Speaking Truth to Power (10 page)

I
spent much of my time at the Office for Civil Rights looking at current research on the educational development of minority children. The office was the chief enforcement agency for combating race and gender discrimination in education under Titles VI and IX of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The caseload of the Office for Civil Rights consisted of claims of race and gender discrimination in the provision of education and educational facilities. I was assigned mostly special projects and did very little casework.

One of my projects was to review and monitor the progress of the
Adams
litigation, a case that had begun as a lawsuit against the secretary of education, Joseph Califano, in 1972. The suit involved questions of the continued viability of the historically black colleges in several states, most of them in the South. The discriminatory manner in which states had funded these institutions led to the lawsuit. The plaintiffs, who were black, claimed that these states promoted an illegal dual system of education by maintaining historically black colleges alongside historically white colleges. Yet the ultimate goals of the suit were unclear.

The obvious response to such a claim was to dismantle the system and merge it into a unitary one. Many blacks objected to this remedy because it would result in the discontinuation of the black colleges, whose place in black communities was respected and appreciated. The challenge to the continued existence of the historically black colleges, the primary avenue of higher education for African Americans prior to the desegregation of white colleges, met political opposition.

Another approach to resolving the suit was to ensure equality of treatment by bringing the schools to parity fiscally, programmatically, and with regard to physical facilities. The Carter administration had pursued
a response that attempted to achieve parity in the funding of the historically black colleges, which had suffered from years of neglect at the hands of state government. The Reagan administration continued that policy. Thus, the goals of those involved in the
Adams
litigation—the colleges themselves represented by students and college presidents, the state governments and the federal government—ranged from full integration of the entire system into a unitary system to maintaining but enhancing the programs at historically black colleges. The results were as diverse as the range of goals. Some of the black colleges became more integrated, as did their white counterparts; others remained the same. Some historically black colleges gained programs and funding improvements; others did not.

Oklahoma was one of the
Adams
states. Elreatha and Carlene, two of my sisters, had attended Langston University, the historically black school in Oklahoma. In June 1977, the summer after I graduated from Oklahoma State University, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare had held a conference on
Adams
. I was invited to attend, along with students from other
Adams
states, to comment on the role and future of the historically black colleges in the event that the dual system was abolished and a unitary system established. I had advocated the position that the colleges ought to be enhanced. I knew that tradition and programs were such that Langston had very little chance of attracting a large number of white students in Oklahoma, in particular because it was located in a sparsely populated rural area. To allow its demise based on market demand would be the equivalent of punishing the very people, the students and administrators, who had borne the burden of discrimination. Thus in 1981, when the
Adams
cases came up in the Office for Civil Rights, I was particularly interested.

Despite the fact that our office worked closely with the presidents of the traditionally black colleges, there was tension. For the first time I had to confront the antagonism between the administration and members of the black community. The mistrust was perfectly understandable given the administration’s antagonism toward some of the civil rights decisions which the black community supported. Yet, in the
Adams
case, though
understandable, it was not altogether warranted. The office was attempting to take what I thought was the right position. In my project we did our best to maintain a good working relationship with the college presidents. We knew and understood the mistrust and hired a consultant, Linda Lambert, to act as a liaison. She later became a friend who helped me to understand the dynamics of the relationship between the plaintiffs, the black college presidents.

My chief concern with administrative policy of both the Carter and Reagan administrations was that there was too little willingness to move programs located in the traditionally white colleges to the black colleges. The office also pushed for the continued fiscal and academic viability of those institutions. What the project ultimately achieved is subject to disagreement. The
Adams
states have been released from the court order under which they operated. The historically black colleges remain. Some have new missions and programs. Yet many in the
Adams
states question whether the changes brought about under the
Adams
order have created parity in the system or maintained the system in a less dramatically inequitable form.

I even had an opportunity to make some overtures to those in the civil rights and women’s rights communities. This was a particularly sensitive effort. Telephone calls to civil rights agencies and gender rights agencies yielded mixed results in part because, still relatively new to Washington, I had few connections in those communities, and many of the people I spoke to distrusted the overtures. We managed to establish a meeting with representatives of the NAACP-LDF, the NOW Legal Defense Fund, and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, but there was little follow-up. For political reasons, many associated with the administration wanted the assistant secretary’s office to limit such contacts. Nevertheless, since the office had a history of working with such groups, I was happy to try to maintain something of those relationships. I saw them as providing a necessary link between what had occurred in the past and what I hoped would be accomplished in the future. I knew that the administration would do very little to promote busing as an alternative, but Thomas assured me that we could take an aggressive role toward
enhancing the quality of predominantly minority schools and ensuring gender equity in programs.

The staff of the Office for Civil Rights reflected the same conflicting emotions that troubled those outside in the civil rights community. Many of the staff were committed to the vigorous enforcement of civil rights. In varying degrees, former administrations had been committed to this ideal as well. Yet the ideal was in conflict with the rhetoric of the new administration, and the conflict was even more profound because the administration had chosen a black man to carry out its policies. The people who had been working at the Office for Civil Rights took a wait-and-see attitude, showing deference to Clarence Thomas because he was, after all, the appointed head of the office. More important, as a black man he presumably shared the race struggle that they were engaged in professionally and in some cases personally as well.

Nevertheless, Thomas was known to be a conservative—albeit a black conservative. This concept was new in the political mix of the Washington civil rights community in the 1980s, and many did not know what to make of it. The deference granted to Clarence Thomas because of his race was balanced by skepticism. And the civil rights community, including many people at the Office for Civil Rights, wondered how Thomas could be committed to both civil rights and the rhetoric of the Reagan administration. As Thomas’ assistant, I met with the same skepticism. I had one other problem. Because I was a young, single black woman, the rumor mill speculated that I had been hired for both my race and my sex. Aware of this, I stuck to my work, made only a few friends in the office, and kept counsel with friends outside the office about Clarence Thomas. For me the work was what mattered.

One project on which I spent a good deal of time was an article I ghostwrote for Thomas on the state of minority education and academic achievement. The article explored the role of the historically black school in the academic achievement of black students during Jim Crow. Though it recognized the decline in black achievement scores in the years following the 1954 decision in
Brown v. Board of Education
, it fell short of blaming busing and school desegregation. Instead, I cited economics
in general, and in particular the deterioration of the economic base of inner-city schools, as the reason for the decline in standardized achievement test scores. The article was published with Clarence Thomas as author.

In 1983, when I left his employ, Thomas expressed disappointment with the article because it did not support the conservative conclusion that the government should spend less time and effort on desegregation. Thomas respected commentators who had reached such conclusions. He even cited outstanding segregated black schools to support his conclusions. No doubt he was dismayed that his only published journal article at the time did not reflect that point of view. However, I had given him drafts of the piece. And at the time I wrote it, he expressed no disagreement with the tone, nor did he refuse to have it attributed to him.

It was clear to me that Thomas and I disagreed on the importance of the
Brown
decision and its role in the continuing protection of the civil rights agenda. This, more than any other disagreement, stands out in my mind. His position was based on William Julius Wilson’s theory that race as a barrier to equality had diminished in significance relative to economics. Thus, the issue of blatant racial constraints was of minimal concern. Economic development was the key. I believed that race still stood as a significant barrier to the advancement of blacks and other racial minorities, despite the outlawing of overt racial classifications and distinctions made on race alone. Economics was secondary. Moreover, I knew that being poor could be debilitating for anyone, but I was certain that the combined impact of racism and poverty was often devastating. Though I had emerged from a poor rural background well educated and now comfortably middle-class, I knew that I was the exception. And I knew that race, poverty, and gender could not be actuarialized out of the combined impact. There was no scientific way of measuring the ratio of racial disadvantage to gender disadvantage to economic disadvantage.

I assumed that Thomas and I operated in an atmosphere of mutual respect, ideological disagreements notwithstanding. I voiced my views when I could substantiate them, carefully balancing my opinion about how to accomplish objectives against the fact that he was in charge. I
suspected that some of my ideas were unpopular with people in the Reagan administration (later at the EEOC one appointee, Armstrong Williams, indicated his distrust of me to Thomas). And though I had social acquaintances who worked with the administration in other offices, I was never in the inner circle of appointees. Nor did I seek it out. I committed to what I believed in and wanted only to do the job that I had been hired to do. I had no intentions of advancing in the administration. At twenty-five, only two years away from an environment that practiced respect for different ideas, I believed that I could work on projects that would serve both the administration and the goals of equality.

But the atmosphere of mutual respect soon began to erode. At the time, the erosion seemed gradual, but now I realize how quick it really was. Though I was not a political appointee and, as a Democrat, would not pass the administration’s litmus test, I was one of the few people in the office whom Thomas had himself hired. Moreover, I was a close friend of Thomas’ friend Gilbert Hardy. Thomas identified me as an insider and the career office staff as outsiders. He began to confide in me about personal and political matters as they related to his work at the Office for Civil Rights. And despite our differences, he appeared to view me as a potential political protégée. I gathered from our discussions that he expected to mold me to his views. He also appeared to see me as a sympathetic sounding board for his personal problems. In college, while briefly considering a career in psychological counseling, I had developed my listening skills.

At first neither my role as listener nor as protégée interfered with my ability to do my work. As he continued to tell me about his difficulties with his marriage, his child, and even about his problems growing up black in Georgia, I convinced myself that this particular time in his life would pass and that work would become the focus of our relationship. I considered these things confidences and still do. In time, however, and precisely when I cannot say, Thomas began to pressure me to see him socially. But for our professional relationship, the requests might have seemed innocent. Still I declined, explaining each time that I did not want to mix my personal life with my professional life. I had just taken
the position as his assistant, and the work was important to me. I had friends from school with whom I socialized and had begun to meet others as well. I was dating two or three men casually, but even if I had not been, I would not have considered dating Thomas. I suspect that the fact that he was my supervisor was most important to me, but because of several other considerations as well, I was not attracted to him. Sure that I could keep it all under control, I concluded that I should be able to handle the situation, maintain my integrity, and keep my job. But I was fooling myself.

Notwithstanding my rebuffs and protestations, Thomas continued from time to time to suggest a closer relationship. Perhaps his experience on Capitol Hill led him to believe that his position entitled him to personal as well as professional access to his staff. Perhaps my rejection of his requests was a challenge to his authority. For whatever reasons, gradually his confessions about his life became more personal, more graphic, and more vulgar. I have no more details of his comments to add to my testimony. I believe, then and now, that what I said was sufficient to establish the ugliness and inappropriateness of the statements made by Thomas. What I describe here in this book attempts to put them in the context in which they occurred. As I said in the statement I sent to the Senate on September 23, 1991: