Close your eyes. Can you remember what you were doing in October of 1991? Zoom in on the crisp fall days of the Senate hearings when Anita Hill stood up and told her truth. Can you see it?
I can. I was a senior at Yale, and I had a very cute boyfriend whom I berated constantly for using sexist, homophobic language -- like calling a guy who wouldn't stand up to his girlfriend a pussy or a fag. He was a very nice young man from a well-known activist family that had fought for civil rights for generations. He said he was talking like one of the guys, and that I was blowing things out of proportion.
I wasn't having it. I had taken bell hooks' class the semester before. I had grown up crawling around the Ms. magazine offices and spent summers at my godmother Gloria Steinem's house. My mother was one of the most visible black feminists in the world. All of which meant that the boyfriend and I had some lovely discussions about Rousseau and the Enlightenment over ramen at my tiny off-campus apartment, but we almost came to blows over what I found to be his unfathomable utterances of patriarchal subterfuge.
And there was more, much more, happening that fall. The shocking footage of Rodney King being beaten mercilessly by the Los Angeles Police Department was viral before any of us even had email. George H.W. Bush was after Roe v. Wade, restricting access to reproductive choice for women and families -- one law, one county, one clinic at a time.
In other news, my generation was marked with a giant X that, we were told repeatedly, stood for unengaged, apathetic, self-absorbed children of Reaganomics, dilettantes who only wanted to make a ton of money. Newsweek screamed that feminism was dead, and the civil rights movement was, too. The pundits opined that this generation without a name had moved on from the equality game. Our parents may have marched, but we were going to business school.
But the hype never rang true to me. My friends and I were the opposite of apathetic. We were consumed. Van Jones and I argued on street corners in New Haven, Conn., about whether it was more effective to work for change within the corridors of power and privilege or outside of them. A brilliant law student I dated for a bit introduced me to KRS-One and Boogie Down Productions -- and their recycled slogan: By Any Means Necessary. After dinner we talked about how to apply the missive to build and control black media outlets.
My friends and I walked down the street listening to Tracy Chapman sing "Talking 'Bout a Revolution" on our Walkmans with tears streaming down our faces. U2's anthem to Dr. King, "Pride," blared on the quad. I stayed up all night talking with a dear friend about starting an ACT UP chapter on campus in response to Bush's refusal to mention AIDS at a point when thousands were dying of the disease. Two black women at my university attempted suicide, and we demanded a more substantive response from the administration to the high rates of depression among women of color on campus.
And we started a magazine for "people of color," a term that was fresh to our ears at the time, in hopes of bringing all the isolated groups together -- African Americans, West Indians, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, even the Chinese dissidents given asylum in our hallowed halls. Wasn't it a matter of those with power and those without? Wouldn't we stand a better chance if we joined together?
Contrary to the media's assessment, my tribe of Gen Xers was forging the language of coalition politics -- now known in academia as intersectionality theory -- by discussing the constructs of race, gender, sexual orientation and socioeconomic status, and how these identities were used to categorize and divide us. Our understanding that the world needed to shift in response to the overlapping oppressions and suppression of marginalized people was at the core of our personal and intellectual lives.
But it wasn't until the fall before my graduation that we got our chance to test the baby we were incubating. It wasn't until Hill spoke up and revealed the ongoing discrimination, the still-yawning chasm between powerful and powerless, that we found a place to enter the political fray and share our passion for change.
Ten years later, when the twin towers were struck, students at my alma mater sat together before large screens and absorbed the shock collectively. But when Hill stood up and said that Clarence Thomas had repeatedly made lewd, offensive, degrading comments to her, there was no huge television for us to watch. There was no Google to constantly refresh on the subject.
We heard about the hearings from our friends who had televisions, who read the newspapers -- all of them -- every day. I heard about them from friends in the movement, women of all ages and backgrounds who were in New York and Washington -- ground zero, so to speak -- who called to give me updates and ask for my response.
Which I gave. Stridently. Informally, in radio interviews, and formally in an article for Ms. magazine called "Becoming the Third Wave," both an ode to Hill and a manifesto for a new generation of activists. In addition to other exhortations, I suggested that we not sleep with men who did not respect us. I declared that I was not a postfeminist feminist, but the Third Wave. In other words, I said, no, the fight wasn't over. The next curl was just about to crash onto the shore.
Hill's courage made me write those words. And those words sparked letters from hundreds of young women who concurred. They were the Third Wave, too, they said, and what were we going to do about it?
If the history were known, I could simply say that the rest was history. But when the people at the center of the history are black, or women, or gay, or poor or all of the above, this is often impossible. So I won't say the rest is history, because it isn't, but it is out there on Google: the New York Times statement by African American Women in Defense of Ourselves, the sparking of the national LGBT movement called ACT UP and the tremendous outpouring of activism of all kinds in the early '90s -- from local, direct-action campaigns to the formation of progressive PACs and wealth-redistribution plans in the guise of 501(c)(3)s. That history is out there because Hill resisted erasure. She made sure her story was on the record, and that encouraged so many of us to do the same.
As for me, I graduated and, with a diverse group of other deeply motivated Gen Xers, founded Third Wave, a nonprofit dedicated to the empowerment of girls ages 15-30, then a completely underserved demographic within the philanthropic and advocacy worlds. Twenty years later, thanks to Hill, who supported our very first voter registration in inner cities and spoke to our intrepid team along the way, Third Wave has given millions of dollars to help young women make meaningful change in their lives and communities.
Thanks to Hill, a new generation of feminists and social-change agents were given their moment to shine, and many have been going strong ever since. While Hill has gone on to produce brilliant scholarship and create a life very separate from those hearings, many continue to draw upon the energy of her strength in those moments. We remember what she wore when she stood up to pledge to tell the truth, but most of all, we remember what she said.
Originally posted on The Root.
Follow Rebecca Walker on Twitter: www.twitter.com/rebeccawalker
I came through those times as well and there were more than a few women exploiting the woman movement and social climate of the times. There would have to be questions of timing, opportunism and why a willing woman movement was completely willing to accept Hill and her story at face value. It all suggesting that truth was not the issue, that the response was more a matter of gender loyalties, opportunism and the climate of the woman movement and the nation at that time and the question remains was it all true. All prospered from her reality or her suggestion to fact.
The question remains was she lying for selfish reasons or was she simply an opportunist of the times. Views tend to run along the lines of personal loyalties and politics and all have forgotten the true reality and nature of the truth. Does she honestly deserve so noble a place in history may be the larger question and is she defined not in truth or reality but the creation or the need of a movement and its loyalties and the willingness of those involved to live in selective reason and beliefs accordingly?
At that time, I was the only female employeed as a computer technician and I worked for a large bank. There were days when vivid photos of naked men were left at my station, and off-color jokes being freely bantered, loud enough for me to hear. My superiors shrugged this off. I refused to resign and I dared not show how offended I was. And then came Anita Hill. God bless her.
Thank you for sharing your article. I have only praise for your efforts across all corridors of life. Women must continue helping women.
If we all want universally better treatment for all people why not make laws to enforce standards of conduct which cover everyone instead of targeting America's 'victim of the week'. If we think that would be too intrusive then restricting sexual harassment is also. Any behavior which causes another person to feel uncomfortable would need to be regulated by federal edict by the precedent sexual harassment creates. These rules target men disproportionately because men are still the sexual aggressors in spite of all this equality talk. They already had to take the risk of rejection and now that's combined with risk of losing their job.
Such emotionally based policies to protect women are not rooted in equality but men's preference to make make women happy regardless of the cost. Men did not go about making rules for the work place to protect the emotional welfare of men but they did do so for women. To this day men are still filling the most dangerous professions and work in the harshest conditions. They would prefer to put a man at risk rather than a women. Still we see them working much harder to accommodate the desires of women long after practical equality has been achieved.
So since men just love being so nice to women, I wonder when women will recognize this and try just as hard to make the men around them happy.
Lol, you keep saying this. Where's the evidence? All I see on huffpo are men like yourselves whining about women and lecturing them on how they should be different.
Why didn't she say lodge a complaint when the alledged actions by Justice Thomas supposedly occurred?
Where are the witnesses? She is not credible. At all.
Where are the convictions for sex crimes????
So you just assume because one person makes allegations against another with no witnesses, no physical evidence, and years after the alledged acts occurred, that those allegations are correct?
You can accept that a lawyer didn't know what to do or how to procede in a case of alledged sexual impropriety?
Please excuse yourself from jury duty, if ever called.
Some day she'll receive national honors for her courage.