by Anita Hill
My chief concern with administrative policy of both the Carter and Reagan administrations was that there was too little willingness to move programs located in the traditionally white colleges to the black colleges. The office also pushed for the continued fiscal and academic viability of those institutions. What the project ultimately achieved is subject to disagreement. The Adams states have been released from the court order under which they operated. The historically black colleges remain. Some have new missions and programs. Yet many in the Adams states question whether the changes brought about under the Adams order have created parity in the system or maintained the system in a less dramatically inequitable form.
I even had an opportunity to make some overtures to those in the civil rights and women’s rights communities. This was a particularly sensitive effort. Telephone calls to civil rights agencies and gender rights agencies yielded mixed results in part because, still relatively new to Washington, I had few connections in those communities, and many of the people I spoke to distrusted the overtures. We managed to establish a meeting with representatives of the NAACP-LDF, the NOW Legal Defense Fund, and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, but there was little follow-up. For political reasons, many associated with the administration wanted the assistant secretary’s office to limit such contacts. Nevertheless, since the office had a history of working with such groups, I was happy to try to maintain something of those relationships. I saw them as providing a necessary link between what had occurred in the past and what I hoped would be accomplished in the future. I knew that the administration would do very little to promote busing as an alternative, but Thomas assured me that we could take an aggressive role toward enhancing the quality of predominantly minority schools and ensuring gender equity in programs.
The staff of the Office for Civil Rights reflected the same conflicting emotions that troubled those outside in the civil rights community. Many of the staff were committed to the vigorous enforcement of civil rights. In varying degrees, former administrations had been committed to this ideal as well. Yet the ideal was in conflict with the rhetoric of the new administration, and the conflict was even more profound because the administration had chosen a black man to carry out its policies. The people who had been working at the Office for Civil Rights took a wait-and-see attitude, showing deference to Clarence Thomas because he was, after all, the appointed head of the office. More important, as a black man he presumably shared the race struggle that they were engaged in professionally and in some cases personally as well.
Nevertheless, Thomas was known to be a conservative—albeit a black conservative. This concept was new in the political mix of the Washington civil rights community in the 1980s, and many did not know what to make of it. The deference granted to Clarence Thomas because of his race was balanced by skepticism. And the civil rights community, including many people at the Office for Civil Rights, wondered how Thomas could be committed to both civil rights and the rhetoric of the Reagan administration. As Thomas’ assistant, I met with the same skepticism. I had one other problem. Because I was a young, single black woman, the rumor mill speculated that I had been hired for both my race and my sex. Aware of this, I stuck to my work, made only a few friends in the office, and kept counsel with friends outside the office about Clarence Thomas. For me the work was what mattered.
One project on which I spent a good deal of time was an article I ghostwrote for Thomas on the state of minority education and academic achievement. The article explored the role of the historically black school in the academic achievement of black students during Jim Crow. Though it recognized the decline in black achievement scores in the years following the 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, it fell short of blaming busing and school desegregation. Instead, I cited economics in general, and in particular the deterioration of the economic base of inner-city schools, as the reason for the decline in standardized achievement test scores. The article was published with Clarence Thomas as author.
In 1983, when I left his employ, Thomas expressed disappointment with the article because it did not support the conservative conclusion that the government should spend less time and effort on desegregation. Thomas respected commentators who had reached such conclusions. He even cited outstanding segregated black schools to support his conclusions. No doubt he was dismayed that his only published journal article at the time did not reflect that point of view. However, I had given him drafts of the piece. And at the time I wrote it, he expressed no disagreement with the tone, nor did he refuse to have it attributed to him.
It was clear to me that Thomas and I disagreed on the importance of the Brown decision and its role in the continuing protection of the civil rights agenda. This, more than any other disagreement, stands out in my mind. His position was based on William Julius Wilson’s theory that race as a barrier to equality had diminished in significance relative to economics. Thus, the issue of blatant racial constraints was of minimal concern. Economic development was the key. I believed that race still stood as a significant barrier to the advancement of blacks and other racial minorities, despite the outlawing of overt racial classifications and distinctions made on race alone. Economics was secondary. Moreover, I knew that being poor could be debilitating for anyone, but I was certain that the combined impact of racism and poverty was often devastating. Though I had emerged from a poor rural background well educated and now comfortably middle-class, I knew that I was the exception. And I knew that race, poverty, and gender could not be actuarialized out of the combined impact. There was no scientific way of measuring the ratio of racial disadvantage to gender disadvantage to economic disadvantage.
I assumed that Thomas and I operated in an atmosphere of mutual respect, ideological disagreements notwithstanding. I voiced my views when I could substantiate them, carefully balancing my opinion about how to accomplish objectives against the fact that he was in charge. I suspected that some of my ideas were unpopular with people in the Reagan administration (later at the EEOC one appointee, Armstrong Williams, indicated his distrust of me to Thomas). And though I had social acquaintances who worked with the administration in other offices, I was never in the inner circle of appointees. Nor did I seek it out. I committed to what I believed in and wanted only to do the job that I had been hired to do. I had no intentions of advancing in the administration. At twenty-five, only two years away from an environment that practiced respect for different ideas, I believed that I could work on projects that would serve both the administration and the goals of equality.
But the atmosphere of mutual respect soon began to erode. At the time, the erosion seemed gradual, but now I realize how quick it really was. Though I was not a political appointee and, as a Democrat, would not pass the administration’s litmus test, I was one of the few people in the office whom Thomas had himself hired. Moreover, I was a close friend of Thomas’ friend Gilbert Hardy. Thomas identified me as an insider and the career office staff as outsiders. He began to confide in me about personal and political matters as they related to his work at the Office for Civil Rights. And despite our differences, he appeared to view me as a potential political protégée. I gathered from our discussions that he expected to mold me to his views. He also appeared to see me as a sympathetic sounding board for his personal problems. In college, while briefly considering a career in psychological counseling, I had developed my listening skills.
At first neither my role as listener nor as protégée interfered with my ability to do my work. As he continued to tell me about his difficulties with his marriage, his child, and even about his problems growing up black in Georgia, I convinced myself that this particular time in his life would pass and that work would become the focus of our relationship. I considered these things confidences and still do. In time, however, and precisely when I cannot say, Thomas began to pressure me to see him socially. But for our professional relationship, the requests might have seemed innocent. Still I declined, explaining each time that I did
not want to mix my personal life with my professional life. I had just taken the position as his assistant, and the work was important to me. I had friends from school with whom I socialized and had begun to meet others as well. I was dating two or three men casually, but even if I had not been, I would not have considered dating Thomas. I suspect that the fact that he was my supervisor was most important to me, but because of several other considerations as well, I was not attracted to him. Sure that I could keep it all under control, I concluded that I should be able to handle the situation, maintain my integrity, and keep my job. But I was fooling myself.
Notwithstanding my rebuffs and protestations, Thomas continued from time to time to suggest a closer relationship. Perhaps his experience on Capitol Hill led him to believe that his position entitled him to personal as well as professional access to his staff. Perhaps my rejection of his requests was a challenge to his authority. For whatever reasons, gradually his confessions about his life became more personal, more graphic, and more vulgar. I have no more details of his comments to add to my testimony. I believe, then and now, that what I said was sufficient to establish the ugliness and inappropriateness of the statements made by Thomas. What I describe here in this book attempts to put them in the context in which they occurred. As I said in the statement I sent to the Senate on September 23, 1991:
… Clarence Thomas would call me into his office for reports on education issues and projects or, if his schedule was full of outside appointments, he would suggest that we go to lunch together at one of the area government cafeterias. After a brief discussion about work, he would turn the conversation to discussions about his sexual interests. His conversations were very vivid. He spoke about acts that he had seen in pornographic films involving such things as women having sex with animals and films involving group sex or rape scenes. He talked about pornographic materials depicting individuals with large penises or breasts involved in various sex acts. I was extremely uncomfortable talking about sex with him, at all, particularly in such a graphic way, and I told him repeatedly that I didn’t want to talk about those kinds of things. I would also try to change the subject to education matters or to nonsexual personal matters like his background or political beliefs. However, I sensed that my discomfort with his discussions only urged him on, as though my reaction of feeling ill at ease and vulnerable was exactly what he wanted.
The second time his conversation turned sexual, I knew that I had made a mistake in taking the job with Clarence Thomas. Working as his special assistant put me in a vulnerable position. Yet my only course seemed to be standing my ground, avoiding the problem when I could, and focusing on my work. I wanted very badly to believe that the behavior would end if I continued to resist.
I had no idea where to turn for a solution to the problem. It was 1981, I was living in Washington, and I had no close family in the area. Gil Hardy was too close to Thomas to trust with the information. I had no powerful political contacts. Clarence Thomas was the most powerful and well-connected person I knew. I was so politically naive that when I met Secretary of Education Terrel Bell at a reception, I had not a clue as to who he was. “Excuse me, but I didn’t catch your name,” I said after introducing myself, to his considerable amusement. We spoke briefly afterward, and I never saw him again. I doubted I could turn to him, and I was uncertain who in the administration could be trusted. I suspected that some might do nothing and others might use the information against me. I had no reason to believe that Reagan appointees would have any interest in assisting me.
As a novice to Washington, I very much wanted to handle the situation professionally. Thus, I tried to separate my sense of personal offense from my professional role. After all, that was what I had learned as a young black woman: do your schoolwork or job and don’t take biases or insults personally. And there was another old dynamic at work. As Clarence Thomas’ assistant, I believed my professional role included protecting him. I had listened to Thomas complain that the people in the civil rights community were out to get him because he challenged the conventional way of thinking. I knew he felt that there were those in the administration who did not trust him or his commitment to their ideals. I had to consider how my information might be misused by outsiders and by the administration. I had been schooled by Thomas not to trust either, and I worried that anyone who challenged him on the basis of my information might do so at my expense.
In conversations too embarrassing and hurtful to recall, I confided my problem to Ellen Wells and Susan Hoerchner, and at one point intimated to Brad Mims what was happening, though I did not tell my roommate and friend from Yale Law School, Sonia Jarvis. She was experiencing workplace difficulties of her own and was in the process of changing jobs. Ellen knew Thomas from her time as a Senate staffer in Senator Danforth’s office. By the time she and I met and became close friends, she had changed jobs. Our friendship was based on an affinity despite any difference in backgrounds. We were both socially reserved, but in the Republican world of 1980s Washington we felt like we were renegades. Together, Ellen and I struggled to discover a way that I might keep my job but avoid the behavior. At one point, we even discussed changing my perfume. Mostly, we talked as though I had control over the behavior, though we both knew I did not.
Of the friends I told, not one suggested that I bring a charge of sexual harassment against Clarence Thomas. No one suggested that I go to the agency with oversight authority over Education or file a complaint with the EEOC. Frankly, neither course of action seemed viable, then or now. All I really wanted was for the behavior to stop. I wanted to do my job. Neither my appeals to reason nor my efforts to dissuade Thomas by laughing off his advances worked. In time I became convinced that this was a game to him, one that he controlled and intended to win.
A few months after the noxious behavior began, Thomas seemed increasingly preoccupied with other matters. The administration had stepped up talk about abolishing the Department of Education and there were rumors about another appointment for him. Thomas also told me that he was involved in a new relationship. As gradually as they had begun, the sexual advances and remarks tapered to an end. We had fewer personal conversations and I assumed that the troubled phase of his life had concluded or that whatever distraction or amusement his offensive behavior held for him had died. I was so overjoyed that I did not question cause or consider that it might just as mysteriously resume. My stomach no longer went into convulsions at the thought of going into the office. And gradually, I was able to interact with Thomas without anticipating some repulsive remark or unwanted suggestion. At last, work became a source of pleasure once again.
At the time, I was developing a conference to be sponsored by the Office for Civil Rights. For me it was a logical extension of the research I had done for the article I had ghostwritten for Thomas. Marva Collins, a teacher with phenomenal success in raising achievement levels in Chicago’s urban schools, was receiving national attention. Collins was known for expecting more of her students and had developed a way of communicating that helped them achieve. The kind of toughness her program appeared to promote fit in well with the “self-help” philosophy of the political conservatives in power. I proposed bringing her and others with outstanding teaching records to Washington to discuss their successes and techniques. The conference message would be that minority and poor children can achieve if provided with a proper learning environment. Structuring the program required researching the social science and policy literature on the education of disadvantaged youth. I was thrilled to be able to combine research, which I love, with a practical enterprise. Once again I began to believe that my job gave me just what I wanted and needed out of work.
I worked on this project along with other routine office matters during the winter of 1981 and into the following spring. In the spring of 1982 before the conference occurred, Thomas called me into his office and confirmed the rumors that he had been nominated to chair the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. He advised me that I could
go with him and do the same kind of work there that I was doing at Education. He even indicated that there might be some way for us to continue to be involved in the conference I was planning. Thomas made clear that he would do what he could to protect my position if I decided to stay at Education, but that he had no real control over it. It sounded as though the talk about abolishing the department was serious. In February 1982 David Stockman of the Office of Management and Budget had alluded to administration plans for a “major, sweeping program to hold the deficit down” that included the elimination of the Department of Education. This played into Thomas’ decision to go to the EEOC, even though the administration did not hold that agency in high regard either.
As Thomas explained it, the choice seemed to be between certain employment at the EEOC and uncertain or no employment if I stayed at Education. I did not inquire further about his assessment of the situation. Again I was trying to ignore the personal implications in favor of making a purely professional choice. Consequently, I did not ask him about his past objectionable behavior toward me, nor did I seek assurances that it would not be repeated at the EEOC. As far as I was concerned, it was a closed chapter. I relied on Thomas’ professionalism and hoped that he, too, had separated personal considerations from workplace responsibilities.
Despite my concerns, I knew that Thomas in an odd way was offering me job security. Putting my misgivings aside in hindsight, even foolishly so, I decided to take the job at the EEOC as Thomas’ assistant. I was apprehensive, but I chose to look forward. Again I was attracted by the challenge of learning a new area of policy and instituting some positive programs at the EEOC. In the summer of 1982, as I cleared out my desk at the Education office on Third and C Streets Southwest and moved into the Foggy Bottom offices of the EEOC, I focused on the potential for growth the change offered. The work, the people, even the EEOC offices, were very different from those at the Office for Civil Rights. Whereas the offices for Education had been old, traditional, and utilitarian government office building with beige walls, gray tile floors, and metal furniture, the EEOC office was a newer, modern structure once slated to be a hotel. Still, both were dilapidated. Where the ceiling leaked in the Education office building, the ventilation was poor in the EEOC office building.