett Kavanaugh. I expected to hear frustration that the sexual-assault allegations against him had failed to derail his Supreme Court appointment.”
“Instead, I encountered sympathy. One man stood up and asked, passionately, “What happened to due process?” He was met with a smattering of applause, and an array of head nods,” she writes.
Hill says this support makes a “twisted kind of sense,” because, “Countless times, black men have had to witness the careers and reputations of other black men ruthlessly destroyed because of unproved rape and sexual-assault accusations.”
But there’s nothing “twisted” about it. Their experience highlights the vital importance of due process and the presumption of innocence.
Last September Emily Yoffe wrote a troubling essay (also in The Atlantic) detailing how preliminary evidence indicates that campus courts are disproportionately punishing black men.
These tribunals, animated by the very “believe survivors” ideology of Kavanaugh’s opponents, are imposing terrible consequences on young African-Americans, often stemming from morning-after regret amplified by racial differences.
Jeannie Suk Gersen, a Harvard Law professor, has written extensively on Title IX and notes that campus administrators and faculty members who work on campus adjudications have told her that “most of the complaints they see are against minorities.”
The federal government — which, under Obama, mandated reduced due-process protections for accused students — has been remarkably incurious about the racial effect of its policies. But individual schools have been subject to race-discrimination complaints, and the #’s are stunning
The bottom line is that opponents of Kavanaugh didn’t just want to stop Kavanaugh, they wanted to create a cultural moment that many black men are very wise to be wary of. “Believe survivors” is a slogan that resonates far beyond one single judicial confirmation.
It is true that Kavanaugh was more powerful than young black men who face similarly terrifying accusations that can ruin their lives, but the answer isn’t to convince black Americans that Kavanaugh should face the kind of “justice” they have faced far too often throughout history
It’s to convince America that due process and the presumption of innocence belong to all of us, no matter our social station, even when prison isn’t at stake.
Contra Jemele Hill, then, black men aren’t “missing” anything. They’re getting a fundamental point: If even a man as powerful as Kavanaugh barely escaped uncorroborated accusations, what chance would they stand?
