Chapter 7: The Oppression of Black Women

I begin this discussion of the oppression of black women by looking at the issue through the eyes of Johnnetta Cole and Beverly Guy-Sheftall. Cole and Sheftall (Gender Talk: The Struggle for Women's Equality in African American Communities, 2003) write from both a lifetime of personal experience and from a lifetime of scholarship. They carry some personal scars from the battle between the Afro American sexes. Some scholars, such as Elsie Washington (1996), believe that war is an apt term to describe "the discord which has reached crisis proportions."

Calvin Herton (1987), an Afro American male, "underwent profound shifts in his thinking about gender matters and asserts that white racism isn't the only culprit":

"In the name of white supremacy, every imaginable act of human atrocity was perpetrated against blacks. Now, in an all-black situation, we witness a chillingly similar type of oppression, we see sundry acts of inhumanity leveled against black females . . . the centuries of slavery and racism, and the struggle to overcome them, have not informed the humanity of black men when it comes to black women . . . the oppressive experiences of black men have not deterred them from being oppressors themselves."

There is spirited discussion within the Afro American community about who has been/is most oppressed---the male or the female. Historical information and sociological data can be marshaled to argue that the Afro male has been most oppressed; therefore, racial oppression is more serious than gender oppression. But it can also be argued that the Afro female has been doubly oppressed on the basis of both race and gender, thus making her oppression the worst. These are not just philosophical points in an ideological debate; these different perspectives are deeply and emotionally felt. Males are accused of exploiting and abusing females; females are accused of running a matriarchy that dominates males.

In their book, Cole and Sheftall argue that both Afro men and women have been terribly oppressed, and in addition, Afro females have been oppressed by Afro males. Writing our of their own "intensely painful and humiliating" experiences, the authors comment:

"What we learned is that every woman is a potential victim of abuse and betrayal, regardless of her class status, level of maturity, or the care with which she chooses a particular partner. We also learned that despite our familiarity with theories about male aggression and control, . . . understanding these issues theoretically is very different from dealing with them on a personal level. . . . One of the most painful lessons Beverly learned is how deeply entrenched is the notion that violent behavior by a man is inevitably provoked by something a female is doing. . . . Without our gender politics, we may well have fallen into the trap that ensnares so many women and girls who are victims of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse---namely, blaming the victim."

Baptist preacher and scholar, Michael Dyson, believes that gender oppression is largely unacknowledged by Afro males:

"Gender is at the heart of the Black male preoccupation with their own self-expression. Whether we're talking about hip-hop culture, the Black church or Black institutions of higher learning, the gender issue is front and center. But Black men don't see their gender in the same ways that white men don't see they have a race." Gary Lemons (1998) states: "Is our attainment of patriarchal power through the oppression of women any less insidious than white people's perpetuation of a system of racial oppression to dehumanize us?"

This debate has a long history going back to the 1870s and the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution:

"This contentious discussion over granting suffrage to Black men and not to Black women precipitated a major split within the women's movement and rancorous debate within the Black community as well."

Even Fredrick Douglass "argued for the greater urgency of race over gender . . . women's rights could wait."

Orlando Patterson, historical sociologist at Harvard and author of Rituals of Blood (1998), engages in a lengthy discussion of the Afro American gender relations crisis in his fine book; Patterson claims that:

"There is a crisis in nearly all aspects of gender relations among all classes of Afro-Americans, and it is getting worse . . . Afro-Americans have the lowest marriage rate in the nation, and those getting married have the highest divorce rate of any major ethnic group. The result is that most Afro-Americans, especially women, will go through most of their adult lives as single people."

Then Patterson pens a most tragic paragraph which reflects the enormous damage that oppression does to individuals and families:

"The simple, sad truth is that Afro-Americans are today the loneliest of all Americans---lonely and isolated as [an ethnic] group; lonely and isolated in their neighborhoods, through which they are often too terrified to walk; lonely as households headed by women sick and tired of being 'the strong black woman'; lonely as single men fearful of commitment; lonely as single women wary of a 'love and trouble' tradition that has always been more trouble than love."

American church, where are you?