Tuesday, October 02, 2007

anita hill on clarence thomas

Appropriately enough, in the context of the jury's findings against Isiah Thomas and Madison Square Garden, Anita Hill today has an op-ed piece in the Times responding to Clarence Thomas's just-published memoir.

Clarence Thomas, back in 1991 during his nomination hearings, accused Congress of conducting a 'lynching' against him. This would have made more sense to me had Anita Hill been a white woman accusing him of inappropriate behavior, I guess. But the fact is that she was, is, African American. This would also have made more sense to me, or at least been somewhat more justified, were Thomas a man who supported affirmative action. But he is an adamant opponent of affirmative action, voting against it again and again. And yet here he was flinging around racially charged phrases, turning a Congressional committee into a lynch mob, in order to avoid having to answer awkward and embarrassing questions. As he so eloquently put it, "
...as far as I'm concerned, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the US Senate rather than hung from a tree." So, according to one of our Supreme Court justices, a woman speaking out against a sexist boss is instigating a lynching. I found him to be disgusting back in 1991, and he seems even more so now, at least in as much of his recent 60 Minutes interview as I could stomach in one sitting. I guess some things never change.

So I am glad that the jury sitting in judgment of Isiah Thomas this week decided that perhaps a woman should be able to accuse a man of mistreating her, to accuse an entire establishment of mistreating her, and not be strung up and lynched for it, figuratively speaking.

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