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black folks then were far more likely to denounce women’s liberation, seeing it as a white woman thing.
By supporting black male suffrage and denouncing white women’s rights
advocates, white men revealed the depths of their sexism—a sexism that was at that brief moment in American history greater than their racism.
Although black women and men had struggled equally for liberation during slavery and much of the Reconstruction era, black male political leaders upheld patriarchal values. As black men advanced in all spheres of American life, they encouraged black women to assume a more subservient role.
Black women were told that they should take care of household needs and breed warriors for the revolution.
Black women had been asked to fade into the background—to allow the spotlight to shine solely on black men.
they were asked to choose between a black movement that primarily served the interests of black male patriarchs and a women’s movement which primarily served the interests of racist white women.
black female who did not willingly respond to his demands, passive submission on the part of the enslaved black women cannot be seen as complicity. Those women who did not willingly respond to the sexual overture of masters and overseers were brutalized and punished.
rape of black female slaves was not, as other scholars have suggested, a case of white men satisfying their sexual lust, but was in fact an institutionalized method of terrorism which had as its goal the demoralization and dehumanization of black women.
For many other white female abolitionists the sole motivating force behind their anti-slavery efforts was the desire to bring an end to sexual contact between white men and black female slaves.
Victorian social convention governing behavior did not allow them to graphically expose many of the cruel acts inflicted upon black slave women by white men.
woman was an inherently sinful creature of the flesh whose wickedness could only be purged by the intercession of a more powerful
Salem Witchcraft trials were an extreme expression of patriarchal society’s persecution of women.
“This court will never take the word of a nigger against the word of a white man.*’
the white wives, were afraid that, if their husbands did not associate with colored women, they would certainly do so with outside white women, and the white wives, for reasons which ought to be perfectly obvious, preferred to have their husbands do wrong with the colored women in order to keep their husbands straight.
They evoke a false sense of avenging themselves against racism to mask their sexist exploitative feelings about white women and finally all women.
No matriarchy has ever existed in the United States.
matriarchs was readily accepted by black people even though it was an image created by white males.
For fear of undermining the self-confidence of black men, many young college-educated black women repress their own career aspirations.
Nor do they wish to complicate efforts to resist racism by acknowledging that black men can be victimized by racism but at the same time act as sexist oppressors of black women.
Black women wanted to assume the “feminine” role of homemaker supported, protected, and honored by a loving husband. There was one problem—few jobs available to black men. Racist whites refused black men employment, while black women were able to find domestic service jobs.
As women in capitalist America are the major consumers, much of the pressure on all men to earn more money is imposed upon them by women.
They also knew that the monetary rewards for their labor rarely compensated for the indignities they were forced to endure.
divine complement the black woman is for her man.
We could never be equals… nature has not provided thus. The brother says, “Let a woman be a woman… and let a man be a ma-an…”
Those were the days, all right. A man was a man, and a woman was a woman, and each of them knew what that meant. Father was the head of the family in the real sense of the term. Mother respected him for it and received all the gratifications she needed or wanted at home, doing her well-defined jobs…. Man was strong, woman was feminine—and there was little loose talk about phony equality.
black man who had seen himself as the loser in the all male competitive struggle with white men for status and power could show a trump card—he was the “real” man because he could control “his” woman.
Racism has always been a divisive force separating black men and white men, and sexism has been a force that unites the two groups.
In white society, respect is to a large degree institutionalized. You must respect a man because he is a judge or a professor or a corporate executive. In the ghetto without the institutionalization of respect, a man must earn respect by his own personal qualities, including the ability to defend himself physically.
white women during the 19th century. Whereas white men elevated white female status by labeling black women sluts and whores, 20th century black Muslim men elevated black females by labeling white women she-devils and whores.
black women have been labeled hamburger and white women prime rib. And it is white men who have created this race-sex hierarchy, not black men. Black men merely accept and support it. In fact, if white men decided at any given moment that owning a purple female was the symbol of masculine status and success, black men in competition with white men would have to try and possess a purple female.
simply expressing personal preferences free of culturally socialized biases.
Freedom (and by that term I do not mean
to evoke some wishy-washy hang-loose do-as-you-like world) as positive social equality that grants all humans the opportunity to shape their destinies in the most healthy and communally productive way can only be a complete reality when our world is no longer racist or sexist.
To black women the issue is not whether white women are more or less racist than white men, but that they are racist.
When white women reformers in the 1830s chose to work to free the slave, they were motivated by religious sentiment. They attacked slavery, not racism. The basis of their attack was moral reform.
They simply expressed anger and outrage that white men were more committed to maintaining sexual hierarchies than racial hierarchies in the political arena.
To prevent white employers from hiring black females, white female workers threatened to cease work.
The refusal of white women to share dressing rooms, bathrooms, or lounge areas with black women often meant that black women were denied access to these comforts.
word “woman” to refer solely to white women;
“WHAT CHOU MEAN WE, WHITE GIRL?”
Often in a jealous rage a mistress might use disfigurement to punish a lusted-after black female slave.
The mistress might cut off her breast, blind an eye, or cut off another body part.
It can spring from our knowledge that racism is an obstacle in our path that must be removed. More obstacles are created if we simply engage in endless debate as to who put it there.
white women who deemed it unfitting that a black woman should speak on a public platform in their presence screamed: “Don’t let her speak! Don’t let her speak!
and ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm!… I have plowed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me—and ain’t I a woman? I could work as much as any man (when I could get it), and bear de lash as well—and ain’t I a woman?
have borne five children and I seen ’em mos all sold off into slavery, and when I cried out with a mother’s grief, none but Jesus hear—and ain’t I a woman?
Sojourner Truth was not the only black woman to advocate social equality for women. Her eagerness to speak publicly in favor of women’s rights despite public disapproval and resistance paved the way for other politically-minded black women to express their views.
White female scholars who support feminist ideology have also ignored the contribution of black women.
Most women involved in the recent move toward a feminist revolution assume that white women have initiated all feminist resistance to male chauvinism in American society, and further assume that black women are not interested in women’s liberation.
