Subscribe Login
Jamaica Observer
ePaper
The Edge 105 FM Radio Fyah 105 FM
Jamaica Observer
ePaper
The Edge 105 FM Radio Fyah 105 FM
    • Home
    • News
      • Latest News
      • Cartoon
      • International News
      • Central
      • North & East
      • Western
      • Environment
      • Health
      • #
    • Business
      • Business Bites
      • Social Love
    • Sports
      • Football
      • Basketball
      • Cricket
      • Horse Racing
      • World Champs
      • Commonwealth Games
      • FIFA World Cup
      • Olympics
      • #
    • Videos
    • Entertainment
      • Music
      • Movies
      • Art & Culture
      • Bookends
      • #
    • Lifestyle
      • Page2
      • Food
      • Tuesday Style
      • Food Awards
      • JOL Takes Style Out
      • Design Week JA
      • Black Friday
      • #
    • All Woman
      • Home
      • Relationships
      • Features
      • Fashion
      • Fitness
      • Rights
      • Parenting
      • Advice
      • #
    • Obits
    • Classifieds
      • Employment
      • Property
      • Motor Vehicles
      • Place an Ad
      • Obituaries
    • More
      • Games
      • Elections
      • Jobs & Careers
      • Study Centre
      • Jnr Study Centre
      • Letters
      • Columns
      • Advertorial
      • Editorial
      • Supplements
      • Webinars
    • Home
    • News
      • Latest News
      • Cartoon
      • International News
      • Central
      • North & East
      • Western
      • Environment
      • Health
      • #
    • Business
      • Business Bites
      • Social Love
    • Sports
      • Football
      • Basketball
      • Cricket
      • Horse Racing
      • World Champs
      • Commonwealth Games
      • FIFA World Cup
      • Olympics
      • #
    • Videos
    • Entertainment
      • Music
      • Movies
      • Art & Culture
      • Bookends
      • #
    • Lifestyle
      • Page2
      • Food
      • Tuesday Style
      • Food Awards
      • JOL Takes Style Out
      • Design Week JA
      • Black Friday
      • #
    • All Woman
      • Home
      • Relationships
      • Features
      • Fashion
      • Fitness
      • Rights
      • Parenting
      • Advice
      • #
    • Obits
    • Classifieds
      • Employment
      • Property
      • Motor Vehicles
      • Place an Ad
      • Obituaries
    • More
      • Games
      • Elections
      • Jobs & Careers
      • Study Centre
      • Jnr Study Centre
      • Letters
      • Columns
      • Advertorial
      • Editorial
      • Supplements
      • Webinars
  • Home
  • News
    • International News
  • Latest
  • Business
    • Business Bites
  • Cartoon
  • Games
  • Food Awards
  • Health
  • Entertainment
    • Bookends
  • Regional
  • Sports
    • Sports
    • World Cup
    • World Champs
    • Olympics
  • Videos
  • Career & Education
  • Classifieds
  • All Woman
  • Environment
  • Webinars
  • More
    • Football
    • Elections
    • Letters
    • Advertorial
    • Columns
    • Editorial
    • Supplements
  • Epaper
  • Design Week
WHAT SHE SAID
Lifestyle, Local Lifestyle, Tuesday Style
Sharon Leach | Proofreader  
November 6, 2010

WHAT SHE SAID

It’s been said that women are all links on a chain, and at no other time have I had more reason to agree with this, perhaps, than now.

In 1991, Anita Hill, an aide to Clarence Thomas, President George Bush’s nomination for Supreme Court Justice, caused a scandal of epic proportions when she accused him of sexual harassment in the middle of his confirmation hearings. It was, I think, the seminal Washington sex scandal, precursor to what has become hackneyed today: you know, standard he said-she said fare, young woman accuses Washington powerbroker of sexual misconduct. But back then, Anita Hill’s bombshell accusation reverberated all over the world. We hadn’t seen anything like it before. Not in Washington. Not since Nixon had left the White House in disgrace had we gawked in horrified fascination at a lurid Capitol Hill story. Besides the political intrigue, there was the bonus fact that the main players were, gulp, black. This was Washington, for God’s sake. Black people were usually bit players, never above-marquee talent.

In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Hill claimed that Thomas had repeatedly made inappropriate sexual comments to her in the workplace, including descriptions of pornographic films. For his part, Thomas denied the allegations and called them “a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks”.

Needless to say, the Hill-Thomas case, as it came to be known, got polarising with the public weighing in not simply along gender lines. Black people began thinking that there was a race component. Conspiracy theories emerged. Thomas was an innocent black man enduring a high-tech lynching and being prevented from sitting on the highest US court as the second black Justice. I know I saw it that way. And, much like what would transpire with the OJ Simpson case later, opinions on guilt or innocence came down to race. To white people, Thomas was guilty as sin; he was the embodiment of every stereotype they’d ever heard. Long Dong Silver and all. To black people, however, especially black Americans, there was a sense that Anita Hill was a trouble-making pawn of The Man, being used to keep a black man in his place. Even those who couldn’t reconcile themselves with the fact that the politics of Thomas, a black conservative, didn’t mirror theirs. As a black woman I looked at her sullen face as she endured the intense scrutiny and, yes, embarrassment of testifying and despised her.

(As women, how can we justify relating to other women simply on the basis of how we perceive that they relate to men?)

In the end it was all moot, though. Thomas was confirmed by the Senate and Hill slunk away, her reputation more battered than his. Not that she fared badly. She is today a 54-year-old professor of social policy, law and women’s studies at Brandeis University. But I imagine a cloud still hangs over her.

That is, until now.

Almost 20 years later, a Thomas ex-girlfriend, Lillian McEwen, is spilling the beans. On the heels of a much-publicised voice mail recently left for Anita Hill by Thomas’s wife, Ginni, beseeching that she apologise to the Justice for the pain she caused him by the allegations, McEwen is blabbing that Thomas was in fact the kind of man Hill accused him of being. In an interview with The Washington Post, McEwen seemingly corroborated Hill’s characterisation of Thomas as a power-abusing predator obsessed with porn – more than most men, I gather – who had an unfortunate penchant for querying the bra sizes of the bosomy women he worked with.

Oh my.

So why the silence until now, when she’s shopping around the memoir she’s just completed? Simple, according to her. She wasn’t called to testify, in 1991. Joe Biden, the senator running the hearings back then, knowing about their relationship, blocked testimony from her (and other women who had personal relationships with Thomas), opting instead to hear accounts only from female co-workers.

To be fair, only 25 pages of the book are dedicated to her time with Thomas. Lillian McEwen isn’t some wannabe in need of a fast buck from a tell-all. She’s a retired prosecutor, law professor and administrative law judge who has a comfortable townhouse in Washington. Among the reasons she gives for clamming up, she says is simply out of courtesy to Thomas, with whom she’s remained friendly over the years, and who asked her to not speak publicly about their past.

Guilt or innocence is always difficult to prove in these cases, and one woman’s harasser is another one’s knight in shining armour. What you believe to be the truth is really just about the party you believe. In 1991, I remember watching Anita Hill testifying and feeling caged fury. That was because she didn’t emit warmth. Thinking about it now, how could she have been expected to? She didn’t seem vulnerable, like a bird with a broken wing. But why did her cold defiance rub me the wrong way? I suppose back then I had a different concept of what a sexually harassed woman looked like. Truthfully, Thomas didn’t provoke warm, gooey feelings in me, either. I suspected he was merely acting the wounded victim, betrayed by his “most traitorous adversary”. But I didn’t want to add to the marginalisation of another black man. I was in about as much denial then as Ginni Thomas is now about her husband.

Frankly, I believe Lillian McEwen. Her tone is devoid of rancour about Thomas, who is merely a closed chapter in her life but mostly, her account about Thomas’s sexual proclivities seem to correspond with Hill’s and the other women’s accounts of him, accounts that got brushed aside by the media during the confirmation hearings. Most porn lovers know how to separate fantasy from reality, but other women corroborated what Hill steadfastly charged about Thomas. Why was it so easy to discredit her and give him the benefit of the doubt?

Nearly twenty years later, I believe Anita Hill; I guess I believed her all along. So why did I get caught up in the public excoriation of Hill, back then? For the same reason I would blindly defend OJ, a few years later, even when something deep within me felt he was guilty: the notion that our black men need defending at all costs. I’m older now and wise enough to know that they don’t – not when they’re wrong, and certainly not at the expense of black women.

{"website":"website"}{"jamaica-observer":"Jamaica Observer"}
img img
0 Comments · Make a comment

ALSO ON JAMAICA OBSERVER

Mexican influencer killed on livestream
Latest News, News
Mexican influencer killed on livestream
August 5, 2026
MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AFP) — The drive-by shooting death of a Mexican influencer may have been in retaliation for social media posts about a criminal g...
{"jamaica-observer":"Jamaica Observer"}
‘Come to Ghana, Asafa!’
Latest News, News
‘Come to Ghana, Asafa!’
Ghanaian President Mahama extends invitation to Jamaican Olympian
August 5, 2026
KINGSTON, Jamaica — Retired Jamaican sprinter Asafa Powell has a standing invitation to visit Ghana from the country’s president, John Dramani Mahama,...
{"jamaica-observer":"Jamaica Observer"}
Funeral service underway for former Cabinet Minister Dean Peart
Latest News, News
Funeral service underway for former Cabinet Minister Dean Peart
August 5, 2026
MANCHESTER, Jamaica — Hundreds of mourners are now gathered at the Kendal Conference Centre in Manchester for the funeral service of former Cabinet Mi...
{"jamaica-observer":"Jamaica Observer"}
Jamaica plants 100 Kenyan Wambugu apple trees in import substitution drive – Green
Latest News, News
Jamaica plants 100 Kenyan Wambugu apple trees in import substitution drive – Green
August 5, 2026
One hundred Wambugu apple trees were recently imported to Jamaica from Kenya and planted across agro parks at Amity Hall, Ebony Park and Parnassu, as ...
{"jamaica-observer":"Jamaica Observer"}
Applications open for Scotia Insurance Headstart scholarship
Latest News, News
Applications open for Scotia Insurance Headstart scholarship
August 5, 2026
KINGSTON, Jamaica — Noting that the cost of education continues to place increasing pressure on Jamaican families, Scotia Insurance says it is investi...
{"jamaica-observer":"Jamaica Observer"}
Appleton Estate invites Jamaica to get ‘On the Rum’ this August
Latest News, Lifestyle
Appleton Estate invites Jamaica to get ‘On the Rum’ this August
August 5, 2026
Appleton Estate Jamaica Rum is inviting Jamaicans and visitors to join the brand throughout August as it celebrates its annual rum month with a series...
{"jamaica-observer":"Jamaica Observer"}
US announces $242 million in new Ebola funding
International News, Latest News
US announces $242 million in new Ebola funding
August 5, 2026
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — The United States (US) announced Wednesday that it had allocated more than $242 million in additional funding to com...
{"jamaica-observer":"Jamaica Observer"}
WHO chief in DR Congo for talks on Ebola reponse
International News, Latest News
WHO chief in DR Congo for talks on Ebola reponse
August 5, 2026
KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo (AFP) — The head of the World Health Organization has arrived in the Democratic Republic of Congo for a meeting...
{"jamaica-observer":"Jamaica Observer"}
❮ ❯

Polls

HOUSE RULES

  1. We welcome reader comments on the top stories of the day. Some comments may be republished on the website or in the newspaper; email addresses will not be published.
  2. Please understand that comments are moderated and it is not always possible to publish all that have been submitted. We will, however, try to publish comments that are representative of all received.
  3. We ask that comments are civil and free of libellous or hateful material. Also please stick to the topic under discussion.
  4. Please do not write in block capitals since this makes your comment hard to read.
  5. Please don't use the comments to advertise. However, our advertising department can be more than accommodating if emailed: advertising@jamaicaobserver.com.
  6. If readers wish to report offensive comments, suggest a correction or share a story then please email: community@jamaicaobserver.com.
  7. Lastly, read our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy

Recent Posts

Archives

Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
Tweets

Polls

Recent Posts

Archives

Logo Jamaica Observer
Breaking news from the premier Jamaican newspaper, the Jamaica Observer. Follow Jamaican news online for free and stay informed on what's happening in the Caribbean
Featured Tags
  • Editorial
  • Columns
  • Health
  • Auto
  • Business
  • Letters
  • Page2
  • Football
Categories
  • Business
  • Politics
  • Entertainment
  • Page2
  • Business
  • Politics
  • Entertainment
  • Page2
Ads
img
Jamaica Observer, © All Rights Reserved
  • Home
  • Contact Us
  • RSS Feeds
  • Feedback
  • Privacy Policy
  • Editorial Code of Conduct