Speaking Truth to Power - Anita Hill [138]
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