The Legacy of Justice Thomas

Seeing Clarence Thomas all over the television, once again using florid language drenched in civil rights era imagery to describe his victimization as a conservative black man really takes me back. The Thomas hearings were the first time I recall seeing the right wing directly appropriate liberal rhetoric and throw it back at them. (It may not have been the first time it was done, but it was the first time I noticed it --- and realized how powerful it could be.)

Thomas was an arch conservative who nonetheless used his experience as an oppressed minority to shut down debate about his ideology. It was quite brilliant in its way. It paved the way for the thousands of similar uses of liberal "politically correct" rhetoric to advance the most politically incorrect causes to come.

The hearings unfolded very dramatically. George Bush the elder had insisted that he had chosen Thomas because he was the best man for the job rather than admit that he was one of the few black conservatives available to fill the Thurgood Marshall seat on the court. (I have often wondered what would have happened if he'd openly admitted that he wanted to ensure the seat was held by an African American rather than advance that fatuous line.) The nomination was steeped in racial significance, which the Republicans exploited as if they were marching hand in hand with Martin Luther King across the Edmund Pettus bridge. But regardless of that, the controversy over Thomas wasn't about race, and despite Thomas' recent insistence that it was about abortion, it wasn't about that either. It was about women's rights in the workplace.

At the time of the hearings I had been working for nearly 15 years, toiling in traditionally male as well as traditionally female jobs -- from pipeline construction to the the pink collar ghetto. I think I had been exposed to every form of sexual harassment and nasty male behavior by that time in both its obvious and subtle permutations. But I didn't even know there was a legal prohibition against it until the hearings.

What I remember most clearly was the outrage that I (and many other women it turned out) felt when we found out the men on the Judiciary Committee had cavalierly dismissed Anita Hill's story.(At the time there were only two female senators, Kassebaum of Kansas and Mikulski of Maryland, neither of whom were on the judiciary committee.) I may not have known that there were legal issues involved with what Thomas was accused of, but I certainly knew that Anita Hill's statements would be important to working women. So did the seven women House members [1] who marched on the Senate to bring attention to Hill's testimony and demand that the senators address it.

The senators were extremely upset about it, whining and complaining that they couldn't possibly use the august setting of the US senate to discuss such an insignificant issue. But they had no choice.

The hearings were riveting, with Hill and another lawyer, Angela Wright, testifying that they had been on the receiving end of the kind of workplace sexual power game that women understood very well. If they hadn't experienced it themselves they had very likely seen others endure similar situations --- women smiling tightly in meetings when some fellow made an inappropriate remark about her clothing as she was trying to make a presentation. Or the office assistant who dreaded going into her bosses office alone because he would regale her with stories of his sexual adventures. Seeing Anita Hill reluctantly testify to the same kind of treatment was both depressing and strangely comforting.

At the time I was working in an office with a high powered lawyer who was completely out of control, harassing virtually any female who came across his path with crude sexual banter and brazen come ons. It was the worst case I'd ever seen. But again, I didn't even know there were legal sanctions against his behavior, much less did any women in the office feel like taking on such a powerful man and losing their chance at advancement or possibly even their jobs. For the first time, as I watched those hearings, and saw those men up on the dais, clueless and condescending toward the "little bit nutty and little bit slutty" Hill, implying she was some sort of lying deviant, I realized that that this behavior could no longer be tolerated. I suspect that many other women did too. It was laid right out there, exposed in all its sexist glory among those powerful, privileged men, and our society's understanding of what was and wasn't acceptable in the workplace changed virtually overnight. (And four new women were elected to the Senate the next year.)

Thomas made a dramatic prime time appearance before the committee and evoked the language of Jim Crow, famously proclaiming that he was the victim of a "high tech lynching." His new autobiography indicates that he's never moved on from that moment, still trying to explain the issue as some sort of racist attack (as if Hill wasn't black as well) and smearing her all over again. In his 60 Minutes interview he said that she was the type who could have defended herself if she had a problem with someone -- both implying that she was a liar and a bitch. That is, of course, a typical rationale of sexual harassers.

Most workplaces today have a clear written policy against sexual harassment and the legal sanctions are well known by all. But Justice Thomas still doesn't seem to have recognized that his behavior --- and the evidence is clear that he did behave this way --- was wrong. Instead he has nursed his grievances against women, liberals, anyone he sees as his enemy, and there seem to be legions. He didn't learn a thing.

But the rest of the country did. This arch conservative, anti-feminist unwittingly and against his will may have done more to advance the cause of women's rights in the workplace than anyone else on the Supreme Court today. His greatest legacy will be that his inappropriate behavior woke up the nation to the issue of sexual harassment. And perhaps that explains why he is still so bitter and angry. That's the last legacy he would have ever chosen.