Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and Us

Yesterday I went to the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema to see a documentary about Anita Hill. It focussed especially on her testimony given to a committee of the US senate responsible for the appointment of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court in 1991. Because Anita had held two positions working closely with Thomas, one as his assistant, a job which she had resigned seven years earlier, and later, as a colleague working on issues of equality, she was asked to appear before the committee as a witness to his worthiness as a Supreme Court candidate. Before receiving this invitation, Anita was aware of the likelihood that she would be called. Knowing the importance of the position that he would hold, she believed it her duty to speak of the sexual harassment that she had endured while Thomas’ assistant. Though she had spoken in private to colleagues at the time, Anita had not gone public about her experiences. In the mid-1980s cases of sexual harassment were not taken seriously; judges in general would not hear them; and, complainants were often tarnished and vilified. Anita saw that her only option was to resign. Later she accepted a position with Thomas, not as his assistant but working along with him and a larger team. In that role she was not subject to the former abuse.

Her testimony was given over one seven-hour day in a court room filled with spectators and media, before a panel of about twenty republican and democratic senators – all white and all male. She sat alone before them at a large table, without notes and without the usual legal counsel that accompanies witnesses at hearings of this kind. Her testimony was clear, intelligent, and patently true. The discomfort of the men before whom she spoke was palpable. She came forward not with an accusation but with a description of the actual experiences that she had endured while Thomas’s assistant. Taking turns the panellists asked her detailed questions in various forms about her experiences and about her motivations for testifying. Her poise and clarity of expression were wonderful. She spoke of things never before approached in a senate hearing: his references to women with large breasts cavorting sexually with one another in porno films that he watched; his graphic descriptions of the size of his penis and of his sexual virility; his throw-away remarks like, “Who put these pubic hairs on my coke can?”, and, his invitation for her to see him “socially.”

The hearing became a far from subtle case focussed, not on the candidate himself, but on the character and veracity of the witness called to speak about him. Her motives were questioned: was she a woman scorned? Did she seek some preferment or notoriety through her testimony? Why did she not come forward publically seven years earlier when the experiences she was describing were happening? Her examiners did not or would not understand the climate within which women worked in that era. Had she spoken to others at the time? Four witnesses came forward, all lawyers or judges, friends and colleagues of hers during the period under examination. All recalled the concern with which she had spoken with them about Thomas’ behaviour.

The following day Clarence Thomas was called to give testimony. He began with a powerfully indignant statement of total innocence of the events that Anita Hill had recalled. He characterized her entire story as an attempt by powerful entities to undercut and to destroy, to symbolically lynch any black man who had the temerity to try to raise himself to a position of influence in the United States. Following his brief declaration a profound silence temporarily reigned in the committee room. After a few perfunctory questions, the chairman, Joseph Biden, called the hearing closed. Within a few days Clarence Thomas was confirmed by the senate committee in his appointment by George HW Bush to the Supreme Court. He presides there still, now the chief justice, the head of what is called the Thomas Court, handing out judgements that confirm and further the republican agenda – recent judgements, for example, that legitimize the expenditure of the so-called C-Pac unlimited moneys on the support of candidates for public office.

Because Anita Hill’s testimony about Judge Thomas and her experience at the hands of the senate committee were televised, that seven-hour day had broad and deep ramifications not just for Anita herself but for the climate within which all working women had been living. Her testimony so truthfully and courageously given touched and liberated others who recognized experiences of their own in her words. Women journalists, congresswomen, women of diverse backgrounds and situations began to speak openly and publically of the issue of sexual harassment as it was lived at work, at school, in any situation where power could be brought to keep women in positions of vulnerability.

Anita herself though broadly supported by her wonderful and loving family and her colleagues and students at the college where she was then teaching contract law, was so harassed and vilified by letters and in person when she was out in public, that she eventually was forced to resign from her tenured position and to move away from her community. One of the things that fortified her during this difficult period was the steady stream of letters that she received from men and women about the influence that she had had upon their own convictions and behaviour in working for a healthy climate for women. She also received thousands of hate letters and threats. From contract law, Anita gradually moved into the area of equality rights. In the USA in particular she holds a special place to this day among the women and men who advocate and work for gender and racial equity.

Lost in the senate committee’s embarrassment over Thomas’ blatant use of “the race card” in his defence, was any sense of shame at the manner in which they had tried to cast doubt upon a young black women who had come at their invitation to speak truthfully of her experiences. The Bush White House and the Republican Party had groomed Thomas for this position. He would be appointed. There might be a racial difference but they were all men and they would stand together, a new twist on The Old Boys Club.

I remember clearly a newspaper story in 1984 which reported on the reaction in our House of Parliament when a report was tabled indicating that one out of every ten Canadian woman was physically abused by her husband. The mostly all-male members broke out in hilarity, tossing jokes back and forth about their own possible aggressions. Three decades later this scene could not be replicated. All of us, men and women, boys and girls, owe much to people like Anita Hill who in both Canada and the US have had the courage to speak about circumstances that could cast doubt on them personally. In doing so they have been part of our on-going understanding that health and happiness for men and women alike necessitate mutual respect and decency. Power politics and harrassment are not dead among us by any means but we have developed and are developing clearer articulations of their instances and of their destructive effects. Anita Hill remains a heroine of this process, a woman who at great personal cost was willing to speak truth to power.