I may be going out on a limb here, but I'm going to posit that most members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, including Biden himself, doubted Thomas's word. Unfortunately, in 1987, it was more politic to support Thomas, in order not to look racist toward a black man, than to respect the word of a black woman.

Have things changed for the better? Not in the least. We all watched Brett Kavanaugh lie, sneer, contort, and bully his way into a Supreme Court seat, despite his obvious lack of experience and that hard-to-define judicial temperament. We've been paying the price for white men's deference to Thomas for decades. It's time we got our rights back.