Speaking Truth to Power - Anita Hill [74]
The two parts of my life came together on Tuesday afternoon. Though my students and I didn’t discuss the day’s events in class, they were on our minds. And as I concluded my introduction of the Material on Warranties in Contracts for Sales of Goods, Ovetta Vermillion interrupted my lecture to let me know that the Senate had voted unanimously to postpone the confirmation vote on Thomas and hold a hearing on my claim. I finished my lecture.
Afterward, I attended my second press conference. This time, following my own instincts, I declined to answer any questions except to say that I would cooperate with the committee and preferred that the matter be resolved in the hearing. To a disappointed press, anxious to get started on their own analysis of the content of my charges, I refused to say more. This was not a matter to be tried in the media and reduced to twenty-second sound bites.
The members of the Senate, however, thought differently. In addition to Senator Specter, who had concluded that no harassment had taken place and that my statement must therefore be false, Specter’s colleague John Danforth, Thomas’ friend and mentor, stated that he had asked his friend if the allegations were true and that he believed Thomas’ denial.
Earlier that afternoon a group of women legislators from the House side, including Representatives Patricia Schroeder of Colorado, Eleanor Holmes Norton of the District of Columbia, Barbara Boxer of California, and Louise Slaughter of New York, appeared at the regular luncheon of the Democratic senators. In a scene reminiscent of The Wizard of Oz, in which Dorothy Gale and her friends seek an audience with the Wizard and are turned away at the door, the congresswomen were told to go away and come back later, when Senator Mitchell had finished his dessert. In the meeting that followed, Mitchell advised the women to focus on Democrats like David Boren of Oklahoma, who had pledged to vote for Thomas, and try to enlist their support for a delay. Mitchell himself still seemed to want to avoid an active role in addressing this increasingly volatile issue. His reluctance would later provoke one woman to observe, “So much power and so little leadership.”
CHAPTER NINE
The sentiments expressed in the senators’ comments fell far short of demonstrating any responsibility to the confirmation process or to the upholding of the law. Instead Senator Orrin Hatch attacked the law governing sexual harassment itself, saying that it is “so broad that a person can accuse someone at any time and ruin their reputation.”
The scope of the law of sexual harassment was alternately exaggerated and reduced by the senators in the days before the second round of the hearing. In contrast to Specter, who in effect limited the law to sexual assault or battery when he cited “the absence of any touching or intimidation” as a reason for disregarding my claim, Hatch perpetuated the idea that the law gives anyone license to challenge an individual’s reputation on virtually any grounds.
Senator Hatch’s baseless assessments tapped into a growing sentiment of distrust of civil rights laws. The law governing sexual harassment, found in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, is undoubtedly the law to which he was referring. The Supreme Court recognized sexual harassment claims as valid in 1986, and the EEOC has promulgated specific guidelines for the investigation and evaluation of harassment claims. Federal law provides sanctions against a party who files a frivolous lawsuit. Statistically, the rate of frivolous sexual harassment claims is the same