In 1991, when Anita Hill testified in Justice Clarence Thomas's confirmation hearings, the country had never seen a high stakes confrontation between a black man and a black woman over illegal workplace sexual misconduct. Now, sixteen years later, its fair to ask whether anything has changed in the climate for women of color in the workplace.
Now, in the Knicks lawsuit we have a different set of allegations from a poised, well-educated black woman, Anucha Browne Sanders, a Princeton graduate and former Northwestern basketball star who told a Manhattan jury that Isiah Thomas, the coach for the Knicks basketball team, called her a "bitch" and a "ho" and other profanities. Browne Sanders, the Senior Vice President for Marketing for the Knicks, also charged that she was fired in retaliation for her complaints to management. She testified that Thomas's abusive language then turned to ardor, including unwanted "kissing" and invitations to "go off-site" with him.
Both women were greeted with character attacks and retaliation. Browne Sanders was fired. Anita Hill was vilified first by Senators on the Judiciary Committee and then by conservative writer, David Brock in his book "The Real Anita Hill", filled with personal attacks, that he later recanted.
Some things have changed and some have not. One thing that has surely changed is that ordinary citizens, members of a Manhattan jury are prepared to sort through the "he said", "she said", the smiles, the dimples, or the righteous indignation about high-tech lynching, to award, not just compensatory damages, but a jaw-dropping amount of punitive damages.
The trial testimony and verdict for punitive damages against the Knicks shows that some powerful black men still choose to concoct a toxic brew of sexually degrading images of black women in the workplace. Anita Hill testified about Thomas's references to a series of the pornographic movies featuring black women with oversized breasts.
Browne Sanders testified that she was called a "bitch" and a "ho" and hugged without her consent. One witness, himself an employment discrimination lawyer, told the jury that he saw Thomas drape his arm over Browne Sander shoulder and say that it was distracting to work next to someone "so easy on the eyes", but that when she recoiled from him Thomas said, "can't I get any love today" . It took Anita Hill almost ten years to come forth, reluctantly, to tell about her experiences. Browne Sanders filed, well within the statute of limitations.
As Professor Tanya Hernandez has written here on Blackprof and in law review articles, her empirical research shows that black women are "overrepresented" among those who file sexual harassment claims with the EEOC. Does this mean that black women are more often the target of sexual harassment, or are they just less willing to rely on internal company procedures to protect their rights?
In the lawsuit against the Knicks we see that some white men can also foster a hostile workplace for black women. Selena Roberts opinion piece for the NYT today identifies James L. Dolan, the owner of the Knicks, as a person who cultivated an atmosphere of sexual hostility and male power trips. The Garden Needs a Warning Label .
Is there a cultural defense to sexual harassment by black men against black women? In 1991, immediately after the hearings ended, Distinguished Harvard Sociologist, Orlando Patterson argued in a NYT op-ed that even if Thomas had said what he was accused of saying, it would have been harmless "down home style of courting" that southern black men used to woo black women, and that Hill would have been very well acquainted with this style. To be fair, Patterson retreated from this untenable position in a book of essays that Professor Hill and I co-edited: Race, Gender and Power in America, and in his book Rituals of Blood.
The Knicks trial featured an embarrassing video deposition in which Isiah Thomas says that it would violate his code of conduct for a white male Knicks executive to call a black woman a "bitch", but that it would be o.k. for a black man to use the same word in talking to a black woman.
Trashing the accuser's professional competence continues to be a favored defense. Although ironically, both Thomases initially praised their accusers. Thomas told the Senate Judiciary committee under oath: "Senator, ...she repeatedly received promotions, as scheduled...In fact she may have been promoted on an accelerated basis. Her assignments, for her age and experience at that time, I think were fairly aggressive". Yet, sixteen years later in his new book, My Grandfather's Son and in a Sixty Minutes interview last Sunday, he referred to Professor Hill as a "mediocre employee".
Isiah Thomas and the Knicks, reading from the same playbook, gave Browne Sanders bonuses that totaled $217,500 between 2002 and 2005, before she accused them of sexual harassment and retaliatory firing. Once the law suit was filed, they told a Manhattan jury that she was fired for flagging competence.
This morning I chatted with Michel McQueen Martin, on her terrific new show on NPR, Tell Me More about what had changed and what remained the same in the sixteen years since Charles Ogletree, and I were on the legal team that represented Professor Hill during her testimony in the Thomas confirmation hearings.
I want to hear from BlackProf readers. What has changed in sixteen years, and what has not? Is the Isiah Thomas verdict a wake up call? Or, can all women, but especially black women, expect more of the same sexual harassment and hostility in the workplace from some of the powerful men and organizations for whom they work?
What do you think?
Brown gets all the attention.
in 1960 to 1.46 million in 2000.
Michael Vick 
