JUST INSIDE THE DOOR
Jordan, June
just inside the door June Jordan Can I Get a Witness? Iwanted to write a letter to Anita Hill. I wanted to say thanks. I wanted to convey the sorrow and the bitterness I feel on her behalf. I...
...Senate Judiciary Committee of fourteen white men and made to testify and to tolerate interrogation on national television...
...Is it conceivable that such a young woman—such a flower of white womanhood—would, by herself, have to withstand the calumny and unabashed, unlawful bullying that was heaped upon Anita Hill...
...Anita Hill's dutiful answers disclosed that Thomas had violated the trust of his office as head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission...
...To be a black woman in this savage country: Is that to be nothing and no one revered and defended and given our help and our gratitude...
...Congressional Black Caucus...
...Remarkably, not a single psychiatrist or licensed psychologist was allowed to testify...
...I wanted to reassure her of her rights, her sanity, and the African beauty of her earnest commitment to do right and to be a good woman: a good black woman in this America...
...The only powerful man to utter and to level the appropriate word of revulsion as a charge against his peers—the word was "SHAME"-that man was U.S...
...God is my judge...
...It should be noted that Anita Hill readily agreed to a lie-detector test and that, according to the test, she was telling the truth...
...Meanwhile, Clarence Thomas—who has nodded and grinned his way to glory and power by denying systemic American realities of racism, on the one hand, and by publicly castigating and lying about his own sister, a poor black woman, on the other—this Thomas, this Uncle Tom calamity of mediocre abilities, at best, this bootstrap miracle of egoman-iacal myth and self-pity, this choice of the very same President who has vetoed two civil-rights bills and boasted about that, how did he respond to the testimony of Anita Hill...
...What about spokesmen for the NAACP or the National Urban League...
...These slanderous suppositions about the psychic functionings of Anita Hill were never more than malevolent speculations invited by one or another of the fourteen white Senators as they sat above an assortment of character witnesses hand-picked by White House staffers eager to protect the President's nominee...
...But Ted Kennedy was not on trial...
...I wanted to explode the history that twisted itself around the innocence of her fate...
...3. Why was she "lying...
...God is my judge, Senator...
...This Clarence Thomas—about whom an African-American young man in my freshman composition class exclaimed, "He's an Uncle Tom...
...He's a hypocritical Uncle Tom...
...fore twelve black men of the U.S...
...Tonight my heart pounds with shame...
...And why...
...And not you...
...Can you hear me...
...Although Anita Hill had not volunteered this information and only supplied it in response to direct, specific inquiries from the FBI, And although Anita Hill was promised the protection of confidentiality as regards her sworn statement of allegations, And despite the fact that four witnesses—two men and two women, two black and two white distinguished Americans, including a Federal judge and a professor of law—testified, under oath, that Anita Hill had told each of them about these sordid carryings on by Thomas at the time of their occurrence or in the years that followed, And despite the fact that Anita Hill sustained a remarkably fastidious display of exact recall and never alleged, for example, that Thomas actually touched her, And despite the unpardonable decision by the U.S...
...And with this televised victimization of Anita Hill, the American war of violence against women moved from the streets, moved from hip hop, moved from multimillion-dollar movies into the highest chambers of the U.S...
...The Senators didn't seem to notice or to care that Thomas occupied the office of last recourse for victims of sexual harassment...
...I wanted to assail the brutal ironies, the cruel consistencies that left her—at the moment of her utmost vulnerability and public power—isolated, betrayed, abused, and not nearly as powerful as those who sought and who seek to besmirch, ridicule, and condemn the truth of her important and perishable human being...
...One loathsomely memorable item: John Doggett, a self-infatuated black attorney and a friend of Clarence Thomas, declared that Thomas would not have jeopardized his career for Anita Hill because Doggett, a black man, explained to the Senate Committee of fourteen white men, "She is not worth it...
...Senate Judiciary Committee to prohibit expert testimony on sexual harassment, Anita Hill, a young black woman born and raised within a black farm family of thirteen children, a graduate of an Oklahoma public high school who later earned honors and graduated from Yale Law School, a political conservative and, now, a professor of law, Anita Hill, a young black woman who suffered sexual harassment once in ten years and, therefore, never reported sexual harassment to any of her friends except for that once in ten years, Anita Hill, whose public calm and dispassionate sincerity refreshed America's eyes and ears with her persuasive example of what somebody looks like and sounds like when she's simply trying to tell the truth, Anita Hill was subpoenaed by the U.S...
...When a black woman is raped or beaten or mutilated by a black man or a white man, what happens...
...It should also be noted that Clarence Thomas refused even to consider taking such a test and that, furthermore, he had already established himself as a liar when, earlier in the Senate hearings, he insisted that he had never discussed Roe v. Wade, and didn't know much about this paramount legal dispute...
...What about spokesmen for the U.S...
...And I don't care what happens to his punk ass"—this Thomas vilified the hearings as a "high-tech lynching...
...To be a black woman in this savage country: Is that to be nothing and no one beautiful and precious and exquisitely compelling...
...And where were the tears...
...This candidate for the Supreme Court evidently believes himself exempt from the judgments of mere men...
...And, as for those brothers who disappeared when a black woman rose up to tell the truth, listen: It's getting to be payback time...
...And what is anybody going to do about it...
...Government...
...Clarence Thomas glowered and he growled...
...Is there no way to interdict and terminate the traditional, abusive loneliness of black women in this savage country...
...And I am going to say that if this Government will not protect and defend her, and all black women, and all women, period, in this savage country—if this Government will not defend us from poverty and violence and contempt—then we will change the Government...
...Sitting in that office of ultimate recourse for women suffering from sexual harassment, Thomas himself harassed Anita Hill, repeatedly, with unwanted sexual advances and remarks...
...2. Wasn't it the case that she had/has fantasies and is delusional...
...And so, at the last, it was she, Anita Hill, who stood alone, trying to tell the truth in an arena of snakes and hyenas and dinosaurs and power-mad dogs...
...When and where was there ever a black man lynched because he was bothering a black woman...
...I am going to tell her that, thank God, she is a black woman who is somebody and something beautiful and precious and exquisitely compelling...
...How is it possible that only John Carr— a young black corporate lawyer who maintained a friendship with Anita Hill ten years ago ("It didn't go but so far," he testified, with an engaging, handsome trace of a smile)—how is it possible that he, alone among black men, stood tall and strong and righteous as a witness for her defense...
...Is it conceivable that a young white woman could be tricked into appearing before a lineup of incredibly powerful and hypocritical and sneering and hellbent black men freely insinuating and freely hypothesizing whatever lurid scenario came into their heads...
...When he got into hot water for the first time (on public record, at any rate), he attempted to identify himself as a regular black man...
...And his bedfellows, from Senator Strom Thurmond to President George Bush, persist—way more powerful than Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill combined...
...All of the organizational and elected black men who spoke aloud against a wrong black man, Clarence Thomas, for the sake of principles resting upon decency and concerns for fair play, equal protection, and affirmative action—where did they go when, suddenly, a good black woman arose among us, trying to tell the truth...
...Senate...
...1. Why didn't she "do something" when Thomas allegedly harassed her...
...She was set up...
...I have been speaking on behalf of a good black woman...
...he cried, at one especially disgusting low point in the Senate proceedings...
...Can I get a witness...
...And had the Committee allowed any expert on the subject to testify, we would have learned that it is absolutely typical for victims to keep silent...
...He has never been on trial...
...Where did they go...
...From those slavery times when African men could not dare to defend their sisters, their mothers, their sweethearts, their wives, and their daughters—except at the risk of their lives—from those times until today: Has nothing changed...
...But tonight I am still too furious, I am still too hurt, I am still too astounded and nauseated by the enemies of Anita Hill...
...She is a regular columnist for The Progressive...
...We have the numbers to deliver on this warning...
...When and where was there ever a white man jailed or tarred and feathered because he was bothering a black woman...
...What a peculiar reaction to the charge of sexual harassment...
...And where was the laughter that should have embarrassed him out of that chamber...
...Is it conceivable that a young white woman could be tricked into appearing beThe poet June Jordan is professor of African-American studies and women's studies at the University of California-Berkeley...
...She had been minding her business at the University of Oklahoma Law School when the Senators asked her to describe her relationship with Clarence Thomas...
...I, for one, I am going to write a letter to Anita Hill...
...Is it conceivable that this flower would not be swiftly surrounded by white knights rallying—with ropes, or guns, or whatever—to defend her honor and the honor, the legal and civilized rights, of white people, per set Anita Hill was tricked...
...Clarence Thomas thundered and he shook...
...Clarence Thomas was supposed to be on trial but he was not: He is more powerful than Anita Hill...
...Senator Ted Kennedy, a white man whose ongoing, successful career illuminates the unequal privileges of male gender, white race, and millionaire-class identity...
Vol. 55 • December 1991 • No. 12
