Speaking Truth to Power - Anita Hill [34]
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