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Knicks Sex-Harassment-Suit Winner Gets Advice From Anita Hill, Rutgers Coach
By the DiversityInc staff
November 02, 2007
From besieged victim to inspirational hero, Anucha Browne Sanders has come full circle in the weeks following her successful sexual-harassment suit of the New York Knicks' coach Isiah Thomas, owner James Dolan and Madison Square Garden.
In an interview with The New York Times, Browne Sanders said she's had recent conversations with Anita Hill, Rutgers' women's basketball coach C. Vivian Stringer and tennis hall-of-famer Billie Jean King about the impact her lawsuit has had on the lives of other women facing similar challenges in corporate America. She asked Stringer how she can be a symbol to the public with adversely impacting her personal life.
"You can't compromise yourself," Browne Sanders told the Times. "I hope we're teaching young women that we're past the days where we had to put up with a bad work environment."
Browne Sanders won an $11.6-million verdict last month against Madison Square Garden (MSG) and Dolan, who is appealing the verdict. MSG came under additional fire just a few weeks later when a former Ranger City Skaters captain who was formerly employed with MSG sued for sexual harassment. Then two black-female security supervisors who are no longer with the company sued MSG for allegedly bypassing them for promotions and pay raises in favor of two white interns who the plaintiffs say slept with management.
Over the course of the three-week trial, Browne Sanders, who was fired from her $260,000-a-year job in 2006, presented MSG as "Animal House" in sneakers, where crude remarks, sexism and crass language were an accepted part of the culture. The headlines of the case dominated the back pages of New York tabloids as allegations flew, from Thomas going from offering unwanted advances to later referring to the former senior vice president of marketing and business operations as a "bitch" and a "ho." Thomas also stirred up a tempest with his videotaped remarks about the racial dynamics of calling a woman a bitch when Thomas suggested he would be more troubled hearing a white man calling a black woman "bitch" than if a black man said the same thing, reports USA Today.
She also told The New York Times that she has the following advice to offer women going through identical experiences at their workplaces: "To just be strong and stand tall. And just expect the truth will prevail."
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