This week’s hearings in which Christine Blasey Ford, the California professor who has accused the Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault when she was 15 and he was 17, will appear, seems primed to privilege Kavanaugh and exploit Ford’s weaknesses.

There is no effort yet to thoroughly investigate her claim, by either the F.B.I. or the Senate itself, and there are no plans as yet to call any witnesses other than the accused and the accuser. This is designed to be a spectacle that will embarrass her and elevate him, much the way the Clarence Thomas hearings featuring accuser Anita Hill played out in 1991.

Indeed, many people have drawn attention to the numerous parallels between the two cases, but I would like to draw attention to one difference, one that could bode well for Ford: the absence of a racial element in a heated racial environment.

Months before Thomas was nominated, an amateur photographer videotaped the savage beating of motorist Rodney King by a throng of Los Angeles police officers.