My Lived Racial Experiences Part 2: Standing on the Hot Coals of Truth

This is a series of posts in which I share my racial experiences as a Black woman  in America. I am an activist and a humanitarian. If I want to make the world a better place, I must begin with me and examine how race shows up in my life. These are my epiphanies.

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Self reflection is an important part of my personal growth. I look at Self and my reactions to the world around me, and I adjust. But I admit seeing is difficult when I don’t want to face my truths. Because of all the racial turmoil and unabashed hatred going on in the world, I feel the need to check for biases and prejudices in how I’m processing what’s happening. How am I moving through the world? 

As much as I advocate for what I believe is right, I’m not so naive or so full of myself that I believe that I live bias free. I’m not afraid to admit that sometimes I am blinded by my own perceptions and misconceptions. A few weeks ago, I went up north to see a sold-out play. Issues of race and color intrigue me, and this play (that I have since forgotten the name) was a story of both. It was about free women of color who lived openly with their White lovers in Louisiana. And even though they could not marry, the women and their offspring could inherit his fortune prior to the Louisiana Purchase.

I put my name on the list and went across the street to grab a bite to eat. The restaurant had indoor and outdoor seating. It was nice out, so I opted to sit outside. Next to me was an interracial couple. He was Black, she was Other. My mind immediately went to judgment about why this dark skinned Black man was with this non Black woman. The stories of dark men hooking up with light women to increase their chances of having light brown or tan babies was not foreign to me. I had seen it, heard it, and tried in vain to explain to dark boys in my classes over the years that being with light girls would not guarantee the birth of light babies.

And as soon as I was conscious of my thoughts, I chided myself for jumping to conclusions. I was able to get in to see the play. The man and his wife from the eatery were seated in the audience. During the Q&A after the show, he talked about how he had come to learn to love himself as a Black man. He gushed about the strength and the beauty of Black women, and how the play spoke to him that we need to love Black women. The Latina with him was his wife. He said that she was beautiful, too. This reminded me of how quickly and absented mindedly we succumb to stereotype. He wasn’t a Black man stepping over sisters to get to mixed race women like Kanye who said he and most of his friends like “mutts” or Lil Wayne who does not hide his lover for red bones (light skinned Black women).  But I digress. I made unfair assumptions about the man in the audience. His appreciation of Black women did not supersede his love for his wife and vice versa. 

During the month of July, I worked with a summer program teaching social justice. I worked with a great bunch of ladies. The day following the tragic fatal police shootings in Dallas, a White woman at work remarked at how horrible it was. The three black women sitting at the table remained silent. The shootings had come on the tail of two police shootings of unarmed Black men. We changed topics. I made some assumptions: as Black women we were in solidarity in our thoughts. But it wasn’t that simple. I had only been working with these women for a few weeks, so we were still learning about each other. It turns out that the White woman’s son is a police officer, so it stands to reason that she would be upset by police shootings. Both of the Black women have Black sons, and one of them is married to a police officer. Imagine her anguish. She has to worry about her husband and her sons coming homely safely every night. 

These situations serve to remind me that even in my fight for civil rights, I still have my own work to do. Nothing is rarely as simple as it seems. The world draws a stark line of black and white, but so often the line is blurred. There are so many shades of grey in our existence. I recognize that I jumped to my own conclusions without having all the facts in both situations. How often do we do that? I’m not afraid to admit that I fall short. I’m standing in my truth even if it feels like hot coals under my feet. I have to stand in it, own it, and work on it. But every day I have a chance to learn and do better than I did the day before. That’s My Truth and I’m standing on it.

What’s your truth? Be sure to let me know in the comments section.

Speaking Truth to Power: Why Anita Hill’s Voice Still Matters by Stephanie J. Gates

There were three of us in the theater—me and two other White women watching Anita: Speaking Truth to Power, the documentary chronicling the story of Anita Hill’s testimony of sexual harassment against then Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. A young woman in my 20s, I remember being transfixed along with the rest of the nation in front of the TV.

My support of Anita Hill never wavered, and I defended her against those who thought she must have had some ulterior motive for waiting for so long to speak her truth. Though I didn’t have a verbal reference point for sexual harassment before the hearings, I knew that it existed because I had both experienced it and witnessed it at the hospital where I worked.  Harassment and abuse of Black women occurred with such regularity that it almost seemed normal.

During my last year of high school, I started working part-time in the billing department. One day I came to work really sick. My throat felt like inflamed golf balls had found their way inside, and I had a mouth full of canker sores. My sister-in-law, who was also my supervisor, sent me to see the Asian doctor. He was quiet and meek, not loud and impatient like some of the others. She thought he was trustworthy. After he looked down my throat and in my mouth, and pressed on my glands, he instructed me to remove my gown. I thought it was odd, but I complied. He was the doctor; I was the patient. While examining my breasts, “Bite?” he asked as he noticed the scar on my breast. “No, a burn,” I replied. He nodded and wrote me a prescription. I got dressed and returned to work, but I never said anything to anyone about the exam. I silenced myself, and I didn’t know why.

 Located in a blighted area on the west side of Chicago, most of the patients received public assistance. So, race, class and gender were the perfect combination for rampant unwanted sexual attention. When I changed departments and worked as an outpatient clerk, I was responsible for filling out requisitions for lab work, x-rays, ultra sounds etc. per the doctor’s request. There was this weird sexual dynamic in place that Black women were play things for the men in the hospital. We didn’t have rights or feelings as employees or patients that mattered most of the time.

 One evening I was working alone when I felt a hand on my hip and hot breath on my neck. My heart raced. I turned quickly and looked into the face of the orthopedic surgeon who saw patients in between surgeries and rounds on Fridays. Until that day, our interactions had been professional yet friendly. When I asked him what was he doing, and why were his hands on me, he turned red, and said, “I can’t afford to touch you!” I couldn’t believe my ears. This man had just insinuated that I was a whore. I was livid!

I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I was going to do something. I was going to report him, but I didn’t know how to go about it. So, I confided in a couple of my co-workers--Black women who I trusted women--who advised me not to report the incident. They said I was a clerk and he was a doctor and that I was just making trouble for myself. I refused to be silent. I was going to speak my truth even if it meant I was the only person who heard my voice.

 I witnessed the mistreatment that the patients received from the doctors. I know how the female employees were often times treated, and I couldn’t let it go. I had to take a stand, and I accepted that whatever happened as a result of me reporting him, I was going to be okay. So, I wrote a letter to the medical director--a woman—that evening before I left, and then I followed up with a phone call Monday morning. She assured me that she would take care of it, and she did. He was hostile after that and he would tell the patients that I liked to write letters. I didn't care what he said so long as he knew that I had a right to voice my concerns about his unethical behavior.

There were patients who described troubling sexual scenarios with the one of the obstetric-gynecologists.  One woman laughed as she told me that the doctor stuck his hands in his pants and moved his finger around like a penis and said, “You see what you do to me.”  There was another woman who came into the office crying after seeing the same doctor. She had come in with a discharge from her breast and when she shared her concern with the physician, he told her to tell her boyfriend to stop sucking so hard on it. I never heard any of the women complain to the hospital administration. They just accepted it. It’s hard to speak truth to power when your truth has been horribly skewed by myths and stereotypes.

If I didn’t have value myself, no one else was going to either. We had a patient who liked to talk about what he wanted to suck and lick. He did this every time he came into the office. My department was all women of color and we all complained, but the patient was never reprimanded. We were told he was a patient; just ignore him. Sometimes he would sit in the waiting area making such obscene gestures that I would just close the door. But one day, a new administrator, a White woman, was walking down the hall and when she passed the patient he said, “I ain’t prejudiced; I eat White p@##$, too!” He was banned from the premises after that.

All of these incidents came rushing back to me as I sat in the theater in disbelief at the ridiculous questions the Senate Committee was throwing at Anita Hill as if to trip her up and catch her in a lie--that or they got some perverse pleasure out of having her give details of the nasty things that were said.

Reliving the testimony from an adult perspective, I was even more convinced that Clarence Thomas had lied. The saddest thing about the entire episode is that Anita Hill’s testimony was a mere bump in the road of Clarence Thomas journey to the Supreme Court. A woman in the movie said, “It wasn’t about truth; it was about winning.” And it was clear that her testimony was never about truth. They didn’t want to know if it was true because then they would be forced to deal with the fall out of unchecked sexual harassment. It was easier to just throw Anita Hill under the bus.

From my understanding of race and gender in this country, I knew that the all-White senate had no point of reference for Anita Hill's predicament especially when most of them probably had little if any regard for the safety of Black women. There was no consideration given to Anita Hill's plight as a Black woman. It played right into the sexual stereotype of the Black woman's wonton sexual appetite. If we can't be raped, surely we cannot be harassed.

When Clarence Tomas hit them with the race card, it was over. He called the hearing a “circus and a national disgrace” a “high tech lynching for uppity Negroes” who would be hung by the   U. S. Senate rather than from a tree for daring to speak up for themselves. It was brilliant!  Even though there were other women that could have backed up Hill’s testimony with lurid stories of their own, they were never called. The Senate Committee didn’t want to look like a bunch of racists after Thomas’ remarks because we know racism only happens to Black men, and sexual assault only happens to White women. There was no place in the conversation to discuss the bruised and battered bodies of Black women.
Today, I hear the term sexual harassment being flippantly tossed around almost as if it were a joke. I don’t even know where we are in a struggle against abuse and harassment because we seem to have lost our way. But I know the fight must continue. I left the theater thankful for Anita Hill’s bravery on that October day back in 1991. She reminded me that even in the most adverse circumstances how important it is to continue to speak our truth to power. Sexual harassment and abuse of Black women and girls is fact, not fiction.