Evidence of Misogynoir
The character assassination of and lessons to be learned from Anita Hill’s testimony
Justice Clarence Thomas is known for his silence during oral arguments. Holding a modern record for silence on the bench, his voice was only heard behind his pen used to author conservative opinions. Thomas has since been lauded for his reserved demeanor as it has been viewed as a political strategy he invokes at length.
Invoking silence, however, is not a privilege that is afforded to all as Anita Hill would learn in 1991 when she became the focus of Thomas’s confirmation hearing.
Hill, a Black lawyer, alleged that Thomas had sexually harassed her. She would later admit after all the pomp and circumstance of the hearing that “it would have been more comfortable to remain silent,” however, given the gravity of the nomination and the impact the hearing has had, she is fortunate to have brought the issue of sexual harassment to light.
Anita Hill’s background contributes greatly to the proceedings. Hill is the youngest of thirteen children and grew up on a farm in Oklahoma. She attended Oklahoma State University and like Thomas, attended Yale Law school. She met Thomas at the DoE where she was his legal advisor when he was the Assistant Secretary. At the time of the hearings, Hill was a professor of law at the University of Oklahoma, alleged that he had made unwarranted sexual advances toward her when she first worked with him at the DoE. Although the harassment ended after repeatedly refusing him, it would soon resume once he became the head of the EEOC. Finding his consistent harassment intolerable, she decided to leave, choosing instead to accept teaching positions at the Oral Roberts University, and later, and at the time of the hearings, the law college at the University of Oklahoma. In the public’s eyes, her status as a highly educated Black woman made her more of an appealing and credible witness compared to Angela Wright, another accuser of Judge Thomas. Both Hill and Wright were subpoenaed by the Senate Judiciary Committee, although Hill was the only one to testify. Why was that so?
Many believed it was because Hill personified the ideals of a Black lady, which Kimberle Crenshaw would describe as a Black woman who was a “hardworking professional who works twice as hard as everyone else.”
The trope suggests that this type of woman is respected, comes from a middle-class background, has a dedicated work ethic, is asexual, and is also assertive. Wright does not fit within this mold as her depiction in HBO’s Confirmation showcased anything. Wright was Thomas’s Director of Public Affairs at the EEOC and alleged that he too sexually harassed her. Like Hill, Wright was vilified by members of the Committee who thought she too had come up with lies to tarnish Thomas’s credibility. However, unlike Hill, Wright had been portrayed as an angry Black woman who held a vendetta against Thomas. The portrayals of both Anita Hill and Angela Wright are important to note when understanding the whole nature of the proceedings and it affected Black women.
The hearings did more than just expose the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace. It also highlighted the need to consider political intersectionality when we are addressing situations. Political intersectionality, according to Kimberle Crenshaw, “highlights the fact that women of color are situated within at least two subordinated groups that frequently pursue conflicting political agendas.” When assessing Anita Hill’s testimony, it is clear that her race and gender came into conflict with one another. In accusing Thomas of sexual harassment, Hill had found herself on the side of feminists who staunchly advocated against sexual violence and harassment of women, and on the other side, Thomas and those who had taken the antiracist stance, associating Hill’s charge of sexual harassment to ‘a high-tech lynching of uppity blacks, which in doing so, discredited her own Blackness. Having taken “[a] side against the self,” in Crenshaw’s opinion, Anita, like many other Black women “ have almost always chosen race over the other: a sacrifice of their self-hood s woman and of full humanity” instead.
Moya Bailey, the dean’s postdoctoral fellow in digital humanities and women’s gender and sexuality studies at Northeastern University, would describe Hill’s comparison of Hill’s testimony to the lynching of Black men as a misogynoir, or the “specific hatred, dislike, distrust, and prejudice directed toward Black women.” Misogynoir was highly evident throughout the proceedings as then-Senator Joe Biden, who led the Senate Judiciary Committee, failed to protect Anita Hill from attacks from Republican members of the Committee and the media. Republican Senators on the committee were prepared to defend Judge Clarence Thomas as they saw her claims being made in the 11th hour,’ and not to his superiors while she worked with him at the DoE and EEOC. More specifically, Senators Orrin Hatch and Senator John Danforth believed she fabricated her allegations, supposing that she had based her claims off of a plot from ‘The Exorcist’ and accused her of suffering from ‘erotomania.’ Members of the media are also to blame, as they were the ones and not the members of the Committee who violated Hill’s confidentiality. The media’s role during the hearings, which were streamed, was grand, as it sparked conversations regarding sexual harassment in the workplace and ultimately divided the country, putting people on Hill’s side and people on Thomas’s. On the presidential campaign trail, Biden was condemned for his inaction, lack of rules that would have made the proceedings fair for both parties, and failure to formally apologize to Hill for the damage the hearings had caused her.
The hearings did more than just direct hate onto Anita Hill, it directed hate to Black women as a whole and question their sexuality. History has shown how Black women’s bodies are sexualized, and the treatment Hill received is evidence of that fact.
As Crenshaw points out, “Blacks have long been portrayed as more sexual, more earthy, more gratification-oriented,” especially Black women who “essentially are prepackaged as bad women within cultural narratives about good women who can be raped and bad women who cannot.”
There were people who believed that Thomas’s statements weren’t ‘directly’ harmful as his comments didn’t lead to assault. There were also members of the media and members of the Committee who hypersexualized Anita Hill. In their effort to find the truth, both sides desired to know the veracity of her claims and Thomas’s overall conduct. In doing so, Hill had to provide highly graphic details of the statements Thomas gave her. Given the fact she had to recount the highly graphic and sexually charged nature of his comments for public consumption, it made people question the sexuality of Black women as a whole as she was thought to be a highly sexual person based on the assumption that Black people are sexual beings on one hand, and the suggestions provided by the Black lady trope that believes she is an asexual woman on the other.
Reactions in both the women’s circles and the Black community seemed to not wholly confront the gravity of the situation as a Black woman accusing a Black man of a sexual crime. At the time, White women found commonalities with Hill’s account of sexual harassment in the workplace, but as Patricia Hill Collins puts it, “they regarded her race of little concern.” As they saw it, her race was an additional, but unimportant factor in the movement that Hill had found herself in. Mainstream feminism has often promoted the idea that it speaks and fights on the behalf of all women, but in actuality, it has excluded and neglected the issues that face women of color. White feminists, in their attempt to advocate on Hill’s behalf, failed to recognize the intersections between race and gender. Coincidingly, the Black community labeled Hill as a ‘traitor to the race,’ believing that she had aired out business that was not meant to be made public and should have been dealt with internally. The Black community is overly cautious and guarded of Black men, and there is a reason to be. Lynching was a punishment popularized in the south that witnessed White people falsely accusing Black men of sexually assaulting white women. Ida B. Wells was one of many anti-lynching advocates who came out to defend Black men from made-up crimes that sought to enforce white male feelings of economic and social superiority. Wells believed that if a Black man were to take ownership of such a crime it “would be used against Black men and therefore against all of us,” preferring that if a Black man had indeed sexually assaulted someone, it would not come to light. Wells would agree with the lynching claim that Thomas and his supporter put forth at the expense of disparaging Anita Hill’s character and the nature of her accusations.
Ultimately, Thomas’s lynching comment operated to discredit Black women’s claims of sexual assault and harassment by Black men and advanced the (false) idea that Black men could not sexually assault a woman, let alone a Black woman.
The hearings bore an important moment in American political culture, birthing what has now been described as the #MeToo Movement. Tarana Burke, who is credited with founding the Movement, would agree that had Biden, along with other members of the Committee had taken Hill’s allegations of sexual harassment earlier, the #MeToo Movement would have started back in 1991, rather than it did in 2006. Intensified media coverage of instances of sexual harassment in the workplace skyrocketed after the hearing was nationally broadcasted. If anything, there would not have been investigations into powerful men like film producer Harvey Weinstein and former Fox CEO Roger Ailes. Without Hill’s testimony, we also wouldn’t have seen the eruption of the #SayHerName campaign, a movement that also worked in tandem with the #MeToo Movement which exposed how instances of sexual assault and harassment of Black girls and women go unnoticed. However, the most notable lessons to have been learned from the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill hearings were applied, somewhat, to the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearing. Kavanaugh, similar to Thomas, was accused of sexually assaulting Christine Blasey Ford Ph.D. Ford had come forward to Congresswoman Anna Eshoo and Senator Dianne Feinstein (and later reviewed by the Washington Post) after it was announced that he was President Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court. Like Hill, Ford expressed confidentiality, which was later violated when the media learned of her allegations, and testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Had it not been for Anita Hill’s bravery and the level of scrutiny that has since been waged toward political leaders to fully investigate claims of sexual harassment and violence, the Senate Judiciary Committee would not have investigated and invited Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings.
Anita Hill shed light on what could only be described as a traumatic experience in the face of the world-at-large. However, in the hope of finding justice, highlighting the truth, and speaking out about sexual harassment and other instances of gender-based violence, Hill was staunchly criticized. Although Thomas, like Kavanaugh, was voted to sit on the bench of the Supreme Court, both have had their records tarnished in the process and we have Anita Hill to thank for that.
