Op/Ed: Unequal Justice
Who Qualifies as Sexual Predator? Lecturer Points to Double Standard
Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images
Judge Brett Kavanaugh is sworn in during his U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing to be an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court on Sept. 4. African American studies lecturer Jason Williams asserts that back when Kavanaugh was accused of sexual misconduct, society generally believed that rapists didn't look like "an upper-middle-class prep schooler headed for the Ivy League."
Brett Kavanaugh, whose scandal-plagued nomination to the Supreme Court was further roiled yesterday by new accusations of rape, doesn’t fit society’s image of a rapist, writes Jason Nichols, a lecturer in the Department of African American Studies. In a new essay, Nichols argues that how we handle such accusations is too often dependent on deeply embedded societal power dynamics built around race, sexuality and gender.
Read more at NBCNews.com.
As multiple accusers have come forward with allegations of sexual misconduct against Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh, his defenders are taking predictable steps to defend him. They have tried trotting out conservative talking heads to smear Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, Kavanaugh’s initial accuser, as a “troubled” liar (though she first made the allegations to a therapist in 2012 and has since passed a polygraph test administered by a former FBI agent) and a Democratic political operative. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, has called newer allegations by Deborah Ramirez, simply “phony.”
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