April 1, 2022 • 35 mins
Sharing an episode of another show from Pushkin, Well-Read Black Girl: Host Glory Edim talks to Anita about her latest book, Believing: Our Thirty-Year Journey to End Gender Violence. They discuss the need to believe women when they're brave enough to speak their truth, and the work Hill does with the Hollywood Commission to help victims of gender-based violence.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
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up on the Getting Even show page in Apple Podcasts
(00:37):
or at Pushkin dot Fm. Hi listeners, It's me Anita Hill.
I'll be back next week with filmmaker and comedian w
Kmubell discussing his new documentary series We need to talk
about Cosby, but until then, I wanted to share something
(01:00):
special with you. It's an interview I did on another
Pushkin podcast called Well Read Black Girl, with Glory Adam.
On her show, Adam talks to emerging and established authors
of color about the artcraft, and power of the written word.
She speaks with women like to Rota Burke, men Gen Lee,
(01:23):
Gabrielle Union, and others about how they found their voices,
hone their skills, navigated the publishing world, and composed some
of the most interesting and impactful writing of the day.
In this episode, I talked to Adam about my work
at the Hollywood Commission, where I help vulnerable victims of
(01:44):
gender based violence. We talk about my latest book, Believing,
discussing how I researched and wrote it and why now
was the right time to share these stories. You'll even
get to hear about my life growing up and the
writers who inspired me along the way. I hope you
enjoy our conversation as much as I did. Welcome to
(02:26):
Well Read Black Girl, the literary kickback you didn't even
know you needed. I'm your host, Glory Adam. By the way, Glory,
I was gonna wear my T shirt, so I can't
remember where I got it, but I did get the
black Girl Read T shirt and I was gonna wear it.
(02:47):
But you know how things are. When you get dressed,
you gotta get ready. It's all good. I'm so so
excited to meet you again and have you on the podcast.
And congratulations on your amazing book. This is I have
it all highlighted here. It's so phenomenal. Why did you
decide to write this book now? And what were you
(03:10):
hoping your audience and readers would take away from it? Wow?
First of all, I had been working on the ideas
for the book and the things that were brought out
in the pandemic inequalities and inequities and vulnerabilities, including that
more people were vulnerable to violence because they were in
(03:32):
their homes. All of those things kind of came together,
and I knew that I had to write the book.
I knew that gender race violence was one of those
things that we desperately needed to address. And what I
wanted people to take away was this sense of urgency
for addressing the problem. That it wasn't a problem that
(03:53):
just was going to go away on its own. It
wasn't going to go away because a new generation would
come along and resolve it. It wasn't a problem that
was going to go away because some minor fixes. The
problem was much more complex and deserve complex solutions. Third
thing that I wanted people to understand is that it
(04:15):
is a larger problem than one behavior or a few
bad apples out there that we read about it. It's
really an everyday problem as well as an astonishing series
of egregious problems, and so I wanted people to understand
that it was real and part of their lives or
(04:36):
part of the lives of people who they know and
they care about. As I was reading it, it hit
me that every chapter it feels like a lifetime of material.
It feels just like I'm reading your history and your testimony,
and not only am I processing all of that, but
I also see just like the light that you have
(04:57):
for your community and for the next generation, you know,
and like thinking about who you were in nineteen ninety one,
in that coming full circle and seeing everything that's happened.
What does that feel like? Well, first of all, it's
it's feels probably pretty odd, because, as I explained in
(05:17):
the book, I tend to think of myself as a
very private person, and so with that really richness reflecting
on my own life on me, it's something that I
have a hard time really doing. But I did want
for people to understand in getting their stories and telling
(05:41):
them that I was sharing some of myself too, that
people have been so generous and sharing their feelings that
it was just important for me to share some of
my own sense of who I am and to help
them to understand that what I had experienced, while it's
(06:03):
never the same as what other people experience, was very
real in my life, and that I really understood the consequences.
And I had been walking in the steps of people
who had been abused by individuals or systems in one
way or the other, and I was trying to be
(06:24):
as generous as people were to me in my own way,
and still maintaining my own sort of authenticity of who
I am. It's hard though, it is challenging, but you
definitely feel your generosity on the page. That is one
thing that really shines through. And it made me also
think of your first book, Speaking Truths of Power. What
(06:47):
was the process from that book in nineteen ninety seven
to this Was there a big difference in your writing process? Yeah, well,
you know, I call it a thirty year journey because
there are things that I have come to understand in
the past thirty years that I wanted to add to
(07:07):
this book. The process, to me was not only about
telling about me without letting my ego be too much
a part of the story, but it was also about
how do you integrate and the stories of other people
whose experiences are very different from your own into a narrative,
(07:31):
and how do you address the skepticism that some people
have because oh, they want data, so that you want
to put the data in the book, but you don't
want the stories to get lost. You don't want the feelings,
the emotion, the harm, the pain, and in some cases
(07:52):
the joy to be lost. You know, it's funny. As
a lawyer, we have to tell stories. We tell stories
about our clients cases in the courtroom. We tell stories
when we're teaching. You use hypothetical sometimes and sometimes the
real stories. And we learned very early on its lawyers
(08:14):
that how we tell the story really can't impact what
people take away from it. In your book, you referenced
your mentor Judge Higginbotham, who once said to you, I
never talk about race without talking about gender equality and
black women in general. We tend to receive so much
(08:35):
criticism when we try to tell our stories. How do
you say, the course not losing sight of talking about
gender equality and race in your work, right? Yes, well,
it's so intuitive to make because you know, identify, of course,
both with my gender and with my race. And in
(08:56):
nineteen ninety one, it was very difficult after the Commis
hearings because I felt though I were being excommunicated from
the black community, and that was very hurtful. So part
of the reason I wanted to write this chapter in particular,
was because I wanted to again put light on some
(09:20):
of the limitations that we have even coming forward to
talk about what happens to us. How many limits are
placed on our ability to talk about our experiences, And
that was the point of view I was coming from.
It's like, what can I say that will make it
easier for people to stop up and to be present
(09:44):
and to be open about the pain that they've experienced.
To look at the problem of violence of any type
simply through one lens means that we're going to lose people,
that we are not going to hear people. And then
(10:05):
so then the question is, how can we as a
community be open to hearing all of those perspectives. How
do we get rid of this idea that when black
women tell about their experience it's harmful to the community,
And how can we get us to the point of
(10:28):
acknowledging that, in fact, our community cannot be strong if
over fifty percent of the community can be targeted and
abused because of how they identify in terms of their
gender and because they are women, or because they are trans.
(10:49):
So those are the things that I was thinking about,
and I don't think that I have all of the answers,
but what I wanted people to take away is that
it is in the entire African American community's best interest
for us to be able to tell about our pain
because that's the only way that we are going to
(11:11):
get to solutions. I agree. One when it comes to
this level of vulnerability and being open to share the difficulties.
I've experienced it in my own life, not being able
to tell my full story and feeling that restriction. And
when you can tell your story, it's such a liberating feeling.
(11:33):
But it's not only you, it's like the people you encounter.
It's your family, it's your friend's, your larger community. It
actually shows them that it's possible. And I feel like
that is the one thing your book Believing does. It
just gives us another level of possibility and it presents
the questions to us so we can talk amongst ourselves.
I want to talk to you about your experience with
(11:57):
the Me Too movement and when you first encounter those
words me too. When you learned about Toronto Burke. You
write about it in the book, But what struck you
about it? Were you excited and exhilarated? Did you think
like it's about time you know that these things are
meaning knowledge? What was your first reaction to the Me
Too movement? Well, I think I was just astonished because
(12:18):
it happened so quickly, and you know, it was global,
and I didn't know about Toronto Burke's work beforehand, but
I do recognize that it was worked by Toronto and
many others that allow that Me Too movement to happen
(12:42):
to afford to become a social media movement, where as
with her, it was her personal movement in trying to
help young black and brown girls heal. So first of all,
I thought, you know, this is amazing because we see
how the seed gets planet, but we don't necessarily know
when it's going to grow and really become bigger and
(13:06):
involve so many people. And so I was very excited
about the fact that it was happening. But the other
part of me says that I think the media, in
presenting it, initially presented it as the experience of white women.
In fact, it took off in part because many of
(13:28):
the women involved were RV. Weinstein victims, and they were
Hollywood stars, and so that became the face in some instances,
And so I knew that we still had a lot
of work to do to expand, to be inclusive and
(13:49):
to understand that what was happening to bipot women were
working women low income women. It was just as important
and should have just as much air as an attend
(14:09):
as what was happening to the women in Hollywood. I
know you oversee the Hollywood Commission. He talked a little
bit about that. Yes, Well, the Hollywood Commission came about
because a woman named Kathleen Kennedy, who is a producer.
She is the head of Lucas Films, made an announcement
after the Me Too movement surface that Hollywood needed some
(14:35):
kind of commission that would build the standards for treatment
of the abuse that was made evident by Me Too.
So she and Anina Shaw, who is an attorney in Hollywood,
and a nan Rita Caper Klein biden me to join
as the chair of this commission. We didn't know exactly
(14:58):
how we were going to do this work, but we
knew that we had to bring in people from all
different sectors in the Hollywood community, because this was not
just an individual problem, or it wasn't even just a
behavioral problem. It was an industry wide problem that had
historical routes add that had been built into the structures
(15:22):
the way people were hired and the way people got
top billing. And so we knew that we needed just
about every segment of the industry, or as much as
we could get them represented on the Commission. And it's
long been my theory that if you can provide equity,
and you can provide safety and protections for the most vulnerable,
(15:46):
then the rest of the populations are going to be
taken care of. Yes. And so one of the things
that we have done is to do a survey of
Hollywood workers to know and learn who are the most vulnerable.
There is a lot of work going on, and I
think it is that kind of work that will ultimately
(16:07):
change the behavior and the culture and the structures that
caused people to be harassed and discriminated against. I want
to get back into believing because everything that you're saying
(16:30):
is about like resources and like execution and ways to
really take these ideas and theories and put them into practice.
And I want to talk about the practice of writing
for you. Was there a particular chapter or was there
a moment as you were writing this that you felt
a breakthrough or what moments really made you feel proud
(16:53):
of this work. Well, one of the places where I
did it initially was in the chapter about What's happening
in our schools to children. When I read it at
the end, I said to myself, if we read no
other chapter, please read this. If people are saying, you know,
(17:16):
where do we start and they have to pick one place,
let's start with children because they are the most vulnerable,
and they're so vulnerable to the pain and the harassment
and the taunting and just us your brutality, the physical
brutality as well as the emotional and psychological based on
(17:39):
who they are. That's where we, I think, begin to
see the most damaging behavior where it can continue lifelong.
And so if you had to pick one and you
had to do away with all of the others, that
would be it, because that's where the urgency is. And
so I guess that was the chapter I look at
(18:02):
and said, this is why the book was worth writing.
I love that I know we share a common love
for Paul Murray, and I think she is so iconic
and I want more folks to know about her work
and her poetry and just her life. Her life is
(18:24):
just so outstanding. And there was a poem that you
had referenced, Hope is a song in a weary Throat
that I wanted to just read two lines of the
last stanza, give me a song of Hope and love
in a Brown Girl's heart to hear it. Can you
tell us how she inspired you and if there are
(18:46):
any other writers like her that give you inspiration or
hope or just a creative surge. Yeah. I mean, she
was so bold about her ideas and her intelligence. She
never tried to hide how smart she was, and she
(19:07):
was bold about making sure that she put their intelligence
to good use in terms of the things she cared about,
which was racial equality and gender equality. But she was
also very bold about who she was at a time
(19:28):
when we really weren't having conversations about people being trans
the idea that she had thought very carefully about her
identity and was certain that she was born in the
wrong body and was certain that she was going to
(19:51):
do whatever she could to change that to correct that,
and you know, tried to get medical attention to help
produce so m But I think it was it was
because she was just so certain about which he had
to offer the world, and she wanted to be able
(20:14):
to do it as her authentic self. And I take
that away from her story because it's just so impressive.
If you think of all of the challenges that she
faced and spaced and and the way she just went
after them. I mean, she she challenged a Philip Randolph,
(20:35):
who was like the dean of the civil rights movement.
Before there was a Martin Luther King, there was a
Philip Randolph and she yeah, oh yeah, she challenged his
sexism at a time when you know, in the March
on Washington he had excluded women from speaking roles. There
(20:57):
are so many more Tony Morrison what I wrote believing
as I was putting the other proposal that she died
and I was on an airplane and I a documentary
about her, and it was so clarifying in terms of
who she was. And the real takeaway from that was intentionality.
(21:18):
I knew I could never match her voice in terms
of her writing, but I did try to channel her
spirit in terms of really honing my own voice to
polishing it so that I could be clear in writing believing.
(21:39):
So those are two people, two writers that really influenced
me for different reasons. Again, there's just so much beautiful
information in this book. What was your research process, like,
how did you like, curate and put the book together? Well?
I had a general outline of every chapter. But you
(22:00):
know it. As a teacher, we're always researching. So I
had stories that I plugged in. I had research to
that booked in, but I was constantly to the end,
always trying to verify and confirm and refine the points
that I wanted to make with my own thinking, but
(22:23):
with the thinking of others, and so the process was
really iterative. When did I finished writing the book? I
finished writing the book when I put the last period on.
The sentence was I didn't finish run chapter. I mean
I was always going back to chapters to make sure
(22:45):
that I had it right in, to make sure that
the chapters fit together. I didn't write a chapter and
then put that away. I was constantly going back to
them and reconciling things. But I'm also I have to
say I was a completely messy writer, and so I
(23:06):
had brought on someone who helped me edit my mess,
cleaned up my mess, and that was that was definitely
a part of what allowed me to get the book completed.
But the research. There was some research that I had
help with in the past, but when it came down
to writing it, I did most of the research. And
(23:30):
there is a lot in there because the thing that
I wanted to be intentional about was I didn't want
anybody to walk away and say, oh, you know, she's
just talking about herself. These are just her ideas. There's
no evidence, there's no logic, and I wanted it to
all come together. And even though I knew there'll be criticisms,
(23:51):
it was just important that I have all of it.
Maybe that's the lawyer in me, but I wanted to
make the case as strongly as I could. Yes, I
love the titles of your books, you know, speaking Truths
of Power Believing. They just leave such a like a
strong impact on the reader, and you can't forget those
(24:12):
titles and the past. You've said, the title believing comes
from your inherent belief that we deserve better. Our families,
our colleagues, our institutions deserve better. What is better? Can
you tell us what better looks like for you and
for our communities. Well, better is for us to develop
a response to the violence that so many people are
(24:34):
experienced that attempts to preventive. Right now, what we have
is a system that says, okay, here's how we were
respond If you can get through the gauntlet of reporting
we can change our culture and our thinking. I believe
to eliminate this problem from happening. Prevention should be our goal,
(25:01):
not waiting until people are harmed to say, let's think
about what the solution will be to their harm. Better
would be for there to be a national commitment to
that prevention, where we actually have a president that says
that this is a public issue that I want to
(25:24):
commit my presidency too. Doesn't mean that you have to
exclude everything else, but this, to me is an issue
that deserves the thinking at the national level. If you
think about all the ways that our institutions are implicated,
whether our colleges and universities, or workforces, or our military,
(25:46):
or even our Congress in the Supreme Court, all have
been implicated in gender violence issues in ways that cause
people to have less confidence in our systems. I think
that's a public crisis. And then finally, better would be
engaging survivors and victims and solutions. Really engaging them, then
(26:07):
beyond having calm and tell them about their paying, really
trusting them and asking, now, how do we solve this?
So believing for me, was believing that this was the
right issue to take on, and that I had a
special place in addressing it. Thank you so much. This
(26:29):
conversation is just so fortifying, and I know everyone listening
will feel just the love and generosity that you've offered
us and the tools you've also offered us. You're also
just so calm. I love like you're just so calm
and collective. Me. It's a lawyer in you as well.
Do you have like a guiding principle that you live by,
or like something that just gives you, like a mantra
(26:52):
or something. I would love to hear a Professor Hill,
because because I just feel like you just wake up
like assured every day, like you just have this energy.
Well you know I you know, I come from this
family of thirteen children, growing up on a farm in Oklahoma.
(27:14):
And and when I'm not when I'm talking farm, I'm
not talking about you know, one hundred thousand acres in
big machinery. You know, I'm talking about a subsistence farm. Um.
I wake up thinking what a privilege I have to
be able to be alive and to be able to
(27:36):
talk about and to use the skills and my energy
and time. That's what allows me to get up every morning.
Um in it and it comes from a lot of
different sources. I saw up. It comes from the fact
that I look at the life that my mother had
and that her mother had and realized how much more
(27:57):
that I have, and so to honor her. And I
just feel that you're on the earth for a short
time and that you have to use that time in
the service of others, um and use what has been
(28:20):
given to you. And that comes not only from my parents,
but it comes from my siblings and all of the
hope and the faith that they have in me. And
that's that keeps me going. Hello, I'm Anita Hill. Thank
(28:54):
you for listening to well read black Girl. So we're
going to do what we like to call rapid Oh gosh,
I'm so bad with rapid fire up, but I'm gonna try.
They're fun. They're fun. First one is named three items
(29:19):
on your desk A light for video conference me always
there is a pad and pencil because you don't. I
don't like to type everything. I like to write things out.
It's part of my process and typically a big battle
of water they hydrated. We like that. Yes, favorite comic
(29:42):
book character, Oh, oh gosh, I don't have a favorite character,
but let me tell you I was a big fan
of Stanley, you know. Oh yeah, and I and one
of my wishes, but Stanley would make a comic book
character out of me. Oh god, it's okay. So this
goes to the next questions. If you were a superhero,
(30:04):
what would your superpower be? Oh? I have thought about that,
and that is we have superheroes where they can like
look into the future. My superpower would be every time
that I met someone that I would be able to
glimpse their past. Oh that's a good one. Yeah, because
(30:25):
I think if we know their past, you understand how
they behave and why. Oh that's a good one. Oh.
I might have to borrow that superpower because you know,
I encounter some people it's like wow, and then then
you find out and about them and you're like, oh
now I get it. Sometimes you're really lat Okay, that's
(30:51):
a really good one. Um okay, this is going to
take you back to Oklahoma. I want to know about
Little Anita. What was your favorite game to play at
the County Fair. Oh? Well, I always got you know,
look aout those little things where you crank where you're
trying to pick off something that I always felt like
(31:13):
this should be you should be able to do this mechanically. Uh,
And I never could. I never was so, but that
was my favorite thing to try to grab that toy
with the crank in the in the inside the box. Yeah,
with the box, and it never works, but it was
kind of fun to always try. So the last one.
(31:36):
So I'm curious to hear about your childhood nickname. The
only person that ever did use a nickname was my
father's I could said. I was the youngest of thirteen
and he was perhaps the only person I think of
who ever called who called me baby girl? So sweet.
That's sweet, that's sweet. That's the only nickname you need. Yeah,
(31:59):
that's the only thing I needed. Wait, Anita, before you go,
you have a podcast of your own coming out soon, right, Yes,
so wow, I have a podcast coming and um and
I and I know you have your podcasts and you
(32:21):
of a generation where you know that's so familiar to you.
From me, I feel a little bit like a dinosaur
and I'm trying to channel I'm trying to channel people
like you young people, uh, to to really get the
knack of it. But I have a wonderful team. They're
they're working hard on me. You are doing absolutely wonderful.
(32:41):
You listen, I just like I just told you, your
voice is so calming. I think that's like ninety nine
percent of it. Like get having a good voice when
you're you know, sharing the stories or listening or interviewing people.
Your voice is very calming. It's like very soothing. I
know when I listen to podcasts, that's what I'm looking for. Like,
I like, like the richness of someone's voice. I don't
know how my voice. Oh it's great. That's great. It's
(33:05):
like I think some people were made for it. But
so that's very exciting for me. I'm going to continue
to do to work with the Hollywood Commission you've talked about.
I continue to teach. And I'm very proud, if I
must say so, myself, of the book Believing, and I
just want to thank you and all of your readers.
(33:27):
We are proud too. It's so wonderful. I mean, I
literally there's so many highlights in this book. I wish
I could like show you. It's just it's like it's
in terms of being a memoir and a resource in
just a history. It's like living history. And and I'm
going to tell you that I don't take any of
that for granted. I do feel, like I said, I'm
(33:49):
quite privileged to be where I am today because I
know that there were so many people that would never
have thought that I would be even known. And in fact,
I had one journalist say, oh, you know, in six months,
nobody will remember your name. They were wrong, they were wrong.
(34:09):
So thank you. Thank you. Speaking your truth, especially as
a victim of gender based violence isn't easy. It's even
(34:31):
harder for black women if the person being accused is
a black man. About one in three women experienced sexual
or physical violence in their lifetime. We need to keep
talking to one another in the black community and to
be open to having these tough conversations in order to
be stronger together. Thanks to Anita Hill, we are a
(34:53):
step closer. Speaking with Anita Hill, I'm reminded of what
a big impact she had on my own life as
a young person, seeing her on TV speaking to the
entire country, becoming a heroine for so many. Like Professor
Hill said, these issues are larger than just her one story.
(35:14):
Taking them on is about all of us. Read believing
our thirty year journey to end gender violence. It's out now.
(35:36):
You can hear more episodes of Well Read Black Girl
wherever you get your podcast, and I'll see you back
here next week. On Getting even
Pushkin Getting Even is produced by Pushkin Industries. Subscribe to
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up on the Getting Even show page in Apple Podcasts
(00:37):
or at Pushkin dot Fm. Hi listeners, It's me Anita Hill.
I'll be back next week with filmmaker and comedian w
Kmubell discussing his new documentary series We need to talk
about Cosby, but until then, I wanted to share something
(01:00):
special with you. It's an interview I did on another
Pushkin podcast called Well Read Black Girl, with Glory Adam.
On her show, Adam talks to emerging and established authors
of color about the artcraft, and power of the written word.
She speaks with women like to Rota Burke, men Gen Lee,
(01:23):
Gabrielle Union, and others about how they found their voices,
hone their skills, navigated the publishing world, and composed some
of the most interesting and impactful writing of the day.
In this episode, I talked to Adam about my work
at the Hollywood Commission, where I help vulnerable victims of
(01:44):
gender based violence. We talk about my latest book, Believing,
discussing how I researched and wrote it and why now
was the right time to share these stories. You'll even
get to hear about my life growing up and the
writers who inspired me along the way. I hope you
enjoy our conversation as much as I did. Welcome to
(02:26):
Well Read Black Girl, the literary kickback you didn't even
know you needed. I'm your host, Glory Adam. By the way, Glory,
I was gonna wear my T shirt, so I can't
remember where I got it, but I did get the
black Girl Read T shirt and I was gonna wear it.
(02:47):
But you know how things are. When you get dressed,
you gotta get ready. It's all good. I'm so so
excited to meet you again and have you on the podcast.
And congratulations on your amazing book. This is I have
it all highlighted here. It's so phenomenal. Why did you
decide to write this book now? And what were you
(03:10):
hoping your audience and readers would take away from it? Wow?
First of all, I had been working on the ideas
for the book and the things that were brought out
in the pandemic inequalities and inequities and vulnerabilities, including that
more people were vulnerable to violence because they were in
(03:32):
their homes. All of those things kind of came together,
and I knew that I had to write the book.
I knew that gender race violence was one of those
things that we desperately needed to address. And what I
wanted people to take away was this sense of urgency
for addressing the problem. That it wasn't a problem that
(03:53):
just was going to go away on its own. It
wasn't going to go away because a new generation would
come along and resolve it. It wasn't a problem that
was going to go away because some minor fixes. The
problem was much more complex and deserve complex solutions. Third
thing that I wanted people to understand is that it
(04:15):
is a larger problem than one behavior or a few
bad apples out there that we read about it. It's
really an everyday problem as well as an astonishing series
of egregious problems, and so I wanted people to understand
that it was real and part of their lives or
(04:36):
part of the lives of people who they know and
they care about. As I was reading it, it hit
me that every chapter it feels like a lifetime of material.
It feels just like I'm reading your history and your testimony,
and not only am I processing all of that, but
I also see just like the light that you have
(04:57):
for your community and for the next generation, you know,
and like thinking about who you were in nineteen ninety one,
in that coming full circle and seeing everything that's happened.
What does that feel like? Well, first of all, it's
it's feels probably pretty odd, because, as I explained in
(05:17):
the book, I tend to think of myself as a
very private person, and so with that really richness reflecting
on my own life on me, it's something that I
have a hard time really doing. But I did want
for people to understand in getting their stories and telling
(05:41):
them that I was sharing some of myself too, that
people have been so generous and sharing their feelings that
it was just important for me to share some of
my own sense of who I am and to help
them to understand that what I had experienced, while it's
(06:03):
never the same as what other people experience, was very
real in my life, and that I really understood the consequences.
And I had been walking in the steps of people
who had been abused by individuals or systems in one
way or the other, and I was trying to be
(06:24):
as generous as people were to me in my own way,
and still maintaining my own sort of authenticity of who
I am. It's hard though, it is challenging, but you
definitely feel your generosity on the page. That is one
thing that really shines through. And it made me also
think of your first book, Speaking Truths of Power. What
(06:47):
was the process from that book in nineteen ninety seven
to this Was there a big difference in your writing process? Yeah, well,
you know, I call it a thirty year journey because
there are things that I have come to understand in
the past thirty years that I wanted to add to
(07:07):
this book. The process, to me was not only about
telling about me without letting my ego be too much
a part of the story, but it was also about
how do you integrate and the stories of other people
whose experiences are very different from your own into a narrative,
(07:31):
and how do you address the skepticism that some people
have because oh, they want data, so that you want
to put the data in the book, but you don't
want the stories to get lost. You don't want the feelings,
the emotion, the harm, the pain, and in some cases
(07:52):
the joy to be lost. You know, it's funny. As
a lawyer, we have to tell stories. We tell stories
about our clients cases in the courtroom. We tell stories
when we're teaching. You use hypothetical sometimes and sometimes the
real stories. And we learned very early on its lawyers
(08:14):
that how we tell the story really can't impact what
people take away from it. In your book, you referenced
your mentor Judge Higginbotham, who once said to you, I
never talk about race without talking about gender equality and
black women in general. We tend to receive so much
(08:35):
criticism when we try to tell our stories. How do
you say, the course not losing sight of talking about
gender equality and race in your work, right? Yes, well,
it's so intuitive to make because you know, identify, of course,
both with my gender and with my race. And in
(08:56):
nineteen ninety one, it was very difficult after the Commis
hearings because I felt though I were being excommunicated from
the black community, and that was very hurtful. So part
of the reason I wanted to write this chapter in particular,
was because I wanted to again put light on some
(09:20):
of the limitations that we have even coming forward to
talk about what happens to us. How many limits are
placed on our ability to talk about our experiences, And
that was the point of view I was coming from.
It's like, what can I say that will make it
easier for people to stop up and to be present
(09:44):
and to be open about the pain that they've experienced.
To look at the problem of violence of any type
simply through one lens means that we're going to lose people,
that we are not going to hear people. And then
(10:05):
so then the question is, how can we as a
community be open to hearing all of those perspectives. How
do we get rid of this idea that when black
women tell about their experience it's harmful to the community,
And how can we get us to the point of
(10:28):
acknowledging that, in fact, our community cannot be strong if
over fifty percent of the community can be targeted and
abused because of how they identify in terms of their
gender and because they are women, or because they are trans.
(10:49):
So those are the things that I was thinking about,
and I don't think that I have all of the answers,
but what I wanted people to take away is that
it is in the entire African American community's best interest
for us to be able to tell about our pain
because that's the only way that we are going to
(11:11):
get to solutions. I agree. One when it comes to
this level of vulnerability and being open to share the difficulties.
I've experienced it in my own life, not being able
to tell my full story and feeling that restriction. And
when you can tell your story, it's such a liberating feeling.
(11:33):
But it's not only you, it's like the people you encounter.
It's your family, it's your friend's, your larger community. It
actually shows them that it's possible. And I feel like
that is the one thing your book Believing does. It
just gives us another level of possibility and it presents
the questions to us so we can talk amongst ourselves.
I want to talk to you about your experience with
(11:57):
the Me Too movement and when you first encounter those
words me too. When you learned about Toronto Burke. You
write about it in the book, But what struck you
about it? Were you excited and exhilarated? Did you think
like it's about time you know that these things are
meaning knowledge? What was your first reaction to the Me
Too movement? Well, I think I was just astonished because
(12:18):
it happened so quickly, and you know, it was global,
and I didn't know about Toronto Burke's work beforehand, but
I do recognize that it was worked by Toronto and
many others that allow that Me Too movement to happen
(12:42):
to afford to become a social media movement, where as
with her, it was her personal movement in trying to
help young black and brown girls heal. So first of all,
I thought, you know, this is amazing because we see
how the seed gets planet, but we don't necessarily know
when it's going to grow and really become bigger and
(13:06):
involve so many people. And so I was very excited
about the fact that it was happening. But the other
part of me says that I think the media, in
presenting it, initially presented it as the experience of white women.
In fact, it took off in part because many of
(13:28):
the women involved were RV. Weinstein victims, and they were
Hollywood stars, and so that became the face in some instances,
And so I knew that we still had a lot
of work to do to expand, to be inclusive and
(13:49):
to understand that what was happening to bipot women were
working women low income women. It was just as important
and should have just as much air as an attend
(14:09):
as what was happening to the women in Hollywood. I
know you oversee the Hollywood Commission. He talked a little
bit about that. Yes, Well, the Hollywood Commission came about
because a woman named Kathleen Kennedy, who is a producer.
She is the head of Lucas Films, made an announcement
after the Me Too movement surface that Hollywood needed some
(14:35):
kind of commission that would build the standards for treatment
of the abuse that was made evident by Me Too.
So she and Anina Shaw, who is an attorney in Hollywood,
and a nan Rita Caper Klein biden me to join
as the chair of this commission. We didn't know exactly
(14:58):
how we were going to do this work, but we
knew that we had to bring in people from all
different sectors in the Hollywood community, because this was not
just an individual problem, or it wasn't even just a
behavioral problem. It was an industry wide problem that had
historical routes add that had been built into the structures
(15:22):
the way people were hired and the way people got
top billing. And so we knew that we needed just
about every segment of the industry, or as much as
we could get them represented on the Commission. And it's
long been my theory that if you can provide equity,
and you can provide safety and protections for the most vulnerable,
(15:46):
then the rest of the populations are going to be
taken care of. Yes. And so one of the things
that we have done is to do a survey of
Hollywood workers to know and learn who are the most vulnerable.
There is a lot of work going on, and I
think it is that kind of work that will ultimately
(16:07):
change the behavior and the culture and the structures that
caused people to be harassed and discriminated against. I want
to get back into believing because everything that you're saying
(16:30):
is about like resources and like execution and ways to
really take these ideas and theories and put them into practice.
And I want to talk about the practice of writing
for you. Was there a particular chapter or was there
a moment as you were writing this that you felt
a breakthrough or what moments really made you feel proud
(16:53):
of this work. Well, one of the places where I
did it initially was in the chapter about What's happening
in our schools to children. When I read it at
the end, I said to myself, if we read no
other chapter, please read this. If people are saying, you know,
(17:16):
where do we start and they have to pick one place,
let's start with children because they are the most vulnerable,
and they're so vulnerable to the pain and the harassment
and the taunting and just us your brutality, the physical
brutality as well as the emotional and psychological based on
(17:39):
who they are. That's where we, I think, begin to
see the most damaging behavior where it can continue lifelong.
And so if you had to pick one and you
had to do away with all of the others, that
would be it, because that's where the urgency is. And
so I guess that was the chapter I look at
(18:02):
and said, this is why the book was worth writing.
I love that I know we share a common love
for Paul Murray, and I think she is so iconic
and I want more folks to know about her work
and her poetry and just her life. Her life is
(18:24):
just so outstanding. And there was a poem that you
had referenced, Hope is a song in a weary Throat
that I wanted to just read two lines of the
last stanza, give me a song of Hope and love
in a Brown Girl's heart to hear it. Can you
tell us how she inspired you and if there are
(18:46):
any other writers like her that give you inspiration or
hope or just a creative surge. Yeah. I mean, she
was so bold about her ideas and her intelligence. She
never tried to hide how smart she was, and she
(19:07):
was bold about making sure that she put their intelligence
to good use in terms of the things she cared about,
which was racial equality and gender equality. But she was
also very bold about who she was at a time
(19:28):
when we really weren't having conversations about people being trans
the idea that she had thought very carefully about her
identity and was certain that she was born in the
wrong body and was certain that she was going to
(19:51):
do whatever she could to change that to correct that,
and you know, tried to get medical attention to help
produce so m But I think it was it was
because she was just so certain about which he had
to offer the world, and she wanted to be able
(20:14):
to do it as her authentic self. And I take
that away from her story because it's just so impressive.
If you think of all of the challenges that she
faced and spaced and and the way she just went
after them. I mean, she she challenged a Philip Randolph,
(20:35):
who was like the dean of the civil rights movement.
Before there was a Martin Luther King, there was a
Philip Randolph and she yeah, oh yeah, she challenged his
sexism at a time when you know, in the March
on Washington he had excluded women from speaking roles. There
(20:57):
are so many more Tony Morrison what I wrote believing
as I was putting the other proposal that she died
and I was on an airplane and I a documentary
about her, and it was so clarifying in terms of
who she was. And the real takeaway from that was intentionality.
(21:18):
I knew I could never match her voice in terms
of her writing, but I did try to channel her
spirit in terms of really honing my own voice to
polishing it so that I could be clear in writing believing.
(21:39):
So those are two people, two writers that really influenced
me for different reasons. Again, there's just so much beautiful
information in this book. What was your research process, like,
how did you like, curate and put the book together? Well?
I had a general outline of every chapter. But you
(22:00):
know it. As a teacher, we're always researching. So I
had stories that I plugged in. I had research to
that booked in, but I was constantly to the end,
always trying to verify and confirm and refine the points
that I wanted to make with my own thinking, but
(22:23):
with the thinking of others, and so the process was
really iterative. When did I finished writing the book? I
finished writing the book when I put the last period on.
The sentence was I didn't finish run chapter. I mean
I was always going back to chapters to make sure
(22:45):
that I had it right in, to make sure that
the chapters fit together. I didn't write a chapter and
then put that away. I was constantly going back to
them and reconciling things. But I'm also I have to
say I was a completely messy writer, and so I
(23:06):
had brought on someone who helped me edit my mess,
cleaned up my mess, and that was that was definitely
a part of what allowed me to get the book completed.
But the research. There was some research that I had
help with in the past, but when it came down
to writing it, I did most of the research. And
(23:30):
there is a lot in there because the thing that
I wanted to be intentional about was I didn't want
anybody to walk away and say, oh, you know, she's
just talking about herself. These are just her ideas. There's
no evidence, there's no logic, and I wanted it to
all come together. And even though I knew there'll be criticisms,
(23:51):
it was just important that I have all of it.
Maybe that's the lawyer in me, but I wanted to
make the case as strongly as I could. Yes, I
love the titles of your books, you know, speaking Truths
of Power Believing. They just leave such a like a
strong impact on the reader, and you can't forget those
(24:12):
titles and the past. You've said, the title believing comes
from your inherent belief that we deserve better. Our families,
our colleagues, our institutions deserve better. What is better? Can
you tell us what better looks like for you and
for our communities. Well, better is for us to develop
a response to the violence that so many people are
(24:34):
experienced that attempts to preventive. Right now, what we have
is a system that says, okay, here's how we were
respond If you can get through the gauntlet of reporting
we can change our culture and our thinking. I believe
to eliminate this problem from happening. Prevention should be our goal,
(25:01):
not waiting until people are harmed to say, let's think
about what the solution will be to their harm. Better
would be for there to be a national commitment to
that prevention, where we actually have a president that says
that this is a public issue that I want to
(25:24):
commit my presidency too. Doesn't mean that you have to
exclude everything else, but this, to me is an issue
that deserves the thinking at the national level. If you
think about all the ways that our institutions are implicated,
whether our colleges and universities, or workforces, or our military,
(25:46):
or even our Congress in the Supreme Court, all have
been implicated in gender violence issues in ways that cause
people to have less confidence in our systems. I think
that's a public crisis. And then finally, better would be
engaging survivors and victims and solutions. Really engaging them, then
(26:07):
beyond having calm and tell them about their paying, really
trusting them and asking, now, how do we solve this?
So believing for me, was believing that this was the
right issue to take on, and that I had a
special place in addressing it. Thank you so much. This
(26:29):
conversation is just so fortifying, and I know everyone listening
will feel just the love and generosity that you've offered
us and the tools you've also offered us. You're also
just so calm. I love like you're just so calm
and collective. Me. It's a lawyer in you as well.
Do you have like a guiding principle that you live by,
or like something that just gives you, like a mantra
(26:52):
or something. I would love to hear a Professor Hill,
because because I just feel like you just wake up
like assured every day, like you just have this energy.
Well you know I you know, I come from this
family of thirteen children, growing up on a farm in Oklahoma.
(27:14):
And and when I'm not when I'm talking farm, I'm
not talking about you know, one hundred thousand acres in
big machinery. You know, I'm talking about a subsistence farm. Um.
I wake up thinking what a privilege I have to
be able to be alive and to be able to
(27:36):
talk about and to use the skills and my energy
and time. That's what allows me to get up every morning.
Um in it and it comes from a lot of
different sources. I saw up. It comes from the fact
that I look at the life that my mother had
and that her mother had and realized how much more
(27:57):
that I have, and so to honor her. And I
just feel that you're on the earth for a short
time and that you have to use that time in
the service of others, um and use what has been
(28:20):
given to you. And that comes not only from my parents,
but it comes from my siblings and all of the
hope and the faith that they have in me. And
that's that keeps me going. Hello, I'm Anita Hill. Thank
(28:54):
you for listening to well read black Girl. So we're
going to do what we like to call rapid Oh gosh,
I'm so bad with rapid fire up, but I'm gonna try.
They're fun. They're fun. First one is named three items
(29:19):
on your desk A light for video conference me always
there is a pad and pencil because you don't. I
don't like to type everything. I like to write things out.
It's part of my process and typically a big battle
of water they hydrated. We like that. Yes, favorite comic
(29:42):
book character, Oh, oh gosh, I don't have a favorite character,
but let me tell you I was a big fan
of Stanley, you know. Oh yeah, and I and one
of my wishes, but Stanley would make a comic book
character out of me. Oh god, it's okay. So this
goes to the next questions. If you were a superhero,
(30:04):
what would your superpower be? Oh? I have thought about that,
and that is we have superheroes where they can like
look into the future. My superpower would be every time
that I met someone that I would be able to
glimpse their past. Oh that's a good one. Yeah, because
(30:25):
I think if we know their past, you understand how
they behave and why. Oh that's a good one. Oh.
I might have to borrow that superpower because you know,
I encounter some people it's like wow, and then then
you find out and about them and you're like, oh
now I get it. Sometimes you're really lat Okay, that's
(30:51):
a really good one. Um okay, this is going to
take you back to Oklahoma. I want to know about
Little Anita. What was your favorite game to play at
the County Fair. Oh? Well, I always got you know,
look aout those little things where you crank where you're
trying to pick off something that I always felt like
(31:13):
this should be you should be able to do this mechanically. Uh,
And I never could. I never was so, but that
was my favorite thing to try to grab that toy
with the crank in the in the inside the box. Yeah,
with the box, and it never works, but it was
kind of fun to always try. So the last one.
(31:36):
So I'm curious to hear about your childhood nickname. The
only person that ever did use a nickname was my
father's I could said. I was the youngest of thirteen
and he was perhaps the only person I think of
who ever called who called me baby girl? So sweet.
That's sweet, that's sweet. That's the only nickname you need. Yeah,
(31:59):
that's the only thing I needed. Wait, Anita, before you go,
you have a podcast of your own coming out soon, right, Yes,
so wow, I have a podcast coming and um and
I and I know you have your podcasts and you
(32:21):
of a generation where you know that's so familiar to you.
From me, I feel a little bit like a dinosaur
and I'm trying to channel I'm trying to channel people
like you young people, uh, to to really get the
knack of it. But I have a wonderful team. They're
they're working hard on me. You are doing absolutely wonderful.
(32:41):
You listen, I just like I just told you, your
voice is so calming. I think that's like ninety nine
percent of it. Like get having a good voice when
you're you know, sharing the stories or listening or interviewing people.
Your voice is very calming. It's like very soothing. I
know when I listen to podcasts, that's what I'm looking for. Like,
I like, like the richness of someone's voice. I don't
know how my voice. Oh it's great. That's great. It's
(33:05):
like I think some people were made for it. But
so that's very exciting for me. I'm going to continue
to do to work with the Hollywood Commission you've talked about.
I continue to teach. And I'm very proud, if I
must say so, myself, of the book Believing, and I
just want to thank you and all of your readers.
(33:27):
We are proud too. It's so wonderful. I mean, I
literally there's so many highlights in this book. I wish
I could like show you. It's just it's like it's
in terms of being a memoir and a resource in
just a history. It's like living history. And and I'm
going to tell you that I don't take any of
that for granted. I do feel, like I said, I'm
(33:49):
quite privileged to be where I am today because I
know that there were so many people that would never
have thought that I would be even known. And in fact,
I had one journalist say, oh, you know, in six months,
nobody will remember your name. They were wrong, they were wrong.
(34:09):
So thank you. Thank you. Speaking your truth, especially as
a victim of gender based violence isn't easy. It's even
(34:31):
harder for black women if the person being accused is
a black man. About one in three women experienced sexual
or physical violence in their lifetime. We need to keep
talking to one another in the black community and to
be open to having these tough conversations in order to
be stronger together. Thanks to Anita Hill, we are a
(34:53):
step closer. Speaking with Anita Hill, I'm reminded of what
a big impact she had on my own life as
a young person, seeing her on TV speaking to the
entire country, becoming a heroine for so many. Like Professor
Hill said, these issues are larger than just her one story.
(35:14):
Taking them on is about all of us. Read believing
our thirty year journey to end gender violence. It's out now.
(35:36):
You can hear more episodes of Well Read Black Girl
wherever you get your podcast, and I'll see you back
here next week. On Getting even
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