Anita Hill on Justice Thomas

Anita Hill wrote an article for the New York Times regarding Clarence Thomas’ attack on her character in his new memoir, “My Grandfather’s Son.” Thomas personifies her as an incompetent, “touchy”, “combative left-winger” who only had a government job because he had “given it” to her. He was, of course, forgetting the fact that she had graduated from Yale Law School (just like Thomas) as well as passing the D.C. bar exam.

Here is a piece of the article regarding the current state of affairs:

“Regrettably, since 1991, I have repeatedly seen this kind of character attack on women and men who complain of harassment and discrimination in the workplace. In efforts to assail their accusers’ credibility, detractors routinely diminish people’s professional contributions. Often the accused is a supervisor, in a position to describe the complaining employee’s work as “mediocre” or the employee as incompetent. Those accused of inappropriate behavior also often portray the individuals who complain as bizarre caricatures of themselves — oversensitive, even fanatical, and often immoral — even though they enjoy good and productive working relationships with their colleagues.

Finally, when attacks on the accusers’ credibility fail, those accused of workplace improprieties downgrade the level of harm that may have occurred. When sensing that others will believe their accusers’ versions of events, individuals confronted with their own bad behavior try to reduce legitimate concerns to the level of mere words or “slights” that should be dismissed without discussion. “