Comment by Pamela J. Smith
When Anita Hill, Professor of Law at the University of Oklahoma, accused United States Supreme Court nominee Judge Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment, women demanded that her charge be fully investigated. In response to this public outcry, the Senate Judiciary Committee conducted a three-day-long, publicly televised hearing. Many women opined that Professor Hill's allegations were not fully investigated because the Senate, which is ninety-eight percent male, was insensitive to the needs and complaints of women. To show the female gender's displeasure with the all-male Senate Judiciary Committee's insensitivity, a number of congresswomen stormed the Capitol Room. Representative Barbara Boxer exclaimed, “ this is about women.” Although Professor Hill is an African-American woman and Justice Thomas is an African-American male, Representative Boxer did not exclaim that this was about African-American women. Rather, her characterization presented the public with a seemingly raceless and colorless gender issue.
Professor Hill was completely decolorized. Although women demanded an investigation, no one speculated that Professor Hill's claim was not thoroughly investigated because she is an African-American woman. No one speculated that this African-American woman was treated flippantly because the Senate is ninety-eight percent white. No one considered that “black women's complaints about sexist behavior are taken even less seriously than white women's.” And no one during the three-day-long hearing mentioned, other than in passing, that “black females are one of society's most oppressed groups.”
Although Anita Hill is an African-American woman and brought her claim as an African-American woman against an African-American man, she was viewed as the universal woman-with no problems separate and distinct from those of white women. This is disturbing because it reaffirms the proposition that “when women are talked about, the focus tends to be on white women.” Nothing in our history has more eloquently exhibited that African-American women have “had their identity socialized out of existence” than has the gender issue and the Senate confirmation hearings. African-American women are more than colorized white women. Quantitatively and qualitatively, they face different problems than white women.
This Comment will address these differences. The focus is on African-American women and their feelings of isolation—alienated from their white “sisters” who celebrate the power of “sisterhood.” Eliminating sexist oppression for the African-American woman will not free her from oppression; she will still be subject to racism. Racism, like sexism for white women, is an obstacle that African-American women will encounter with almost absolute certainty. When African-American women have mentioned these differences to their “sisters,” they often have been dismissed or reacted to defensively. As a result, African-American women have been excluded from the sisterhood.
Like many African-American women, this Author feels obligated to examine the problems that African-American women face and to “not be deterred from maintaining a critical stance from which to assess what black women might do to improve their political and economic positions and to strengthen their ideological defenses.” Thus, this Comment will advocate that African-American women exclude white women from their associations when necessary to heal or gain empowerment. In addition to advocating association and disassociation, this Comment will address the need to employ “the law to create and sustain institutions and organizations that will belong to black women.” Hence, this Comment will address the right to include and to exclude: a right that is grounded in current freedom-of-association jurisprudence as defined by the United States Supreme Court. The Court has recognized two forms of freedom of association: (1) intimate association and (2) expressive association. This Comment will submit that “ implicit in the right of freedom of association is a corresponding right of disassociation .”
Although the Supreme Court has articulated the standards for protecting minorities when they are excluded by associations organized and run by members of the majority, the Court has not articulated whether this standard applies when a minority group excludes members of the majority. This Comment will address this unchartered area and will conclude that when a minority group excludes members of the majority, the state does not have a compelling governmental interest to burden the minority group's exercise of freedom of association.
About the Author
Pamela J. Smith.
Citation
66 Tul. L. Rev. 1467 (1992)