Basic Black; 3205; Conversation With Anita Hill

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee and the legacy of the Thomas Senate Confirmation Hearings. That's up next on Basic Bland.

Anita Hill teaches law, social policy, and women's studies at Brandeis University these days. Many of her students were barely teenagers when Professor Hill testified about how she was allegedly harassed by a former boss who became a U .S. Supreme Court nominee. The man she accused was Clarence Thomas, President Bush's pick in 1991, to fill a vacant seat on the Supreme Court. Anita Hill testified while the Senate Judiciary Committee was holding hearings on the nomination. Senator Arlen Spector was one of many members who tried to discredit Hill. Why drive the man to the airport? Why maintain that kind of a cordial association?

It's very difficult for me to understand. It was a real -life drama meshed in sex, lies, politics, power, and race. Hollywood couldn't have produced a better script. Tell the committee what was the most embarrassing of all the incidents? Pornography involving these women with large breasts. America was embarrassed and riveted by the testimony. But what has happened since the hearings? Judge Thomas made it to the highest court in the land, and sexual harassment in the workplace is no longer tolerated. Soon after the hearings, the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission reported a 50 % rise in sexual harassment complaints, and the Senate passed a law allowing those victims to sue for damages of up to $300 ,000. A record number of women ran for Congress in the following election, four got elected to the Senate, and many more won seats in the House. Hill's testimony became the subject of debate and discourse for years. David Brock, who authored the

1993 book The Real Anita Hill, now admits he printed lies to destroy Hill's credibility. How has all this affected the woman who dared to tell her story to a nation? Tonight, Basic Black presents her story in her own words. Professor Hill, thank you for joining us on Basic Black. Thank you for having me. In doing some of the reading about you, one of the things that I discovered was that family is important to you. What did you learn or what did you take from your family that may have helped you in learning and living the black experience in this country? Well, one of the things that I took from my family was this closeness, feeling of closeness, and always a feeling of support and caring that we have for each other. So that really helped me to overcome when I had issues of race or racism. There was a sense that there was someone or someone that I could always go back to

who loved me and understood me and really wanted me to do well. Did you experience racism throughout your youth or not until you get older? Well, it's interesting. When I was experiencing racism in my youth, largely we didn't even understand it as racism so much. It was really the way it was. I went to an integrated school, although my brothers and sisters mostly all went to segregated schools. I didn't have some of the opportunities that white people had in the area because of segregation. But there were some distinctions. I remember for years we went to segregated rodeo and segregated affairs in the community. We didn't even quite understand it as racism. It was life as we knew it. It took a toll, I think. takes a toll that's very

subtle on you, but you get beyond it and you learn to enjoy life. How did you come from that experience and wanted to get into law? Well, I got into law. was very interesting. Growing up during the Civil Rights Movement, one of the things I recognized was that a lot of the women who were involved in the Civil Rights Movement were lawyers. And it was the first time that I actually saw African American women in professional positions. Did anyone stand out to you? Well, Patricia Harris in particular was one of those individuals who I saw photographs of marching and being involved in the movement. Although you had those black women who influenced you in getting into law, you had to have a strong belief or a love for it, too. Well, I had, again, going up through the Civil Rights Movement and in women's rights movement as well, I had a strong understanding of the power of the law and what the law could do if used properly to

achieve equality. And I think that's really where my love was, is the idea of achieving equality through the law, not necessarily loving the law. I asked that because did that have any influence or connection to you, your belief in the law and equality, that it helped you decide, yes, I'm going to go forward with the Clarence Thomas hearings? Well, in 1991, at that point, I had been out of law school for 11 years. I had been teaching law. And I really learned to understand and to believe in the integrity of the law and to understand that if the law meant anything or was to mean anything, not only did the law itself have to have integrity, but so did the courts. And so it was really the strong belief in the integrity of the courts and wanting to believe in the integrity of the confirmation process that brought me forward to give my statement initially to the

Senate and then to testify. Once that was over, you at least initially, was your belief in the law or at least the integrity, did all of that change or did you still hold on to it? I think I held on to it. I had to. mean, I think that one of the things that we have to do is to realize that there's always a struggle and that even though individuals may disappoint us, that there are certain values and principles that we have to hold on to and that they should not be allowed to shatter our beliefs in those things. After all of that, you wrote this book, Speaking Truth to Power. What was the central theme you wanted to communicate to the readers of that book? What I wanted people to understand was that I was a full human being. When I came into the hearing, nobody knew anything about me and you had this little snapshot of me that got manipulated or distorted depending on who was

presenting the snapshot. I wanted people to understand that I was a real human being with a background and with a family and with a support system. So that was the first thing I wanted people to take away from the book. Secondly, I wanted people to understand that these issues are not just one -shot issues. They don't just pop up on the radar screen and then we walk away from them because the television cameras are no longer there and they go away. The issues that were raised in the hearings were issues that were affecting the lives of women every day in the workplace and because of that, it was something that had affected my life in a profound way. You used the title Truth to Power. Can you expound on that, though? Well, I realized that very often the most difficult thing for us to do is to

really understand and see the truth of a situation that sometimes the maintenance of power relies on myths and lies. And the big lie that I think was expressed throughout the hearing was about our experiences, women's experiences in the workplace. That sexual harassment is not a reality. That sexual harassment is something that's fabricated by women who are spurned or who have ulterior motives. That sexual harassment is not harmful. I mean, there were a whole host of myths that people really only come forward for ulterior motives and in my case the allegation was that there were political motives. Would it be fair to say that even prior to the book coming out that your experience with the hearings, what it did do, one of the things it did, was it did make this country aware of sexual harassment. And you had corporations coming

up with policies that if they were in place, they may not have been known. They definitely were known now. And there were also, I think, additional cases or more cases being tried or settled. That's even prior to your book. There was an enormous response. And I can tell you that the response was, the response was affirming in a number of ways. The number of cases filed more than doubled in the next couple of years after the hearings. And the irony of that is that initially the response was, well, no woman is ever going to come forward with a story of sexual harassment now, no matter how truthful she is, because they're going to see the example of Anita Hill and who would come forward. After that, if they expect that to happen for them. what happened was that women said, I don't care if that happens. This is important enough to me that I am

going to fight it. And so I think that's just incredible that even in the face of the possibility of meeting with this kind of adversity, women still came forward. And not only did they come forward, but they came forward and recognized numbers. It was though we opened the door and we no longer had to hide or feel guilty or ashamed that something like this had happened to us. In your wildest dreams, did you think by you going forward with the hearings that you would get that reaction, all those cases, all those women becoming empowered? Did you ever think that was going to happen? I had no idea what was going to happen after the hearings and this certainly exceeded my expectations. You know, I set a goal for myself when I testified and the goal was to be able to state clearly and as convincingly as possible what happened to me, what my experience was. I

didn't have goals beyond that quite frankly. And so the outcomes really have well exceeded what my goals and expectations were because I didn't have goals for the rest of the world. I could only set them for myself and hope for the best. There were people definitely in that committee and in this country who thought you did have other goals. Would you say people thought that? Oh, clearly. Clearly. There were people who believed that I had an agenda and some thought the agenda was good and some thought the agenda was bad. But to the extent that there was an agenda, was more a personal agenda to be able to express my story and to talk to this process, speak to this process that involved the Supreme

Court at least in the public eye. Is it fair to say then that what you wanted to do was provide information to a committee that was deciding whether someone should sit in this court with information so that they could weigh that information in their decision? That was my goal. I felt it was important information. It was relevant information and that this was a critical position in history for a variety of reasons and that they deserve to have the full story. Let's forget about the procedure because we know that went wrong. Terribly wrong. But on the face of that, did you at least exceed in that providing some information? What they did with the information is another story. Well, and that's always the case. That's what I've always said to myself. My job was to provide the information. Their jobs were, they

were supposed to make the decisions. And I think that I succeeded in my job. I do believe that they failed in their job because not because they didn't make a decision that I would have made, but because they attempted to distort what I had done. And I think that's really the travesty of the process. Not the outcome so much as their distortion of my role in the process. By that, do you mean the fact that they attempted or did attack your credibility? Not only did they attack my credibility, but they attack my credibility in less than honest ways. They use information that was false. They use tactics that were abusive. And so it was not simply that they attacked my credibility. I didn't mind answering questions

about my experience to people who doubted my truthfulness. But what I didn't appreciate and what I think most people reacted to when they reacted negatively to the hearings was that the committee that was supposed to have been open -minded, that should have been open -minded, were not open -minded. And that they were abusive and that they were willing to say, seemingly to say and do anything to destroy my credibility and to further what seemed to all of us to be a political goal. When I read the book Speaking Truth to Power, and you mentioned that how they attacked your credibility, as opposed to really investigating the claim of sexual harassment, one of the things that struck me was, because now, especially looking back at it, I was 27 years old then, I say, know, Professor Hill, you're in law, a lawyer. And for somebody who's outside of the legal field, when you think of those men who were up there in that committee, a lot of them lawyers? Some of them were lawyers, most of them, I imagine.

They took this posture of whatever it takes to make their client look better, or to get their client off, whatever you want to call it. And so some people say, wow, that's not really surprising for lawyers, or some lawyers. Have you ever heard that before? Well, I guess it is surprising in this sense. They took on prosecutorial roles, particularly Arlen Specter. And it's surprising because when I came to the committee, I was a witness, just like any other witness who had come before that committee. And I deserve the courtesy that any other witness, this was not a trial, it was a hearing. And they had received other information in a way that was professional and that was open, and I deserve to be treated in the same way. And I think the interesting thing about that is that most of us, even today when women file sexual harassment claims, that's what they're struggling for. They're struggling to receive the same kind of treatment that

people who are not bringing these claims, these kinds of claims, receive. They're struggling to receive the same kind of dignity. People of color want to receive the same kind of dignity that white people receive. Same kind of treatment. Women want to be treated in the same way that men are treated in the workplace. Do you think racial discrimination has not taken a back step at all towards sex discrimination? I think that, at least in the courts, that has not been the case. But I think what's really unfortunate is that how race is pitted against. Race discrimination is pitted against gender discrimination, as though we can only fight one. And for someone who lives in the body of an African American woman who is subject to being discriminated on the basis of race and gender, that's really troubling to me. Because what I experience

is a combination. And so I can't choose one over the other. Have you ever received an apology from any of those senators who are in that committee? Well, I have not received an apology. There's an interesting story. Not one. I don't think that any of them have actually apologized to me. Arlen Specter was asked specifically about an apology. And his response was, well, we've learned a lot from those hearings. This was in 1995, I believe. He said, we've learned a lot from those hearings, and I think we ought to just leave it at that. So I think that we know apology forthcoming from Specter, or probably from any of them. But I do hope that the first part of that sentence is true, that we have learned a lot, and that he in particular has learned a lot. Well, it also, and you also energized a lot

of women to not only run for political office, but nationally and locally, too. And probably, I would guess, on the face of it, to help change what they saw during those hearings, which have some influence on it. Because how men were running things up there, white men in particular, a lot of women rejected that. Do you think the women who were elected have had any bearing or any effect on how those men run things in Washington? Well, I think that the changes have been twofold. First of all, I think that women can bring, in many cases, in terms of the women who have been elected, have brought a different kind of sensitivity to this issue, as well as other issues that are specifically related to women's lives and their experiences. And secondly, I think in terms of the public confidence, there has been a change

by bringing together a representative body that really looks more, just looks more like a reflection of the society that they represent. That's important. Public confidence is important, but I still think we have a long way to go to achieving real diversity. I think most African Americans would agree with you on that. But when we watched you and Judge Thomas up there, and you were telling these stories in front of a number of white men only, you would think that people would take that, whatever side you are on, because black people were hurt by that. They were hurt by, you know, while this dirty laundry is being aired, what have you. But you would think that in some way, they'd come out and, you know, vote more, and that still hasn't happened, has it? Well, I think there was some engagement of African Americans. Back to the hearings, I think that there were some people who really

thought that I had hurt black people in particular, just as there were some people who thought that I had hurt women in terms of their advancement. I think that has been proven to be wrong, because I think the representation of African Americans, at least in the House of Representatives, has been better since 1991. But I do think that there is not an engagement the way we would like to see it. I don't think that the hearings did not bring about a change in the political engagement of African Americans in the same way that it brought about a change in the political engagement of women, generally. And that's something that is troublesome. So if something else could come out of it, or if we could somehow turn back the clock and make something good happen, I think that's one of the things that I would like to see happen. I'd like to see African Americans and all

people of color really more politically active, more politically involved, and aware of what is going on in the country, and aware of their power to have an effect on it. Many people who watched those proceedings thought that was a defining moment for this country. How did you see it? immediately after, I saw it as a challenge to survive. There was still, even after the hearings, there was a lot of turmoil in my life. I went back immediately after the hearings to my teaching and attempted to get life back to normal. That wasn't possible immediately afterwards. And even since then, it's changed tremendously. It's just become a new normal now. So initially, I saw the aftermath of the hearings as another challenge, just to get back to my life and to survive what was a really horrific experience for me.

I knew you got a lot of support from your school at the beginning and during the process. But when you went back home to the University of Oklahoma, what ended up happening? Because you eventually left there and it wasn't under the greatest of circumstances. When I went back to the University of Oklahoma, almost immediately there was this effort to establish a professorship or a chair in my name. And even though I had lots of supportive friends and colleagues at the University, there were a number of people who resisted the idea of establishing anything that honored me. Some of them were at the University. Some were in political positions. And I think most of the opposition came from politicians. But they used their position really to make life very unpleasant for me. But we ultimately

did get the professorship approved by the Board of Regents at the University level and then approved by the State Board of Regents for matching funds. And so I considered that really a victory for individuals who really take risk and who stand up for what they believe in. I want to shift gears a little bit and ask you, how has being Anita Hill affected or influenced your professional or personal relationships? We need to start the show over again, start from the beginning. Professionally, I did make a choice to leave a comfortable position, somewhat comfortable position, teaching law in mostly in the commercial area to move to Boston and teach at Brandeis and teach in a School of Social Policy.

Personally, the loss of anonymity has been difficult. I have always considered myself a private person. I still haven't gotten comfortable with the idea of being a public figure. And so it's difficult for me to really be in public and realize that I could be confronted any moment by someone who may be very kind, but also at the same moment or in the next moment, be confronted by someone who is very hostile. And so there's a certain amount of discomfort that I feel. But at the same time, I have a life to live, I have to buy groceries, I have to pick up my laundry, go to the service station. And so I have to go on as though it doesn't impact my life. Do you go around Boston and do people come up to you and profess their like for you, their love for you and their hatred for you? Does that happen to you here? Well, as a matter of fact, I've been very fortunate in Boston. No one has actually come up and profess their hatred for me

here. And I don't want to invite that to happen either. No, we don't want But at the same time, it has happened in other places. How would you want history to remember you if you were able to have an influence on writing it? Wow. I think if I had to sum up what the whole experience meant to me, and what I would like to reflect throughout my life is the integrity, is integrity to use a word, a single word. For me, coming forward was about the integrity of the process, the integrity of the court. But it was also about the integrity of my own testimony. And that's what I would like to reflect throughout my life. A real belief in honesty, a real belief in a system of laws that is fair and impartial. But also a belief that we really have to work hard

to make sure that that is maintained. And that sometimes you have to take some personal risk in order to do that. Anita Hill, thank you for joining us on Basic Black. Again, I want to thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure. Mine too. For questions and comments, please contact our website at wgbh .org, keyword Basic Black. Thank you. Thank

Thank Thank you.