Speaking Truth to Power (11 page)

The second time his conversation turned sexual, I knew that I had made a mistake in taking the job with Clarence Thomas. Working as his special assistant put me in a vulnerable position. Yet my only course seemed to be standing my ground, avoiding the problem when I could, and focusing on my work. I wanted very badly to believe that the behavior would end if I continued to resist.

I had no idea where to turn for a solution to the problem. It was 1981, I was living in Washington, and I had no close family in the area. Gil Hardy was too close to Thomas to trust with the information. I had no powerful political contacts. Clarence Thomas was the most powerful and well-connected person I knew. I was so politically naive that when I met Secretary of Education Terrel Bell at a reception, I had not a clue as to who he was. “Excuse me, but I didn’t catch your name,” I said after introducing myself, to his considerable amusement. We spoke briefly afterward, and I never saw him again. I doubted I could turn to him, and I was uncertain who in the administration could be trusted. I suspected that some might do nothing and others might use the information against me. I had no reason to believe that Reagan appointees would have any interest in assisting me.

As a novice to Washington, I very much wanted to handle the situation professionally. Thus, I tried to separate my sense of personal offense from my professional role. After all, that was what I had learned as a young black woman: do your schoolwork or job and don’t take biases or insults personally. And there was another old dynamic at work. As Clarence Thomas’ assistant, I believed my professional role included protecting him. I had listened to Thomas complain that the people in the civil rights community were out to get him because he challenged the conventional way of thinking. I knew he felt that there were those in the
administration who did not trust him or his commitment to their ideals. I had to consider how my information might be misused by outsiders and by the administration. I had been schooled by Thomas not to trust either, and I worried that anyone who challenged him on the basis of my information might do so at my expense.

In conversations too embarrassing and hurtful to recall, I confided my problem to Ellen Wells and Susan Hoerchner, and at one point intimated to Brad Mims what was happening, though I did not tell my roommate and friend from Yale Law School, Sonia Jarvis. She was experiencing workplace difficulties of her own and was in the process of changing jobs. Ellen knew Thomas from her time as a Senate staffer in Senator Danforth’s office. By the time she and I met and became close friends, she had changed jobs. Our friendship was based on an affinity despite any difference in backgrounds. We were both socially reserved, but in the Republican world of 1980s Washington we felt like we were renegades. Together, Ellen and I struggled to discover a way that I might keep my job but avoid the behavior. At one point, we even discussed changing my perfume. Mostly, we talked as though I had control over the behavior, though we both knew I did not.

Of the friends I told, not one suggested that I bring a charge of sexual harassment against Clarence Thomas. No one suggested that I go to the agency with oversight authority over Education or file a complaint with the EEOC. Frankly, neither course of action seemed viable, then or now. All I really wanted was for the behavior to stop. I wanted to do my job. Neither my appeals to reason nor my efforts to dissuade Thomas by laughing off his advances worked. In time I became convinced that this was a game to him, one that he controlled and intended to win.

A few months after the noxious behavior began, Thomas seemed increasingly preoccupied with other matters. The administration had stepped up talk about abolishing the Department of Education and there were rumors about another appointment for him. Thomas also told me that he was involved in a new relationship. As gradually as they had begun, the sexual advances and remarks tapered to an end. We had fewer personal conversations and I assumed that the troubled phase of his life
had concluded or that whatever distraction or amusement his offensive behavior held for him had died. I was so overjoyed that I did not question cause or consider that it might just as mysteriously resume. My stomach no longer went into convulsions at the thought of going into the office. And gradually, I was able to interact with Thomas without anticipating some repulsive remark or unwanted suggestion. At last, work became a source of pleasure once again.

At the time, I was developing a conference to be sponsored by the Office for Civil Rights. For me it was a logical extension of the research I had done for the article I had ghostwritten for Thomas. Marva Collins, a teacher with phenomenal success in raising achievement levels in Chicago’s urban schools, was receiving national attention. Collins was known for expecting more of her students and had developed a way of communicating that helped them achieve. The kind of toughness her program appeared to promote fit in well with the “self-help” philosophy of the political conservatives in power. I proposed bringing her and others with outstanding teaching records to Washington to discuss their successes and techniques. The conference message would be that minority and poor children can achieve if provided with a proper learning environment. Structuring the program required researching the social science and policy literature on the education of disadvantaged youth. I was thrilled to be able to combine research, which I love, with a practical enterprise. Once again I began to believe that my job gave me just what I wanted and needed out of work.

I worked on this project along with other routine office matters during the winter of 1981 and into the following spring. In the spring of 1982 before the conference occurred, Thomas called me into his office and confirmed the rumors that he had been nominated to chair the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. He advised me that I could go with him and do the same kind of work there that I was doing at Education. He even indicated that there might be some way for us to continue to be involved in the conference I was planning. Thomas made clear that he would do what he could to protect my position if I decided to stay at Education, but that he had no real control over it. It sounded as
though the talk about abolishing the department was serious. In February 1982 David Stockman of the Office of Management and Budget had alluded to administration plans for a “major, sweeping program to hold the deficit down” that included the elimination of the Department of Education. This played into Thomas’ decision to go to the EEOC, even though the administration did not hold that agency in high regard either.

As Thomas explained it, the choice seemed to be between certain employment at the EEOC and uncertain or no employment if I stayed at Education. I did not inquire further about his assessment of the situation. Again I was trying to ignore the personal implications in favor of making a purely professional choice. Consequently, I did not ask him about his past objectionable behavior toward me, nor did I seek assurances that it would not be repeated at the EEOC. As far as I was concerned, it was a closed chapter. I relied on Thomas’ professionalism and hoped that he, too, had separated personal considerations from workplace responsibilities.

Despite my concerns, I knew that Thomas in an odd way was offering me job security. Putting my misgivings aside in hindsight, even foolishly so, I decided to take the job at the EEOC as Thomas’ assistant. I was apprehensive, but I chose to look forward. Again I was attracted by the challenge of learning a new area of policy and instituting some positive programs at the EEOC. In the summer of 1982, as I cleared out my desk at the Education office on Third and C Streets Southwest and moved into the Foggy Bottom offices of the EEOC, I focused on the potential for growth the change offered. The work, the people, even the EEOC offices, were very different from those at the Office for Civil Rights. Whereas the offices for Education had been old, traditional, and utilitarian government office building with beige walls, gray tile floors, and metal furniture, the EEOC office was a newer, modern structure once slated to be a hotel. Still, both were dilapidated. Where the ceiling leaked in the Education office building, the ventilation was poor in the EEOC office building.

Initially, Thomas’ office staff at EEOC was quite small; indeed he was understaffed. Along with a childhood friend of Thomas’, Carlton Stewart,
I was one of only two lawyers and personal assistants at first. Diane Holt had come over from Education and was one of two secretaries. Out of necessity, I became more involved with day-to-day agency administration and did less work on special projects. To keep up with regular commission meetings, I was assigned to review the claims brought before the commission. Thomas had to be briefed on the cases and advised as to the kinds of questions raised and whether the commission should use its resources to pursue the claims. The EEOC, not unlike other federal agencies, was backlogged. To avoid falling further behind, we began a case review immediately after moving in.

There was a good deal of internal and external dissension surrounding the agency. In particular, Mike Connolly, the EEOC general counsel, had appointed himself the administrative spokesperson for the agency. His outspokenness continued after Thomas’ arrival and Thomas objected to this usurpation of his and the other commissioners’ authority. There were also struggles over which was the lead agency on civil rights matters for the administration. President Jimmy Carter had granted the EEOC that role just a few years earlier. But now Brad Reynolds, assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Department of Justice, was seeking to establish his office as the final arbiter of administrative civil rights policy. Since Reynolds’ department decided which cases of discrimination the government appealed, he was in a prime position to designate himself as the authority.

The Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Program (OFCCP) got into the political power play as well. That program was meant to ensure that employers entering into contracts in which the government was a party attempt to include minorities and women in their workforce. The executive orders that served as the basis for such guidelines were hotly contested by some in the administration.

Shortly after I arrived at the EEOC, the OFCCP delivered to the office of the chair a packet of regulations that in essence undermined the executive orders the OFCCP was supposed to implement. Some of these regulations conflicted with existing EEOC policy. One particularly volatile provision limited the amount of back wages a victim of discrimination
should receive in damages. Thomas designated me as the point person for our office and gave me control in how and when matters came to him. There was virtually no time to respond before the proposed regulations were scheduled to be sent out for public comment. My expertise was limited, but I got excellent guidance from EEOC staff people, including an attorney, Stuart Frisch. They advised me on problems with the proposals and educated me about the intra-agency and the interagency politics as well. Frisch presented the EEOC position to Thomas and he gave his approval. Frisch and I and other members of the staff met with OFCCP officials and, point by point, went over the objections to the regulations which were a thinly veiled effort to gut the government’s program to diversify the businesses holding federal contacts.

Eventually, the old program was salvaged and the proposed regulations withdrawn. When they resurfaced and were approved by the commission in July 1983, the summer I left the agency, many of the objectionable proposals had been eliminated. I think I am prouder of this work than of any other I did during my time at the EEOC.

The final factor in Thomas’ early struggles at the agency had to do with internal operations. Just before I arrived, the Office of Management and Budget handed the agency a highly critical evaluation. Some of the criticisms in that report could not be ignored; they demanded that the chair respond if the budget process for the following year was to proceed. Thus, when I got to the EEOC, I fell into the thick of things administratively and politically. I spent much of my first few months dealing with crises or near crises. But though my misgivings about the administration were growing, I still felt that I could do good work. Moreover, despite any offensive interaction with Thomas, I still felt some loyalty to him, much of it born out of the portrait he drew of himself as unfairly maligned from both inside and outside the administration. We disagreed on issues, but past EEOC policies and practices were often consistent with my thinking and I had those to fall back on when we disagreed.

The mood in the office left no time for reflection. Until more assistants could be hired and someone put in charge of the staff, I was overwhelmed. I could count on little guidance from Thomas himself, since
he was occupied with his own responsibilities. We worked with little organization or structure until Chris Roggerson and by then Allyson Duncan came on as office managers. Both had extensive EEOC experience. Duncan had been a special assistant in the office of legal counsel but left for the chair’s office when a new counsel was appointed. The staff once again had some supervision, and lines of responsibility were more clearly drawn. We managed to put out a good deal of work and even to catch up on some of the backlog.