﻿The former vice-president Joe Biden condemned “a white man’s culture” on Tuesday night as he lashed out against violence against women and, more specifically, regretted his role in the supreme court confirmation hearings that undermined Anita Hill’s credibility nearly three decades ago.

Biden, a Democratic presidential prospect who often highlights his white working-class roots, said Hill, who is African American, should not have been forced to face a panel of “a bunch of white guys”.

“To this day I regret I couldn’t come up with a way to give her the kind of hearing she deserved,” he said, echoing comments he delivered last fall as the nation debated sexual misconduct allegations against Brett Kavanaugh amid his supreme court confirmation hearing.

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Later in his Tuesday remarks, Biden called on Americans to “change the culture” that dates back centuries and allows pervasive violence against women. “It’s an English jurisprudential culture, a white man’s culture. It’s got to change,” Biden said.

Biden is leading the polls of potential Democratic presidential candidates despite the fact that he has yet to announce his 2020 intentions. He has a small team of political operatives laying the groundwork for a run and has reportedly started talking to potential donors, but he has acknowledged publicly in recent weeks that his entrance in the presidential race is no sure thing.

Were he to throw his hat in the ring, Biden would face potential stumbling blocks. The first is his age, at 76, and whiteness in an election cycle with unprecedented diversity of gender, race and ethnicity within its crowded field.

That could be an issue in the early voting state of South Carolina, where about 60% of Democratic primary voters are African American. “White privilege” has already been a charge leveled at other candidates, notably Beto O’Rourke from Texas.

Biden’s role in the 1991 Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings is another source of possible difficulty, especially in the wake of #MeToo. He was chair of the Senate judiciary committee when Hill gave televised testimony alleging that Thomas had sexually harassed her when he was her supervisor at the Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Biden allowed Hill to be subjected to hostile questioning by members of the committee. He also asked questions of his own that have since been deemed inappropriate, such as an inquiry about sexually charged behavior towards her by Thomas: “Can you tell us how you felt at the time? Were you uncomfortable, were you embarrassed, did it not concern you? How did you feel about it?”

Hill told Elle magazine last September that Biden had stopped short of giving her a full and direct apology. She said: “It’s become sort of a running joke in the household when someone rings the doorbell and we’re not expecting company. ‘Oh,’ we say, ‘is that Joe Biden coming to apologize?’”

Biden was speaking at a New York City event honoring young people who helped combat sexual assault on college campuses. The event, held at a venue called the Russian Tea Room, was hosted by the Biden Foundation and the not-for-profit group It’s on Us, which Biden founded with Barack Obama in 2014.

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In remarks that were rambling at times and spanned more than a half hour, Biden repeatedly denounced violence against women. It is a topic Biden knows well. As a senator, he introduced the Violence Against Women Act in 1990.

“No man has a right to lay a hand on a woman no matter what she’s wearing, she does, who she is, unless it’s in self-defense. Never,” he said Tuesday.

He then shared a conversation he had with a member of a college fraternity.

“If you see a brother taking an inebriated co-ed up the stairs at a fraternity house and you don’t go and stop it, you’re a damn coward,” Biden said. “You don’t deserve to be called a man.”