Ain't I a Woman

by bell hooks

  The popular notion that black men desire white women because they are so much more “feminine” than black women has been used to place responsibility for black male desire for white female companions onto black women. In sexist terms, if black men are rejecting black women and seeking other companions, then surely black women must be doing something wrong since men are always right. The truth is—in sexist America, where women are objectified extensions of male ego, 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. While I believe it is perfectly normal for people of different races to be sexually attracted to one another, I do not think that black men who confess to loving white women and hating black women or vice versa are simply expressing personal preferences free of culturally socialized biases.

  Black men have been eager to present their desire to “possess” white women as an attempt to overcome racial dehumanization. In Sex and Racism in America, Calvin Hernton contends:

  In America, however, where the Negro is the underdog and the white woman is the great symbol of sexual purity and pride, the black man is often driven to pursue her in lieu of aggrandizing his lack of self-esteem. Having the white woman, who is the prize of our culture, is a way of triumphing over a society that denies the Negro his basic humanity.

  Note that Hernton continually uses the word “Negro” when he is in fact referring solely to black men. All too often black men have tried to argue (and in many cases have successfully convinced their audience) that their objectification of white females has some direct correlation to the degree to which they are oppressed in American society. This logic enables them to mask the basic anti-woman feeling that stimulates their lust to possess white women. Many black men who date and marry white women have positive self-concepts and have achieved a certain measure of capitalist status and success. Their desire for white companions is less an indication of how brutalized they are by white racism and more an expression of the fact that their successes mean little if they cannot also possess that human object white patriarchal culture offers to men as the supreme reward for masculine achievement.

  Few black men who discuss black male/white female relationships question why it is black men do not seek to challenge the values of that white patriarchy that encourages them to objectify and if possible exploit white women. Instead they present the black male as a “victim,” one who is unable to resist the societal seduction that teaches him to de-humanize black women through devaluation and de-humanize white women through idealization. In actuality, black men do not resist the efforts of white male advertisers and public relations people who encourage them to objectify all women, and in particular white women, because to do so would be to challenge patriarchy and its oppression of women. The black male’s assertion that “possessing” a white woman is a triumph over racism is a false truth that masks the reality that his acceptance of her as “the” symbol of status and success is primarily an indication of the extent to which he supports and accepts patriarchy. In their eagerness to gain access to the bodies of white women, many black men have shown that they were far more concerned with exerting masculine privilege than challenging racism. Their behavior is not unlike that of white male patriarchs who, on one hand, claimed to be white supremacists, but who could not forego sexual contact with the women of the very race they claimed to hate. What this indicates is that as men, they place the exertion of masculine privilege above all else in life. And if it is necessary for them to abuse and exploit women in order to maintain that privilege, they will do so without hesitation.

  Often in feminist writing, women express bitterness, rage, and anger about male oppressors because it is one step that helps them to cease believing in romanticized versions of sex-role patterns that deny woman’s humanity. Unfortunately, our over-emphasis on the male as oppressor often obscures the fact that men too are victimized. To be an oppressor is dehumanizing and anti-human in nature, as it is to be a victim. Patriarchy forces fathers to act as monsters, encourages husbands and lovers to be rapists in disguise; it teaches our blood brothers to feel ashamed that they care for us, and denies all men the emotional life that would act as a humanizing, self-affirming force in their lives. The old notion of the patriarch who is worthy of respect and honor has long had no place in an advanced capitalist world. Since patriarchy has become merely a sub-heading under the dominant system of imperialist capitalism, as patriarchs men do not serve their families and communities but serve the interests of the State. Consequently they are not affirmed in their domestic lives. As one psychotherapist emphasizes in The American Male:

  He may have been a big hero in high school—president of the student body or a star athlete, that sort of thing. But then he gets out into the world, and he becomes a cog in the organization, and he comes home feeling defeated.

  Men are encouraged to phobically focus on women as their ENEMY so that they will blindly allow other forces—the truly powerful de-humanizing elements in American life—to strip them daily of their humanity. The select group of patriarchal women (who support and uphold patriarchal ideology) and patriarchal men who shape American capitalism have in fact made sexism into a commodity that they can sell while at the same time brainwashing men to feel that personal identity, worth and value, can be obtained through the oppression of

  women, and that is the ultimate weapon by which patriarchs keep men in states of submission.

  Commenting on black female/male relationships, one writer asserts:

  Self-hatred and violence seethe in black sexual relationships. Because of this, black men and women rarely experience natural love in their relating—they get sex and no love or they get love and no sex. The love quality, plus the quality of respect for females is impoverished by the pimp/whore syndrome imposed for so long upon black people by American racism and oppression. Violence masquerades as affection. The deeper, more binding emotions of male and female are mutilated via mutual exploitation, distrust, disrespect and strivings for selfish aggrandizement. In fact, there are thousands and thousands of young and old blacks who know of no other mode, who have no other conception of what a man/woman relationship is except that of sex, money, automobiles, and male/female politics (“war of the sexes”) vehicled by violence, physical or verbal, or both.

  This writer sees the negative tensions that exist between black women and men as being solely motivated by “American racism and oppression.” This over-emphasis on racism as the explanation for black female/male problems in relationships blinds us to the reality that sexism has as grave an impact on our modes of relating. The unwillingness of many black people to acknowledge that sexism fosters and perpetuates violence and hatred between men and women is due to their unwillingness to challenge patriarchal social order. Black men and women who support patriarchy and consequently support sexist oppression of women have a tremendous investment in presenting the social situation of black people in such a way that it seems we are only oppressed and victimized by racism.

  But let’s face it—despite the reality of racist oppression there are other ways that we as black people are victimized in American society. And it is just as important that we be aware of other oppressive forces like sexism, capitalism, narcissism, etc., that threaten our human liberation. It in no way diminishes our concern about racist oppression for us to acknowledge that our human experience is so complex that we cannot understand

  it if we only understand racism. Fighting against sexist oppression is important for black liberation, for as long as sexism divides black women and men we cannot concentrate our energies on resisting racism. Many of the tensions and problems in black male/female relationships are caused by sexism and sexist oppression. And the black writer who commented
on these relationships would have been closer to the mark if he had stated:

  Self-hatred and violence seethe in sexual relationships. Because of this, men and women rarely experience natural love in their relating—they get sex and no love or they get love and no sex. The love quality, plus the quality of respect for females is impoverished by the pimp/whore syndrome imposed for so long upon people by American patriarchy and sexist oppression. Violence masquerades as affection. The deeper, more binding emotions of male and female are mutilated via mutual exploitation, distrust, disrespect and strivings for selfish aggrandizement. In fact, there are thousands and thousands of young and old people who know of no other mode, who have no other conception of what a man/woman relationship is except that of sex, money, automobiles, and male/female politics (“war of the sexes”) vehicled by violence, physical, or verbal, or both.

  Those women and men who feel concerned about the mounting hatred and violence in black female/male relationships come no closer to understanding the actual dynamics of that aggression when they refuse to acknowledge sexism as an oppressive force. Black nationalism, with its emphasis on separatism and forming new cultures, has allowed many black people to think that we have somehow lived in American society for hundreds of years and yet have remained untouched, uninfluenced by the world around us. It is this romanticized notion of our blackness (the myth of the noble savage) that allows many people to refuse to see that the social orders black nationalists have proposed with their foundation of patriarchy would not have changed in any way negative feelings between black women and men. In the name of liberating black folks from white oppressors, black men could present oppression of black women as a strength—a sign of newfound glory. Consequently, black liberation movements have had many positive

  implications as regards eliminating racist oppression but in no way present programs that are aimed at eliminating sexist oppression. Black female/male relationships (like all male/ female relationships in American society) are tyrannized by the imperialism of patriarchy which makes oppression of women a cultural necessity.

  As people of color, our struggle against racial imperialism should have taught us that wherever there exists a master/ slave relationship, an oppressed/oppressor relationship, violence, mutiny, and hatred will permeate all elements of life. There can be no freedom for black men as long as they advocate subjugation of black women. There can be no freedom for patriarchal men of all races as long as they advocate subjugation of women. Absolute power for patriarchs is not freeing. The nature of fascism is such that it controls, limits, and restricts leaders as well as the people fascists oppress. 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.

  Racism and Feminism: The Issue of Accountability

  American women of all races are socialized to think of racism solely in the context of race hatred. Specifically in the case of black and white people, the term racism is usually seen as synonymous with discrimination or prejudice against black people by white people. For most women, the first knowledge of racism as institutionalized oppression is engendered either by direct personal experience or through information gleaned from conversations, books, television, or movies. Consequently, the American woman’s understanding of racism as a political tool of colonialism and imperialism is severely limited. To experience the pain of race hatred or to witness that pain is not to understand its origin, evolution, or impact on world history. The inability of American women to understand racism in the context of American politics is not due to any inherent deficiency in woman’s psyche. It merely reflects the extent of our victimization.

  No history books used in public schools informed us about racial imperialism. Instead we were given romantic notions of the “new world,” the “American dream,” America as the great melting pot where all races come together as one. We were taught that Columbus discovered America; that “Indians” were scalphunters, killers of innocent women and children; that black people were enslaved because of the biblical curse

  of Ham, that God “himself’ had decreed they would be hewers of wood, tillers of the field, and bringers of water. No one talked of Africa as the cradle of civilization, of the African and Asian people who came to America before Columbus. No one mentioned mass murders of Native Americans as genocide, or the rape of Native American and African women as terrorism. No one discussed slavery as a foundation for the growth of capitalism. No one described the forced breeding of white wives to increase the white population as sexist oppression.

  I am a black woman. I attended all-black public schools. I grew up in the south where all around me was the fact of racial discrimination, hatred, and forced segregation. Yet my education as to the politics of race in American society was not that different from that of white female students I met in integrated high schools, in college, or in various women’s groups. The majority of us understood racism as a social evil perpetuated by prejudiced white people that could be overcome through bonding between blacks and liberal whites, through militant protest, changing of laws or racial integration. Higher educational institutions did nothing to increase our limited understanding of racism as a political ideology. Instead professors systematically denied us truth, teaching us to accept racial polarity in the form of white supremacy and sexual polarity in the form of male dominance.

  American women have been socialized, even brainwashed, to accept a version of American history that was created to uphold and maintain racial imperialism in the form of white supremacy and sexual imperialism in the form of patriarchy. One measure of the success of such indoctrination is that we perpetuate both consciously and unconsciously the very evils that oppress us. I am certain that the black female sixth grade teacher who taught us history, who taught us to identify with the American government, who loved those students who could best recite the pledge of allegiance to the American flag was not aware of the contradiction; that we should love this government that segregated us, that failed to send schools with all black students supplies that went to schools with only white pupils. Unknowingly she implanted in our psyches a seed of the racial imperialism that would keep us forever in bondage. For how does one overthrow, change, or even challenge a system that you have been taught to admire, to love, to believe in? Her innocence does not change the reality that she was teaching black children to embrace the very system that oppressed us, that she encouraged us to support it, to stand in awe of it, to die for it.

  That American women, irrespective of their education, economic status, or racial identification, have undergone years of sexist and racist socialization that has taught us to blindly trust our knowledge of history and its effect on present reality, even though that knowledge has been formed and shaped by an oppressive system, is nowhere more evident than in the recent feminist movement. The group of college-educated white middle and upper class women who came together to organize a women’s movement brought a new energy to the concept of women’s rights in America. They were not merely advocating social equality with men. They demanded a transformation of society, a revolution, a change in the American social structure. Yet as they attempted to take feminism beyond the realm of radical rhetoric and into the realm of American life, they revealed that they had not changed, had not undone the sexist and racist brainwashing that had taught them to regard women unlike themselves as Others. Consequently, the Sisterhood they talked about has not become a reality, and the women’s movement they envisioned would have a transformative effect on American culture has not emerged. Instead, the hierarchical pattern of race and sex relationships already established in American society merely took a different form under “feminism”: the form of women being classed as an oppressed group under affirmative action programs further perpetuating the myth that the social status of all women
in America is the same; the form of women’s studies programs being established with all-white faculty teaching literature almost exclusively by white women about white women and frequently from racist perspectives; the form of white women writing books that purport

  to be about the experience of American women when in fact they concentrate solely on the experience of white women; and finally the form of endless argument and debate as to whether or not racism was a feminist issue.

  If the white women who organized the contemporary movement toward feminism were at all remotely aware of racial politics in American history, they would have known that overcoming barriers that separate women from one another would entail confronting the reality of racism, and not just racism as a general evil in society but the race hatred they might harbor in their own psyches. Despite the predominance of patriarchal rule in American society, America was colonized on a racially imperialistic base and not on a sexually imperialistic base. No degree of patriarchal bonding between white male colonizers and Native American men overshadowed white racial imperialism. Racism took precedence over sexual alliances in both the white world’s interaction with Native Americans and African Americans, just as racism overshadowed any bonding between black women and white women on the basis of sex. Tunisian writer Albert Memmi emphasizes in The Colonizer and the Colonized the impact of racism as a tool of imperialism:

  Racism appears... not as an incidental detail, but as a con-substantial part of colonialism. It is the highest expression of the colonial system and one of the most significant features of the colonialist. Not only does it establish a fundamental discrimination between colonizer and colonized, a sine qua non of colonial life, but it also lays the foundation for the immutability of this life.