Yesterday a jury determined that Isiah Thomas sexually harassed Anucha Browne Sanders and that Madison Square Garden management fired Ms. Sanders in retaliation for reporting the harassment. According to this story in the New York Times:
Mr. Thomas emerged from the courthouse and said,”I want to say it as loud as I possibly can: I am innocent; I am very innocent. I did not do the things that she accused me in the courtroom of doing.”
Patting his chest for emphasis, he added,”I am extremely disappointed that the jury did not see the facts in this case. I will appeal this.”
Coming as the verdict did on the same day as Anita Hill’s appearance on Good Morning America (previously blogged here), I couldn’t help think of the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings. The Clarence Thomas situation is different in many important ways from the Isiah Thomas situation. To note just one, the former involved public hearings about alleged misconduct by a nominee to the United States Supreme Court; the latter was a lawsuit brought by an employee against her former employer. Both situations involve accomplished African-American men who allegedly harassed accomplished African-American women. Gender issues were at the surface. Racial issues were folded in, minimized, ignored or conflated by the press.
What does it mean for a prominent African-American man to be accused of sexual harassment? Clarence Thomas called it a “high-tech lynching” for “uppity blacks.” Years after the confirmation hearings, Anita Hill observed,”I do not think Strom Thurmond would have embraced Clarence Thomas so readily if his accuser had been a white female”(link here). What both Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill communicated at different times was this: the race of the accuser and the race of the accused factor in people’s assessment of a claim of sexual harassment. For people of all colors who view black men and women as “different” from whites (remember the “down-home way of courting” explanation for Clarence Thomas’s behavior?), the jury verdict against Isiah Thomas validates those views. For those who believe that the justice system treats black men unfairly, it validates the view that “keeping it in the family” is more important than speaking out against sexual harassment.
-Bridget Crawford
