For what it’s worth, I think the life of every American would be enriched by reading this book, regardless if they are a Democrat, Republican, or an Independent (like me). There is so much to be gained in this book—more than I ever expected to receive.
I am embarrassed to admit that I didn't know about Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill until watching the Brett Kavanaugh hearings and hearing about "Clarence Thomas this" and "Anita Hill that," which, in turn, led me in curiosity to Youtube to watch what I could find of the Clarence Thomas hearings. I was a little girl when this all happened, so I had never so much as heard anyone talk about this case before. So when I saw Mr. Thomas give his speech for the first time, I was stunned. I got goosebumps when he called it a "high-tech lynching." He spoke with such heartfelt confidence and authority—I believed him.
And then I watched Anita Hill. I instantly had compassion on her—relating with her in knowing how dirty men can be and how degrading and invasive it is to be talked to like that—and the belief I had in Clarence Thomas was quickly diminishing. That's why I read this book. I approached it knowing that no one (except Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill) will ever know exactly what happened, but the choice we, the people, have is to decide for ourselves what we believe the truth is. And nothing is more telling of the truth than the visible character of what a person is in their innermost core. That's why I wanted to get to know the character of this man, and judge this incident according to his character. Not that I think my judgment counts for anything—it certainly does not—the only judgment that really counts is God's, and only eternity will show who was telling the truth.
Having previously known nothing about Clarence Thomas, I was so taken aback by his background. Not only did his poverty-stricken childhood surprise me, but what shocked me even more was his slow yet dramatic transformation from his politically radical and rebellious days in college to becoming the respectable Associate Justice of the Supreme Court that he is today. It caused a pause in me and allowed me to separate the Anita Hill case from the rest of his life. His journey from childhood to adulthood, and the way he conquered unfathomable obstacles, is inspiring, to say the least. For what he accomplished, what he overcame, what battles in his soul he had victory over, what he became—left me in silence. I haven’t faced a fraction of what this man has faced, so I don’t know if I will ever fully grasp the weightiness of his accomplishments, I just know that I respect him and admire his will to continue on, and I am proud to call him an American.
As much as I have grown to respect Mr. Thomas after reading his book, I will admit that I didn’t quite feel that way half way through the book. He was very open about his struggles, about his alcohol abuse, about how he turned his back on God, and about how he left his wife and son, even though he swore he would never do to his son what his father did to him. It was in the midst of these trials going on in his personal life that Anita Hill claimed he sexually harassed her at work, and I found myself thinking (and telling my friends), “As much as his life was falling apart at that time, what would have stopped him from sexually harassing her!?” And then the further I read on in the book, the more I was troubled by my quickness to judge him, and I realized just how cynical I (and even other people in our society), have become of men, in general, today.
Granted, it isn’t hard to be untrusting of men today, especially when it comes to sexual harassment—it is so commonplace and is something most women expect to deal with regularly, that it is too easy to think of all men, “of course he talks dirty to women.” But then that made me realize how many men, who are actually innocent of these charges, must get generalized and clumped in with all the guilty men. That’s not right, nor fair. And what will that do to our society if we keep running down the good men over and over again?
This got me thinking of just how awful it would be if everyone was condemning you for sexual harassment, and you really were completely innocent. Could that be what Mr. Thomas was going through? Could it be that as much as his life may have been falling apart at that time, he still owned enough integrity and dignity to never stoop as low as sexually harassing a woman? The more I thought about it, the more I respected Mr. Thomas for not trying to paint himself in a good light in his book. I came to really appreciate his transparency of telling it as it is—telling us, complete strangers, about his alcohol abuse and divorce—knowing it would paint him in a bad light and stir up doubt in the mind of his readers.
Well, I did see him in a bad light, and it definitely did stir up doubt in my mind about him, but it was upon further reading that I started to see a more complete picture of this man’s character—of his authenticity, truthfulness, and honesty, and of the redeeming power of forgiveness and grace in his life by the way he ended up becoming a good father to his son and a good husband to his second wife, as well as becoming sober and restoring his relationship with God. I felt ashamed that I was so quick to judge him, and it definitely caused me to keep a check on my cynicism of men (and careful to always keep my heart soft), realizing that the right and fair thing to do toward an accused man who says he is innocent, is to grant him the dignity, as a fellow human being, of the benefit of the doubt and to treat him as innocent until proven guilty.
I also came to realize that even though it may seem justifiable for women to be cynical of men, it could really end up harming women in the long run. Cynicism can lead to resentment and hard bitterness, and bitterness can lead to outright hatred, and hatred is a dark and unhealthy place to be—it will sap all the good things in life out of you—the joy, the love, and the hope.
So what does that mean for all the women who have been sexually abused by men? They matter, and my heart aches for them. Their innocence deserves continuous protection and justice. But being cynical or bitter or hateful toward men, or even unjustly condemning innocent men, will not help these hurting women, because what they need to find is something altogether different than that. They need to be made whole again and cherished, to be brought back to a place of honor and abiding value. That is how the Lord see’s them, and that is how we should always see them—doing all that we can to help them get to that place of restoration.
Or what of the guilty men who were rightly and justly condemned then punished for the crimes and sins of sexual harassment or sexual abuse? I hope women’s desire is not for them to rot in jail, because they need help, as well. There is something dark, deranged, and dysfunctional within them that needs cleansing and restoring. They, too, need to be made whole.
What really drove all of this home for me was an eerily similar circumstance that Mr. Thomas recounted in the following paragraph on pages 269-270 where he referenced the book "To Kill a Mockingbird" and made a correlation between Tom Robinson (who, although innocent, was condemned of rape simply because he was black), and himself:
"I, too, took it for granted that nothing I could say, however eloquent or sincere, was capable of overcoming the evil assumptions in which my accusers had put their trust. I had lived my whole life knowing that Tom's fate might be mine. As a child I had been warned by Daddy that I could be picked up off the streets of Savannah and hauled off to jail or the chain gang for no reason other than that I was black...their point was the fear they instilled in southern blacks, a fear that had helped to keep segregation alive. My generation had sought to replace that fear with a rage that proved over time to be intoxicating, empowering, justifiable—and ultimately self-destructive. Yet we never forgot what it felt like to live in fear of the power of the mob. The mob I now faced carried no ropes or guns. Its weapons were smooth-tongued lies spoken into microphones and printed on the front pages of America's newspapers. It no longer sought to break the bodies of its victims. Instead it devastated their reputations and drained away their hope. But it was a mob all the same, and its purpose—to keep the black man in his place—was unchanged. Strip away the fancy talk and you were left with the same old story. You can't trust black men around women. This one may be a big-city judge with a law degree from Yale, but when you get right down to it, he's just like the rest of them. They all do that sort of thing whenever they get the chance, and no woman would ever lie about it. What does it matter that Anita Hill's story doesn't add up? Something must have happened. Case Closed."
This left me speechless and caused me to put the book down and really think this through. Until I read this book, it never even occurred to me that Mr. Thomas would have lived his life with extreme caution in his treatment of women because of the damning stigma against black men. If ANYONE was careful to not be sexually inappropriate towards women (or even so much as APPEAR as being sexually inappropriate), especially in a prominent and public position as Chairman of the EEOC where all eyes are on you and your enemies are watching for one wrong move to take you down, it would have been Mr. Thomas.
This brought flooding back to my mind writings from some of my favorite authors—Frederick Douglas, Carter G. Woodson, and Martin Luther King Jr., and we know all too well from them that over the centuries there have been untold thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of unjust accusations and condemning cases against black men—cases purposely made about sexual misconduct because it's a sure-fire win—simply because they were black and easy to exploit. But it just never occurred to me that this is exactly what Mr. Thomas has had to deal with his whole life. It broke my heart all over again to think of the injustices black men, who were innocent of the accusations brought against them, have had to face for centuries because of racism. They matter. And Mr. Thomas matters.
Not only did Mr. Thomas have the stigma against men to deal with, but he also had the stigma against African-Americans working against him. My generation probably would have used the weapon of sexism against Mr. Thomas, but, nevertheless, in his time he had the bitter weapon of racism (as well as sexism) trying to beat him down. If anyone had a reason to be cynical, bitter, or hateful towards others, it was Mr. Thomas. And, yet, many times in his book he talked about how he found in his own life the crucial need to fight against the rage to hate others that was warring within him, and he encouraged his readers to also fight that rage warring within them. He did fight the rage—not the people—so if anyone had the victory, it was Mr. Thomas.
It was this paragraph toward the end of the book that really solidified his viewpoint in life, one which I think we all would gain from if we truly took it to heart (on page 279):
"Perhaps the fires through which I had passed would have a purifying effect on me, just as a blast furnace burns the impurities out of steel. I already knew that they had brought me closer to God, and I asked Him, as I had so many times before, to help me resist the temptation to hate those who had harmed me."
Could there be any better thought to close this book with? To pray that we resist the temptation to hate those who harm us—wow, how desperately we need this today. That goes deeper than him telling us something cliché like “don’t hate.” In the wisdom of his age and experiences, he encourages us to fight the hate while it is still in its seed form, before it grows and takes over our life, because by fighting the temptation to hate, no matter how many times a day we must do it, will ensure that we never hate another human being. What other type of world would we want to live in, other than one like that?
I have, indeed, learned a lot from this book—and I will forever be grateful to Mr. Thomas for writing it and bringing me through that journey and having a hand in teaching me these important lessons. I’ve decided what I believe of Mr. Thomas, and now it is up to you, the reader, to read this book and decide for yourself what you believe the truth is.
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