Speaking Truth to Power - Anita Hill [36]
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