Speaking Truth to Power

by Anita Hill

  As I explored my feelings toward the community of my birth and choice, my first concern was for the two African American women who followed me at Thomas’ office, Sukari Hardnett and Angela Wright, both of whom told of similar behavior. I felt a sense of guilt and indebtedness to them both. Perhaps if I had brought a claim against Thomas, Wright and Hardnett may not have had to endure Thomas’ behavior. I even recalled other incidents long forgotten. Once when a black female law student, who was married at the time, had sought my advice about a clerkship with Thomas, my own self-doubt kept me from vetoing the idea. I counseled her, never mentioning Thomas’ behavior toward me but suggesting that she proceed cautiously before pursuing the matter—making sure she knew what she wanted. “Perhaps as a married man, he has matured,” I thought to myself. “Perhaps he will treat her differently because she is married,” I rationalized at the time, recalling that I, like Hardnett and Wright, had been single and Thomas was recently divorced.

  Despite the similarities in experiences, both Wright and Hardnett deny that what happened to them was sexual harassment. Though outwardly different, our reactions represent similar ways of dealing with the dilemma raised when black women are harassed by black men. In my own way, I may have denied the behavior, or its effects, by attempting to maintain some semblance of a cordial relationship with him to give the appearance that I had moved beyond the hurt and pain. My reaction was not atypical. After the hearing one writer, a black woman, described her experience with a black man for whom she had once worked. During an interview in his home the man, a minister, husband, and father, propositioned her and bragged about his sexual experiences with “ninety-some women.” When she tried to leave his home, he blocked her way until he heard his son’s car in the driveway. After some prodding she told her boss at the newspaper, but assured him that she “would separate [her] feelings about the man from [her] assignment and do a good story, because a good story was there and that was [her] job.” When she reported the story to her friends, they refused to believe her, and eleven years later she still refused to reveal the name of her harasser publicly. We prove we are conditioned “to handle” such behavior in order to prove that we belong to the race and to establish our womanhood. This conditioning teaches us to deny both the nature of the behavior and the harm we feel from it.

  The dynamics of race, gender, and community expectations made it harder for me to sort out my responsibilities to other women who had worked with Thomas. Both Wright and Hardnett were older and better politically or socially connected than I, if not by much. Though each maintains that she was not intimidated by Thomas’ behavior, Wright’s friend recalled that at the time it brought Wright to tears and sent her away from him trembling, fearful, and angry. We all grew up in a society that tolerated harassment and in a pocket of that society, the black community, where our racial allegiance was measured by our own tolerance of it.

  In our community rules against protesting harassment, domestic violence, and even rape are reinforced by the stories about violence toward and lynching of black men. The experience may hurt the individual, but disclosure, we are told, hurts everyone. “You must protest if a white person calls you a ‘nigger’ but you must not complain if a black man calls you a ‘whore,’ ” is the message we hear, despite the similarly degrading impact. The dilemma to which we are subjected results in a form of self-denial that contributes further to the degradation.

  I recognize that Wright’s and Hardnett’s and my own responses can only be understood within a cultural framework. Yet I am also aware that contextualization of experience can be misused. For example, during the hearings Orlando Patterson, a sociologist from Harvard University, declared that raw sexual language was part of the courting ritual of black American males whose origins are in the rural South—a dialogue misunderstood by the kind of puritanical, white middle-class mores I had adopted in my protests. Patterson concluded that I was rejecting my own cultural standard in favor of “white” standards and associations, a taboo in any community with strong ethnic identification, and one engendering particularly strong disfavor in the African American community where “trying to act white” is viewed as a mortal sin.

  Not only does Patterson’s analysis cast racial blame on the complaining victim of sexual harassment, but as Kimberle Crenshaw pointed out, Patterson’s “courting ritual” explanation gives license to all men, black and white, to use obscenities in social interaction with black women. By placing the theory and language in the context of “courting,” as opposed to a form of maintaining a gender hierarchy, Patterson suggests an interaction, process, or dialogue that black women not only tolerate but enjoy and invite. Thus, black women who are being true to our culture know, understand, and appreciate it. Black women like me who object are being “uppity” and are not “black enough.” The theory is strikingly similar to those espoused to perpetuate slavery and segregation in America. Some justified slavery and the legalized subordination that followed the Civil War as the natural order of the culture of the agrarian South. Those same apologists claimed that the systems were enjoyed by both blacks and whites. As such, blacks “liked” being slaves, could function no other way, and often used slavery and segregation to their benefit. Those who objected were being “uppity” and denying their culture and proper place.

  Patterson’s argument plays on historic political discord in the black community as well. Within the black community the volatile issues surrounding class distinctions evoke some of the same internal conflict raised in discussions of the oppression of black women. Both raise the question of who is best qualified to represent the race. The class conflict reaches back as far as the divisions between W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington. The former argued for equality in all aspects of the society, while Washington asserted that blacks should pursue skills and crafts and forgo, at least for the time being, social equality. The class division is evident today among those who theorize that social programs such as affirmative action strengthen only the middle-class blacks, who have in turn abandoned the “community,” at the expense of poor and working-class blacks.

  By declaring the theory to apply to southern and rural blacks, Patterson is suggesting that the black northerner or intellectual might differ in his courting. Moreover, Patterson is operating in a cultural climate where rural and southern equates with poor and uneducated in the minds of many. The woman who objects to this form of pursuit is attempting to be not only “white” but “bourgeois.” Patterson thus says that the sexual or social pursuit of rural black women, in particular, involves a level of communication which upper-class or urban black women might reject but which the former have no right to resist.

  On Monday, October 7, following my first press conference, I received a telephone call from a man who introduced himself as an officer of the Chicago chapter of the NAACP. His purpose in contacting me was to explain that my complaint was absurd because, he asserted, “Thomas was simply doing what black men do.” The unfortunate response to the caller’s “that’s just the way black men are” theory is that “black women know how to handle themselves.” Both trap men and women into a crude way of interacting.

  Both Wright and Hardnett appear to be strong women who handle themselves well in many situations. I was only too grateful that they did come forward once the press carried my statement. But who could blame any of us for not wanting to become embroiled in the clash that had erupted? We were trained to simply keep our own counsel or at best tell only a few friends. They were advised as well not to encourage confrontation. “Handling” the situation means telling the person who engages in such behavior to stop doing it, finding ways to avoid contact with the person, and ignoring the hurt, fear, embarrassment, and emotional injury the behavior causes—for the good of the race, we are told. But those feelings exist no matter what your race. We must deny our gender in order to maintain our racial identity.

  The invocation of cultural excuses for gender subordination and abuse is not only a distortion o
f community mores, it is a manipulative excuse for illegal behavior. Patterson’s theory represents the unscientific way in which the larger community often deals with ethnic culture—substituting myth for fact, mimicking for analysis, but in essence only validating prejudice. Thus, rank gender subordination, a subtext in our community, continues because of the fear of racism. Unfortunately, that subtext is becoming more and more the main theme as portrayed in popular culture as violence against black women by black men increases, as it does in society in general.

  A community standard which requires that women “toughen up to” gender abuse for the sake of the community creates a complex set of dilemmas. Particularly where toughness requires her to participate in her own denigration, she loses her individual dignity. A requirement that she show her toughness by not protesting such behavior places her at odds with other more broadly accepted definitions of feminine traits and makes her responsible for ending the behavior. In sum, it encourages a dangerous and vicious cycle of abuse.

  As I sat about piecing together the role of social and cultural perception in the events of 1991, I knew that I must look beyond the simple facts and the pat explanations to the broader issues and deeply held presumptions. I even looked to history for a present-day explanation, believing that any society is a total of our experience past and present. In our slave history black women in America experienced the economic exploitation of their sexuality. Even before the law prohibited importing slaves into the country, slave owners saw procreation as a way of increasing the number of new slaves in their holdings. Thus, slave owners used slave women as labor and as a means of continuing the institution of slavery by reproduction. Slave women were forced to reproduce in whatever way the owner deemed necessary. Owners encouraged the raping of slave women to enlarge the slave population. Owners and overseers who participated in this abuse had to justify it to a society which held itself out as maintaining “high moral standards.” They did so in the same manner in which they justified slave ownership. Black people, in general, had been cast as wild and animalistic, subhuman, and thus the enslavement of them was justified as being for the good of both blacks and whites.

  Black women’s sexuality, similarly, was cast as wanton, perverse, and animalistic. As a group they were presumed to be unchaste and eagerly available. Thus, their sexual violation was not an offense. Black women who might have the temerity to complain were accused of being delusional or imagining that they had something to complain about. As the justification goes, the men were participating in activity which the women invited by their nature. Since they presumed that black women welcomed all sexual activity, their violations could not be viewed as rape. The justification often went further, painting black women as sexual aggressors. Thus, those who engaged in sexual activity with black women became the victims. This unenlightened image of black women’s sexuality continued after the end of slavery. And society continued to exploit the image for purposes of titillation as well as justification for abuse of black people in the same way that it exploited other myths of intellectual and moral inferiority it invented to excuse slavery.

  Judge Thomas tapped into society’s shame about the myths of black sexuality when, in his “high-tech lynching” speech, he claimed that the sexual harassment charges pandered to sexual stereotypes of black men. His friend Harry Singleton asserted that he and Thomas had discussed how they had to be above reproach in the Reagan administration, given the sexual “stereotypes all black men deal with.” Neither Thomas nor the senators nor the press recognized how the attacks of the Republican senators pandered to the stereotypes about black women’s sexuality. Falsely casting me as an erotomaniac whose desire for an object prevented me from discerning reality from fantasy fit neatly within the myth of black women’s sexuality. Thus, despite the lack of any supporting evidence, the theory became believable. False claims about sexually provocative comments, behavior, and demeanor aimed at young white males at Oral Roberts University fit within the myth of black women as sexual aggressors who victimize white men. Despite their contextual absurdity, these claims became believable to many. Comparisons between me and the young Tawana Brawley, who exaggerated, perhaps even fabricated, claims of depraved abuse and violence, went unchallenged, despite their dissimilarities, because they fit within the stereotypes of black women’s sexuality. Orlando Patterson’s observation is as false and just as dangerous because it relies on and supports these myths.

  Thomas’ selection and my shunning had its intended effect. Discussion in the white community turned away from the myths of black male sexuality and regrettably focused on the myths of black female sexuality. In 1925, in her prize-winning essay On Being Young—a Woman—and Colored, Marita O. Bonner asked, “Why do they see a colored woman only as a gross collection of desires, all uncontrolled reaching out for their Apollos and Quasimodos with avid indiscrimination?” But for the timing, Miss Bonner might well have been asking the question about the Senate Judiciary Committee members and Senator Danforth who sought to portray me as an erotomaniac. She could well have been referring to David Brock, whose fraudulent portrayal of me, presumptuously entitled The Real Anita Hill, hinged on sexual mythology about black women and society’s willingness to believe it. Because Brock supported his case with fabricated and misquoted sources, I was at first amazed that the press gave him such broad license to define me. (He admits to never having talked to anyone who was at any time close to me. On the other hand, the information which he reports on Clarence Thomas comes from many of Thomas’ political allies—in some cases the same people who provided information critical of me.)

  When I realized the insidious resonance of these myths, the fact that reviewers failed to question Brock’s lack of balance is no longer surprising. In today’s society, with its demand for quick answers, David Brock’s writings and others of its ilk often pass for analysis. Today’s investigative journalism too often relies on salacious rumors to define a character. Yet despite the refutation of most of his material, many will believe David Brock because they are more comfortable rejecting my testimony than that of Judge Thomas. For to reject Judge Thomas’ testimony, one must conclude that a perjurer is sitting on the nation’s highest court. Moreover, those who have invested in his career, many of them highly placed and powerful, such as Senators Danforth and Specter, have placed their own judgment on the line in supporting him. To capitulate now would mean to admit a gross error and might even call for recompense.

  David Brock is a product of the times in which we now live. As a white male he is given permission to define me, a black woman, on whatever terms he chooses, without establishing any credentials to do so. He is presumed to be free of bias, no matter how obviously biased his work may be. Many accept his claim to sources without reference to who they are or what their bias may be. Responsible journalists failed to see that there is a special danger in this approach, where it targets individuals who have been historically portrayed negatively without support. All too often all women and all men and women of color must then rebut the assumption created by misinformed definitions of us despite glaring logical inconsistencies. None of the critics questioned why a woman, as ambitious and politically and sexually aggressive as the woman portrayed by Brock, would ever go to Oklahoma to teach at an unaccredited, conservative, Christian law school. No one ever asked why that same aggressive, ambitious character would wait ten years to “get Clarence Thomas.”

  Brock was very adept at getting many of his reviewers to view me through the same warped prism from which he views me. They, like Thomas’ political supporters, do not relish facing the hard question of what acceptance that Thomas was untruthful means. Would journalists have an obligation to demand his removal from the Court? Would journalists have then to consider that their own role in covering the hearing may have contributed to the likelihood of the confirmation? Unwillingness to address these questions provides incentive to believe both Clarence Thomas’ and David Brock’s dishonesty. That same history and culture mak
e it easier to believe mine.

  All of Brock’s false claims, accusations, and theories fall into a void about black women, another void about women who raise harassment claims, and still another, even larger void of misogyny. Brock’s claims made about a black woman and supported by an expert of black social behavior in the context of claims of sexual impropriety presented a perverse and incredibly burdensome obstacle for me to overcome. In the context of the hearing, false rumors about my behavior and wishes flourished. One source falsely asserted that I did not want Angela Wright to testify because I feared that her more “openly sexual” demeanor might negatively reflect on my testimony and my more reserved demeanor. One colleague from Oral Roberts University, who ascribed overtly sexual intentions to my behavior, suggested that my reserved demeanor was intended to be a sexual come-on.

  Angela Wright’s reaction of denying that Thomas’ comments bothered her and even my reaction of trying to maintain a cordial relationship are ways of coping with years of these combined stereotypical definitions of our sexuality. At one point in preparing for her testimony, Wright was told to borrow a skirt because the pantsuit she was wearing was not demure enough. Perhaps Thomas relied on our vulnerability to these stereotypes when he targeted Wright, Hardnett, and me—three young, single, workplace subordinates—for this kind of attention. Certainly, consciously or not, the Republican senators and some analysts relied upon them when they attacked our charges about the behavior.