Sexual Harassment 20 Years Later

The New York Times
Editorial
Published: October 21, 2011

Twenty years ago this month, Anita Hill stepped into the glare of the national spotlight, testifying before the all-male Senate Judiciary Committee about the vulgar sexual advances she said she endured a decade earlier while working at two governThose hearings brought into the open the problem of sexual harassment — an issue that millions of women privately recognized but rarely discussed. For many, having a way to define and label the behavior was empoweringment agencies for Clarence Thomas, the nominee to the Supreme Court.

Full Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/22/opinion/sexual-harassment-20-years-later.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&src=recg&adxnnlx=1319275258-i8mEVJ0lNORXTyba0gguLg

Supremely Bad Judgment

The New York Times
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: October 23, 2010

In the wacky coda to one of the most searing chapters in American history, everyone remained true to form.
Anita Hill reacted with starchy disgust.
Ginni Thomas came across like a spiritually addled nut.
Clarence Thomas was mute, no doubt privately raging about the trouble women have caused him.
And now into the circus comes Lillian McEwen, an old girlfriend of Thomas’s.

Full Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/opinion/24dowd.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Racial amnesia may be the cure

The Boston Globe
By Anita F. Hill October 29, 2008

MANY OF US who advocate for civil rights lament the fact that the country seems to have forgotten the role race has played in the American experience. We even accuse America of suffering from racial amnesia. Yet, racial amnesia may help Barack Obama and other Democrats on Election Day.
When some Americans remember race, they are reminded of why they and their parents started voting Republican. As President Lyndon Johnson predicted, the exodus began when he supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Even as many in the country were pushing back from racist behavior, those who rejected the federal government's authority to usher in social change captured a portion of the country's political imagination. For them, the laws enacted in the 1960s represented unwarranted government interference on many fronts, and actually contributed to the racial divisions.
States throughout the South abandoned the Democratic Party. Border states and states in the Midwest followed suit, ending histories of straight Democratic Party line representation. Economic concerns played a part as well. But as Sam Gibbons, a Democrat from Florida, observed in 1994, "Republicans have been able to capitalize on [race], creating what is, in effect, an all-white party."
With some, the 1960s' concept of race's relationship to their political choices still holds sway. In 2004, George W. Bush slightly altered the party's racial profile by capturing 44 percent of the Latino vote, but many questioned whether that was an anomaly.
Not surprisingly, because my reality was different, my recollections from the 1960s differ from those who fled the party. I recall a country that rejected Jim Crow laws and committed government resources to assist underfunded and outmanned civil rights champions in overturning centuries of neglect and oppression.
The booming economy of the period played a critical role in encouraging feelings of benevolence. We could afford to put aside racial differences and spread resources like jobs and education. Still, we are yet to come to a consensus on what the reality of race was even then.
Today, as the economy continues to slide, government intervention is not only necessary, it is also desirable. In this context, many are ready to put race aside.
Nearly two generations since that initial shift in voting patterns, some racial memories are either fading or being altered. In a recent CNN poll, 7 out of 10 said that race is not a factor in their decision in the presidential election.
Obama is poised to change America's electoral map by being the first Democratic nominee in decades to win in Virginia, Iowa, and Indiana. Hispanic voters, who helped Bush capture Colorado and New Mexico, favor Obama over John McCain. Democrats in North Carolina, Mississippi, and Alabama may take congressional seats even though Obama may not carry the states.
Regardless of one's political leaning, most would acknowledge that the country is aware of its racial and ethnic diversity, and that for most Americans the stark contrast between the "black experience" and the "white experience" no longer exists. [To read the entire editorial, go to: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/10/29/racial_amnesia_may_be_the_cure/]

The affirmative action provocateur

Boston Globe
By Anita F. Hill
November 5, 2007

GIVEN AN increasing minority population and key locations where minorities are actually the majority, neither Republicans nor Democrats can risk alienating voters by being insensitive to gender or racial concerns. For that reason, both parties should be concerned about how Ward Connerly's "Super Tuesday for Equal Rights" campaign against affirmative action will affect the November 2008 election.
more stories like this
Neither party wants to be seen as resorting to identity politics, but Democratic candidates know they must get a majority of the votes of white women and people of color along with a respectable percentage of white male votes. And Republican presidential candidates are keenly aware that moderate women and Latinos helped give President Bush the edge over John F. Kerry and might have carried other Republicans with him.
Connerly's mission to end affirmative action began in 1995 in California where he succeeded in convincing his fellow University of California regents to end the practice. Since then he has been the face for successful initiatives against it in Washington and Michigan.
From now until next November, Connerly, a Republican, will be campaigning to ban affirmative action in five states - Arizona, Missouri, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Nebraska - all targeted, in part, for their growing anti-immigrant rumblings. According to Connerly, if large numbers of undocumented immigrants are granted legal rights, current affirmative action programs would entitle them to job or educational preferences. By using affirmative action as a proxy for immigration policy, he is taking racial and gender politics to a new level. If he gets his way, voters will associate those who defend granting rights to illegal immigrants with those who support race-based affirmative action.
Connerly counts on anti-immigrant sentiment to attract those who are ambivalent about affirmative action. And white women and blacks, traditional supporters of affirmative action, may think that a vote for affirmative action is a vote for immigrants who will displace them in the job market, and therefore stay home. This tactic may be just enough to affect the election of Democratic candidates. On the other hand, it may also alienate Latino voters who might have voted Republican.
Connerly's true cynicism shows in his decision not to take his initiative to South Dakota, where he recognizes "the Indian tribes are very influential" in bringing in federal programs seen as beneficial to the entire state. That white voters in South Dakota are thus less apt to be polarized by affirmative action and more likely to vote their community interests was part of his calculation.
By exploiting racial distrust, Connerly's campaign employs the kind of identity politics that both conservatives and liberals decry. At the core of his effort is the idea of white male victimization by racial preferences. Moreover, Connerly promotes a fracturing of community interests along racial and gender lines, the very thing he says affirmative action does.
[To read the entire article, go to: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/11/05/the_affirmative_action_provocateur/?page=full ]

Discrimination, harassment, and the NBA

The Boston Globe
By Anita Hill October 15, 2007

THE $11.6 million jury award in Anucha Browne Sanders's sexual harassment case sends a strong message to the New York Knicks sports franchise that sexual harassment will not be tolerated. But the value of the message will be lost if the Knicks and other sports teams respond by hiring fewer, not more, women managers.
Ironically, the NBA has a better record for hiring women than most sports. Though the league does quite well in some categories, this year, the University of Central Florida's Racial and Gender Report Card authored by Richard Lapchick gave the league an "F" for the number of women team vice presidents and a "D" for the number of women employed as senior administrators.
Newspaper accounts of the trial presented a grim picture of Browne Sanders's time with the Knicks. In addition to testifying about how Isiah Thomas harassed her, Browne Sanders, the Knicks' former top marketing executive, described a work environment that was unsupportive of her and her efforts. For example, Browne Sanders recounted that Knicks star player Stephon Marbury called her a bitch because she fired Marbury's cousin for sexually harassing an intern. Both the intern and Marbury's cousin worked for Browne Sanders.
Despite a league policy against sexual harassment, NBA commissioner David Stern has not taken any action against the Knicks. He has said he may recommend "sensitivity training across the league."
In considering the Browne Sanders verdict, I was reminded of an earlier suit that changed the world of sports. In 1977, Melissa Ludtke, a sports writer, successfully sued Major League Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn so that women reporters could have equal access to interview players. The law and the facts were on Ludtke's side and Kuhn, as league leader, should have avoided the litigation.
Even after Ludkte's victory, players verbally and even physically abused female reporters who were simply doing their jobs. The women persevered. But had Kuhn voluntarily opened the door to female journalists he would have sent a message to teams and prevented at least some of the blatantly sexist behavior from occurring.
Sixteen years ago, in the wake of my testimony in the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearing, women coined a phrase, "they just don't get it." "They," of course, were not only members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, but men in general.
In the days after the hearing, I received thousands of supportive letters, the overwhelming majority of which were from women who identified personally with my testimony. Many men who wrote characterized sexual harassment as the fantastic, vengeful invention of disgruntled employees or spurned lovers.
Four women and three men made up the federal jury that concluded that the harassment Browne Sanders suffered warranted $11.6 million in punitive damages. On the day of the verdict and in response to Clarence Thomas's renewed challenges to my 1991 testimony, I received hundreds of supportive e-mails and calls from around the country. To my surprise, about 50 percent of those responses came from men who through their own observations or the stories told them by their mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters understand the problem and its harm.
Neither the correspondence I received nor the Browne Sanders verdict is a scientific public survey. Yet, they both are signs that some consensus around the issue of sexual harassment is building. A kind of "sensitivity training" is already occurring among the population. But the question of just how far are we willing to go to stop sexual harassment remains.
In the male-dominated world of major league sports, one wrong-headed, knee jerk reaction is to eliminate women from the workplace - no women, no sexual harassment, no problem. Not only would that be unacceptable, but as more women armed with law degrees and MBAs seek entry in the business of sports, it would be impossible to maintain.
Browne Sanders has said that she filed her suit for all women, and women will be served if the verdict encourages them to come forward to report workplace abuses. Women will be better served if more is done to prevent abuse from occurring in the first place. Browne Sanders has done her part. Now the NBA should act.
Stern has vowed to put the issue on the agenda for the NBA board of governors meeting this month. At the very least, he should question whether the lack of women in management roles contributes to sexual harassment and other forms of discrimination against them. Conducting an audit of teams' hiring and other employment policies for their impact on women would be a good start. With the Browne Sanders verdict, indications are that Stern has the law and growing public sentiment to back him up.
Anita F. Hill is a guest columnist and professor of law, social policy, and women's studies at Brandeis University and a visiting scholar at Wellesley College, the Newhouse Center for the Humanities, and Wellesley Center for Women.
[http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/10/15/discrimination_harassment_and_the_nba/]