Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism

by bell hooks

separation of the races once slavery ended was a deliberate political move on the part of white supremacists.

Since anti-amalgamation laws were not sufficient deterrents to

interracial marriage, white men used psychological warfare to enforce the ideal of white supremacy.

myths to brainwash all whites against the newly m...

the myth of the “bad,” sexually loose black woman and the myth of t...

Marriages between black women and white men could be tolerated during slavery because they were

so few in number and represented no threat to the white supremacist regime.

The myth that all black men were rapists had ceased to dominate the consciousness of the American public by the 70s.

White Americans have legally relinquished the apartheid structure that once characterized race relations but they have not given up white rule.

Given that power in capitalist patriarchal America is in the hands of white men, the present obvious threat to white

solidarity is inter-marriage between white men and non-white women, and in ...

Taboos against white women mating with black men were maintained by white men because they

were interested in limiting the sexual freedom of white women and insuring that their female “property” was not trespassed on by black men.

Since white women represent a powerless group when not allied with powerful white men, their marriage to black men

is no great threat to existing white patriarchal rule. In our patriarchal society if a wealthy white woman marries a black man she legally

adopts his status. Accordingly a black woman who marries a white man adopts his status; s...

children are his heirs. Consequently, if a large majority of that small group o...

decision-making bodies in American society were to marry black women, the foundation of whit...

The images of black women that are seen as positive usually are those that depict the black woman as a longsuffering, religious, maternal figure,

whose most endearing characteristic is her self-sacrificing self-denial for those she loves.

Negative images of black women in television and film are not simply impressed upon the psyches of white ma...

commercials and advertisements in magazines may portray a white female and male

but feel that it is enough to have a black male to represent black people.

black women are not accepted because they are seen as a threat to the existing race-sex hierarchy.

control black female sexual behavior.

Black females who have been socialized by parents to feel

threatened or even terrorized by contact with white men often have difficulty relating to white male employers, teachers, doctors, etc.

There are many black women who have as phobic a fear about white male sexuality as the fear white women have trad...

Phobic fear is not a solution to the problem of sexual exploitation or ...

While an awareness of male power to rape women with impunity in a patriarchal society is nece...

sexism that causes all men to think that they can verbally or physically assault women sexually with impunity.

All the negative stereotypes used to characterize black women were anti-woman.

As sexist ideology has been accepted by black people, these negative myths and stereotypes

have effectively transcended class and race bounda...

the way black women were perceived by members of their own race and the way th...

To explain the black female’s ability to survive without the direct aid of a male and her ability

to perform tasks that were culturally defined as “male” work, white males argued

that black slave women were not “real” women but were masculinized...

political arena than ever before in history, in proportion to the population of black women this number is relatively small.

They argued that the black woman’s performance of an active role in family life both as mothers and providers had deprived black men of their patriarchal status in the home.

lower class black men in our neighborhood commenting on the fact that some jobs were not worth doing because of the loss of one’s personal dignity,

whereas black women were made to feel that when survival was the crucial issue, personal dignity should be sacrificed.

The black female who thought herself “too good” to do domestic work or other service jobs was ofte...

Sexist thinking made it acceptable for black men to refuse menial work even if they were unable to provide for family and children.

For most men in sexist society, being the boss is synonymous with having absolute power.

been perceived by whites as an Amazonic trait in black women has been merely stoical acceptance of situations we have been powerless to change.

black women required to perform “male” tasks but black men not required to perform “female” tasks—

By emphasizing that the right to vote was more important to men than women, Douglass and other black male activists allied themselves with white male patriarchs on the basis of shared sexism.

Black woman feminist Mary Church Terrell recorded in her diary that her activist lawyer husband desired her to play no role in political affairs.

Terrell’s husband used his patriarchal status to sabotage her political work.