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What About #Ustoo?: the Invisibility of Race in the #Metoo Movement Angela Onwuachi-Willig Abstract

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What About #Ustoo?: the Invisibility of Race in the #Metoo Movement Angela Onwuachi-Willig Abstract THE YALE LAW JOURNAL FORUM J UNE 18, 2018 What About #UsToo?: The Invisibility of Race in the #MeToo Movement Angela Onwuachi-Willig abstract. Women involved in the most recent wave of the #MeToo movement have rightly received praise for breaking long-held silences about harassment in the workplace. The movement, however, has also rightly received criticism for both initially ignoring the role that a woman of color played in founding the movement ten years earlier and in failing to recognize the unique forms of harassment and the heightened vulnerability to harassment that women of color fre- quently face in the workplace. This Essay highlights and analyzes critical points at which the con- tributions and experiences of women of color, particularly black women, were ignored in the mo- ments preceding and following #MeToo’s resurgence. Ultimately, this Essay argues that the persistent racial biases reflected in the #MeToo movement illustrate precisely why sexual harass- ment doctrine must employ a reasonable person standard that accounts for complainants’ different intersectional and multidimensional identities. What history has shown us time and again is that if marginalized voices—those of people of color, queer people, disabled people, poor people—aren’t centered in our movements then they tend to become no more than a footnote. I o�en say that sexual violence knows no race, class or gender, but the response to it does . Ending sexual violence [and harassment] will require every voice from every corner of the world and it will require those whose voices are most o�en heard to find ways to amplify those voices that o�en go unheard. 1 — Tarana Burke 1. Tarana Burke, #MeToo Was Started for Black and Brown Women and Girls. They’re Still Being Ignored, WASH. POST (Nov. 9, 2017), https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation /wp/2017/11/09/the-waitress-who-works-in-the-diner-needs-to-know-that-the-issue-of -sexual-harassment-is-about-her-too [https://perma.cc/22XR-GUEJ]. 105 the yale law journal forum June 18, 2018 introduction On October 15, 2017, the #MeToo movement exploded onto the popular me- dia stage a�er actress Alyssa Milano asked Twitter users to “write ‘me too’ as a reply to [her] tweet” if they had “been sexually harassed or assaulted.”2 Milano’s request brought on an avalanche of stories concerning sexual harassment. Com- bined, more than twelve million users of Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, and other social media platforms offered posts and reactions to Milano’s #MeToo chal- lenge.3 Along with millions of affirming responses to Milano’s tweet, there were also critiques of her request, namely from women of color who were upset that—yet again—a white woman was receiving credit for an idea originated by a woman of color.4 In their responses to Milano’s call for “me too” tweets, these women highlighted not only that the phrase “me too” was originally coined by a black woman, Tarana Burke, more than ten years prior, but also that Burke had never received anywhere near the same level of support that white feminists like Mi- lano received from the general public.5 For example, Alicia Garza, one of the co- founders of Black Lives Matter, tweeted the following message to Burke the very 2. See Sandra E. Garcia, The Woman Who Created #MeToo Long Before Hashtags, N.Y. TIMES (Oct. 20, 2017), https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/20/us/me-too-movement-tarana-burke.html [https://perma.cc/RG8R-LKNN]. 3. Id. (“The hashtag was widely used on Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat and other platforms; on Facebook, it was shared in more than 12 million posts and reactions in the first 24 hours.”). 4. See id. (noting that “when Ms. Milano tweeted out the #metoo hashtag without crediting Ms. [Tarana] Burke, some noted that black women had again been le� out of the story”). 5. See id. Although the #MeToo movement began to gain widespread media attention in October 2017 a�er journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey broke the story about Harvey Wein- stein’s sexual harassment of women in the New York Times, Tarana Burke, a black woman who founded Just Be Inc., a nonprofit organization that helps victims of sexual harassment and assault, actually started the #MeToo movement in 2007. See id. (describing how and why Burke began the “Me Too” movement); Jodi Kantor & Megan Twohey, Harvey Weinstein Paid Off Sexual Harassment Accusers for Decades, N.Y. TIMES (Oct. 5, 2017), http://www.nytimes .com/2017/10/05/us/harvey-weinstein-harassment-allegations.html [https://perma.cc/TD P8-SFLJ] (reporting in detail the results of a breakthrough “investigation by The New York Times,” which “found previously undisclosed allegations against Mr. Weinstein stretching over nearly three decades” and uncovered “at least eight settlements” that Weinstein made with women at Miramax and the Weinstein Company). This series of events “highlights a common problem: Feminist movements are o�en whitewashed when they’re brought into mainstream conversations. Women of color are o�en overlooked and le� out of the very con- versations they create.” Alanna Vagianos, The “Me Too” Campaign Was Created By a Black Women 10 Years Ago, HUFFINGTON POST (Oct. 17, 2017, 1:44 PM), http://www.huffington post.com/entry/the-me-too-campaign-was-created-by-a-black-woman-10-years-ago_us _59e61a7fe4b02a215b336fee [https://perma.cc/NZ7F-T8FS]. 106 what about #ustoo next morning: “Thank you @TaranaBurke for bringing us this gi� of #MeToo almost 10 years ago. Still powerful today.”6 Others like Aura Bogado, a Latina blogger and a writer for The Nation, and Bevy Smith, a television personality best known for her work as a cohost on the show Fashion Queens, offered more direct critiques of the erasure of Burke from the #MeToo narrative.7 For in- stance, Bogado tweeted, “#MeToo was started by Tarana Burke. Stop erasing black women.”8 The recent resurgence of the #MeToo movement reflects the longstanding marginalization and exclusion that women of color experience within the larger feminist movement in U.S. society.9 This marginalization of women of color has occurred within the #MeToo movement despite the fact that a black woman, Mechelle Vinson, was the plaintiff in the very first Supreme Court case to recog- nize a cause of action under Title VII for a hostile work environment created by sexual harassment;10 despite the fact that #MeToo began with a woman of color; and despite the fact that women of color are more vulnerable to sexual harass- ment than white women and are less likely to be believed when they report har- assment, assault, and rape.11 6. Vagianos, supra note 5. 7. Id. 8. Id. 9. See generally Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, Close Encounters of Three Kinds: On Teaching Dominance Feminism and Intersectionality, 46 TULSA L. REV. 151 (2010) (noting that the marginalization of black women in feminist legal theory as well as the common misunderstandings about inter- sectionality necessitate a black feminist particularism); Preston D. Mitchum, Screaming To Be Heard: Black Feminism and the Fight for a Voice from the 1950s-1970s, 4 GEO. J. L. & MOD. CRIT- ICAL RACE PERSP. 151, 154 (2012) (discussing “the sexist attitudes during civil rights demon- strations, such as the 1963 March on Washington, and the racist sentiments of women’s rights organizations in the nineteenth century”). 10. See Meritor Sav. Bank v. Vinson, 477 U.S. 57 (1986); DeNeen L. Brown, She Said Her Boss Raped Her in a Bank Vault. Her Sexual Harassment Case Would Make Legal History, WASH. POST (Oct. 13, 2017), http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/10/13/she-said- her-boss-raped-her-in-a-bank-vault-her-sexual-harassment-case-would-make-legal-history /?utm_term=.fe2532cc7d5d [https://perma.cc/NBQ6-JD4J]. 11. Katherine Giscombe, Sexual Harassment and Women of Color, CATALYST (Feb. 13, 2018), http://www.catalyst.org/blog/catalyzing/sexual-harassment-and-women-color [https:// perma.cc/NBQ6-JD4J] (noting that “the penalties [that women of color’s] assailants suffer are less severe than those of people who sexually assault White women” and citing to “[a] Brandeis University study [that] found disparities in [the] treatment of sexual assault cases that correspond with the race of the victim,” with prosecutors filing “charges in 75% of the cases in which a White woman was attacked, but” only 34% of the cases “when the victim was a Black woman”). 107 the yale law journal forum June 18, 2018 Yet this marginalization within a greater feminist movement should not be surprising given the way privilege and subordination interact with race, sex, and other characteristics. In 1991, Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, one of the founders of Critical Race Theory, created the framework of “intersectionality” to explain how people who share one identity characteristic, such as race, may experience discrimination and subordination differently based on divergent intersecting identity categories, such as being black and female as compared to being black and male or white and female.12 In other words, Crenshaw revealed how “the intersection of racism and sexism [may] factor[] into [women of color’s] lives in ways that cannot be captured wholly by looking at the race or gender dimen- sions of those experiences separately.”13 A few years later, other academics like queer theorist Darren Hutchinson and masculinities scholar Athena Mutua built on Crenshaw’s work to develop the concepts of gendered racism and multidi- mensionality, both of which recognize how individuals whose identities meet at the intersection of privilege and disadvantage—for example, male and black— may encounter unique forms of discrimination and subordination, depending upon context.14 For instance, although being male is generally viewed as a priv- ilege in our society, within the context of police brutality and racial profiling, black maleness, for example, is far from a privileged identity.15 As Hutchinson explained, recognizing the multidimensional nature of discrimination and sub- ordination is critical because solutions to one form of subordination cannot be 12.
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