Anita Hill talks about politics of race and gender
The woman who jolted national politics in 1991, when she accused a Supreme Court nominee of sexual harassment, has a piece of advice for the “#MeToo” movement.
“I say, get better candidates” into political office, Anita Hill, now a Brandeis University professor, told an audience at the downtown Oakland Marriott on Saturday night.
Hill described the current state of race and gender politics as “a network of mutuality” — a phrase she applied to the conflict between a president who flaunts “sexual predation and misogyny as normal,” and a string of allegations that have forced many powerful men to leave their positions.
“It’s hard to know where the country is when you see those two pictures,” Hill said during a speech that drew scattered applause and the occasional chant of “Time’s up!” from the mostly female audience.
Hill was the featured speaker at a lecture presented by Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland; former Oakland Mayor Elihu Harris; the Peralta Community College District; and the Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Center, a community organization in East Oakland.
Hill rose to prominence 27 years ago, when she accused Clarence Thomas of making sexually explicit remarks after she refused to date him. Testifying during Thomas’ televised confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Hill said Thomas made persistent advances and spoke graphically about sex while she was working as his assistant at the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights and later at the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission.
The moment was complicated by racial politics: Both Thomas and Hill are African American; the senators who heard their testimony were all white men.
Then-President George H.W. Bush had nominated Thomas to replace Thurgood Marshall, the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court. Given that Thomas was far more conservative than Marshall, Republicans saw it as an ideal line of succession.
When Hill intervened, she drew ridicule from GOP politicians, including Vice President Dan Quayle, who later called Hill “liberalism’s heroine for the 1990s.”
Thomas denied Hill’s allegations and called the hearings a “high-tech lynching for uppity blacks.” The Senate ultimately confirmed him to the Supreme Court, where he still serves.
Hill addressed that history head-on in her speech.
“When George Bush nominated Clarence Thomas and said he was the best man for the job, we all know he was trying to cover, because he needed an African American to take the place of Thurgood Marshall,” she said. “Not just to be a body, but to replace Thurgood Marshall ideologically.”
Throughout her address, Hill emphasized that race and gender are often intertwined.
Meredith Brown, an attorney and sexual harassment expert who also spoke at the Marriott lecture Saturday, recalled the anguish she felt watching Hill’s testimony, and the Senate committee’s bemused response, in 1991.
“I remember that Senate judiciary hearing as though I were in the room with her,” Brown said. “My stomach was in knots.”
Though Thomas’ confirmation enraged many of Hill’s supporters, it also started a discourse on sexual harassment that would evolve and heighten over the next 27 years.
Today, Hill is considered a historical antecedent for the women who accused film producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment, assault and rape, inspiring a wave of similar charges against men — and some women — in many other industries.
Viewed by many as a reaction to President Trump, who famously bragged on tape about groping women, the “#MeToo” movement spread as a hashtag on social media. Proponents used the tag “#MeToo” to identify themselves as victims of sexual misconduct, illustrating the enormity of the problem.
The movement rattled Hollywood, where top executives in December formed the Commission on Sexual Harassment and Advancing Equality in the Workplace, a body that Hill chairs.
Lee credited Hill with prompting numerous women — including California Sen. Dianne Feinstein and former Sen. Barbara Boxer in 1992 — to run for political office and speak out against sexual harassment in their workplaces. The year after Hill’s testimony — 1992 —was labeled “the Year of the Woman,” a phrase that resonates in the aftermath of the Weinstein accusations.
Though Hill “was humiliated by a committee of white male senators who questioned her motives,” Lee said, “she still rose. She started a movement. One person.”
“I remember that Senate judiciary hearing as though I were in the room with her. My stomach was in knots.” Meredith Brown, attorney and sexual harassment expert