Doubting Thomas
When Ntozake Shange and Michele Wallace published their respective manifestos for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf and Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman in the 1970s they sparked public debates about the state of relations between black men and women. Waged largely in artistic and intellectual circles--Ms. Magazine, for example published early excerpts of Wallace's book--the debates were beyond the gaze of most White Americans. Mainstream America fully confronted the gender tensions within Black America in the autumn of 1991 as Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas was accused of sexual harassment in the workplace in the midst of his confirmation hearings.
As political conservatives who were presumed marginal to the political views of large segments of Black America, Thomas and his accuser Anita Hill, were unlikely characters in the on-going dramas between black women and men. With the confirmation hearings being broadcast in real-time, the debates seemed to project stigmas of deviance on relations between black men and women as if these dynamics were unique to black people. This sense of deviance was underwritten by centuries old racist truisms about black male sexuality--Thomas's apparent sexual appetite--and black female culpability via Hill's presumed political (gold-digging) ambitions.
Thomas, sensing the new technological terrain in which the drama unfolded, famously bore witness to the uniqueness of the moment with his claim that so-called "left wing" attacks on him were representative of a high-tech lynching. While Thomas's language, with its clear reference to Jim Crow-era justice, helped congeal the now popular notion of "playing the race card," his move came at the expense of the real issues that women--and black women in particular--have faced in the workplace. Thus it is ironic that 16 years later, Thomas revisits the drama of those hearings, just as another Thomas--Isiah--is found guilty of sexual harassment of another black woman.
George H. Bush's decision to nominate Thomas--at best a second tier federal judge--as a replacement for the retired Thurgood Marshall, was one of his few moments of political brilliance. The Bush administration anticipated that race pride--or more specifically "race man" pride--would provide the political cover needed to facilitate what was clearly going to be a difficult and controversial appointment. As African American Women in Defense of Ourselves observed at the time of Thomas's confirmation hearing, there was the impression that black communities were willing to "tolerate both the dismantling of affirmative action and the evil of sexual harassment in order to have any Black man on the Supreme Court"
Thomas's invoking of a "high-tech lynching" animated, what remains the Achilles Heel of elite black leadership: when the black man is under siege, all hands on deck. All too often in the drive to close ranks around the "black man falling," it is a black woman or girl who is sacrificed at the altar of black patriarchy. Thomas's employment of what could only be called "the golden penis" clause, essentially re-enacted the silencing of and violence against Hill at the expense of a legacy of violence against of African-Africans that Thomas's own politics help to deny.
That Thomas could credibly treat Anita Hill as little more than an annoying speed-bump on his current "rehabilitate a negro" book tour, speaks to the extent that black women continue to lack real subjectivity in mainstream American society, whether their names are Anita Hill, Crystal Mangum or the woman who was brutally raped in Dunbar Village in July. As journalist Wayne Dawkins recently noted, even Thomas's sister, who the judge unfairly depicted as an example of the welfare state gone-awry, was subjected to the "violence" associated with Thomas's ascension to the high court.
16 years later the travails of black women are not taken any more seriously than they were then. Though the recent judgment against the Madison Square Garden corporation and James Dolan in the Anucha Browne Sanders sexual harassment suit suggest otherwise, the court's decision was largely related to the admission that Dolan (working on behalf of Madison Square Garden) retaliated against her in response to her accusation that Isiah Thomas sexually harassed her. In the larger picture the case does little to stem the tide of harassment and abuse of black women in the boardroom and in the larger society.
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Comments
1.
Matthew Lofton says:
"the extent that black women continue to lack real subjectivity in mainstream American society, whether their names are Anita Hill, Crystal Mangum ..."
When you hold up an absolute liar is your example, this review loses all credibility
10/24/2007 at 1:18 AM
2.
Ralph Phelan says:
"the extent that black women continue to lack real subjectivity in mainstream American society, whether their names are Anita Hill, Crystal Mangum ..."
This is one of those issues where even when even if I understand the complaint, I'm not sure what you would like to see done about it.
What would you consider an appropriate mainstream treatment of the subjectivity of the lying prostitute who helped turn a city upside down and cost it an estimated $30,000,000 in legal judgements (exact value still to be determined) and needlessly terrorized three people, two of whom she had never even met ?
10/23/2007 at 2:38 PM