Ain't I a Woman

by bell hooks

  By the mid-1920’s, the relative stability of capitalism, the disappearance of the small radical farmer, the red-baiting and the internal splits, destroyed the Socialist and Progressive parties and brought a period of conservatism hostile to the women’s movement. The radicalism of the 1930’s concentrated on unemployment and, in the late 1930’s, on the threat of war with fascism to the practical exclusion of all other issues. Again, during the war other issues could not be raised. The postwar 1946-1960 period was a time of U.S. economic expansion and world dominance, of the cold war and super-patriotism ensured by the witch hunting of McCarthyism. All radical and liberal groups suffered repression: and possible women’s liberation causes—such as child care—were smothered with the rest.

  In the forty years from the mid-1920s to the mid-1960s black female leaders no longer advocated women’s rights. The struggle for black liberation and the struggle for women’s liberation were seen as inimical largely because black civil rights leaders did not want the white American public to see their demands for full citizenship as synonymous with a radical demand for equality of the sexes. They made black liberation synonymous with gaining full participation in the existing patriarchal nation-state and their demands were for the elimination of racism, not capitalism or patriarchy. Just as white women had publicly disavowed any political connection with black people when they believed that such an alliance was inimical to their interests, black women disassociated themselves from feminist struggle when they were convinced that to appear feminist, i.e. radical, would hurt the cause of black liberation. Black men and women wanted entrance into the mainstream of American life. To gain that entrance they felt it was necessary for them to be conservative.

  Black women’s organizations, which at one time had concentrated on social services like child care, homes for working women and help for prostitutes, became de-politicized and focused more on social affairs like debutante balls and fundraisers. Black women club members imitated the behavior of middle class white women. Those black women who believed in social equality of the sexes learned to suppress their opinions for fear attention might be shifted from racial issues. They believed they should first support freedom for black people, then later, when that freedom was obtained, work for women’s rights. Unfortunately, they did not foresee the strength of black male resistance to the idea that women should have equal status with men.

  When the Civil Rights Movement began, black women participated but they did not strive to overshadow black male leaders. When the movement ended, the U.S. public remembered the names of Martin Luther King, Jr., A. Phillip Randolph, and Roy Wilkins but forgot the names of Rosa Parks, Daisy Bates and Fannie Lou Hamer. The 50s leaders of the black civil rights movement, like their 19th century predecessors, made it known that they were eager to establish communities and families using the same pattern as whites. Following the example of white male patriarchs, black men were obsessively concerned with asserting their masculinity while black women imitated the behavior of white women and were obsessive about femininity. An obvious change took place in black sex-role patterns. Black people no longer passively accepted that racial oppression has always forced the black female to be as independent and hardworking as black men; they were demanding that she be more passive, subordinate, and preferably unemployed.

  The 50s socialization of black women to assume a more subordinate role in relation to black men occurred as part of an overall effort in the U.S. to brainwash women so as to reverse the effects of World War II. As a result of the war, white and black women had been compelled to be independent, assertive, and hardworking. White men, like black men, wanted to see all women be less assertive, dependent, and unemployed. Mass media was the weapon used to destroy the new-found independence of women. White and black women alike were subjected to endless propaganda which encouraged them to believe that a woman’s place was in the home—that her fulfillment in life depended on finding the right man to marry and producing a family. If women were compelled by circumstance to work, they were told that it was better if they didn’t compete with men and confined themselves to jobs like teaching and nursing.

  The working woman, be she black or white, found it necessary to prove her femininity. Often she developed two demeanors: though she might be assertive and independent on the job, at home she was passive and pleasing. More than ever before in U.S. history, black women were obsessed with pursuing the ideal of femininity described on television, in books and magazines. An emerging black middle class meant that groups of black females had more money than ever before to spend buying fashions, cosmetics, or reading magazines like McCall’s and Ladies Home Journal. Masses of black women who at one time were proud of their ability to work outside the home and yet be good housewives and mothers became discontented with their lot. They wanted only to be housewives and expressed openly their rage and hostility toward black men—a hostility that emerged because they were convinced black men were not striving hard enough to assume the role of sole economic provider in the home so that they could be housewives. Popular sayings of the time like “a black man ain’t shit,” “the nigger ain’t no good,” were expressions of black female contempt for black men.

  Clearly black women wanted to be in a position to fully participate in the 50s pursuit of “idealized femininity” and resented black men for not aiding them in this quest. They measured black men against a standard set by white males. Since whites defined “achieving manhood” as the ability of a man to be a sole economic provider in a family, many black females tended to regard the black male as a “failed” man. In retaliation, black men openly asserted that they perceived white women as more feminine than black women. Both black females and males were uncertain about their womanhood and manhood. They were both striving to adapt themselves to standards set by the dominant white society. When black women failed for whatever reason to assume a passive subordinate role in relationship to black men, the men became angry. When black men failed to assume the role of sole economic provider in the home, black women were angry.

  The tensions and conflicts that emerged in black male/female relationships were dramatized by the 1959 production of Lorraine Hansberry’s award-winning play A Raisin in the Sun. Conflict prevails in the black male Walter Lee’s relationship to his mother and wife. In one scene, as Walter tells his wife Ruth how he intends to spend his mother’s insurance money, she refuses to listen; he becomes angry and yells:

  Walter: That is just what is wrong with the colored woman in this world... don’t understand about building their men up and making ’em feel like they somebody. Like they can do something.

  Ruth: There are colored men who do things.

  Walter: No thanks to the colored woman.

  Ruth: Well, being a colored woman, I guess I can’t help myself none.

  Walter: We one group of men tied to a race of women with small minds.

  The mother in Raisin in the Sun is the dominant figure in the home and Walter Lee complains endlessly that she thwarts his assertion of his manhood, that she is a tyrant who forcibly bends him to her will. In the course of the play, Walter Lee is portrayed as irresponsible and unworthy of his mother’s trust and respect. She does not respect his assertion of manhood because he acts in an immature manner. However, at the end of the play when he acts in a responsible manner, the mother automatically assumes a subordinate position. The message of the play was twofold. On the one hand, it portrayed the strength and self-sacrificing nature of the single black mother working to ensure the survival of her family, and on the other hand, it stressed the importance of the black male assuming his proper place as patriarch in the home. The mother’s way of life is a thing of the past. Walter Lee and Ruth are harbingers of the future. The future black family they portray is the two-parent nuclear set-up wherein man assumes a patriarchal role, the role of decision maker, protector, and upholder of family pride and honor.

  Lorraine Hansberry’s play was a foretelling of future conflicts between black wome
n and men over the issue of sex-role patterns. This conflict was exaggerated and brought to public attention by the 1965 publication of Danial Moynihan’s report The Negro Family: The Case for National Action. In his report Moynihan argued that the black American family was being undermined by female dominance. He claimed that racist discrimination against black men in the work force caused black

  families to have a matriarchal structure which he asserted was out of line with the white American norm, the patriarchal family structure, and that this prevented the black race from being accepted into the mainstream of American life. Moynihan’s message was similar to that of black women who admonished black men for not assuming the patriarchal role. The difference in the two perspectives was that Moynihan placed a measure of the responsibility for the black male’s inability to assume a patriarchal role on black women, whereas black women felt that racism and black male indifference were the forces that caused black men to reject the role of sole economic provider.

  By labeling black women matriarchs, Moynihan implied that those black women who worked and headed households were the enemies of black manhood. Even though Moynihan’s supposition that the black family was matriarchal was based on data that showed that only one-fourth of all black families in America were female-headed households, he used this figure to make generalizations about black families as a whole. His generalizations about black family structure, though erroneous, had a tremendous impact upon the black male psyche. Like the American white male in the 50s and 60s, black men were concerned that all women were becoming too assertive and domineering.

  The notion that modern women were emasculating men had its origin not in the conflict between black women and black men over sex-role patterns but in the overall conflict in American society over the issue of sex roles. Women as castrator was an image first evoked not in reference to black women and certainly not by Daniel Moynihan; it was popularized by certain psychoanalysts who had their heyday in the 50s. They imposed upon the consciousness of the American public the notion that any career woman, any woman who competed with men, was envious of male power and was likely to be a castrating bitch.

  Black women came to be depicted as female castrators par excellence, though not because they were inherently more assertive and independent than white women. History shows that

  white women were actively competing in the male-dominated power structure long before black women because there was no racial barrier to make entrance into that sphere completely impossible. Black women became the target for many misogynist attacks on female independence largely because of racist scapegoating. Just as the 19th century white public had portrayed black women as embodying all negative traits that were usually attributed to the female sex as a whole while portraying white women as embodying all positive traits, the 20th century white public continued this practice. They idealized and elevated the status of the white female group by debasing and degrading the black female group. Daniel Moynihan did not attempt to document the fact that the so-called “matriarchal” role black women assumed in the female-headed household was the same as the one white women assumed in the female-headed household. Instead, he continued to perpetuate one of the United States’ most popular sexist-racist myths about black womanhood—the myth that black women are inherently more assertive, independent, and domineering than white women.

  Sexist ideology was the core of the matriarchy myth. Implicit in the assertion that black women were matriarchs was the assumption that patriarchy should be maintained at all costs and that the subordination of the female was necessary for the healthy achievement of manhood. In effect, Moynihan suggested that the negative effects of racist oppression of black people could be eliminated if black females were more passive, subservient and supportive of patriarchy. Once again, woman’s liberation was presented as inimical to black liberation.

  The extent to which black men absorbed this ideology was made evident in the 60s black liberation movement. Black male leaders of the movement made the liberation of black people from racist oppression synonymous with their gaining the right to assume the role of patriarch, of sexist oppressor.

  By allowing white men to dictate the terms by which they would define black liberation, black men chose to endorse sexist exploitation and oppression of black women. And in so doing they were compromised. They were not liberated from the system but liberated to serve the system. The movement ended and the system had not changed; it was no less racist or sexist.

  Like black men, many black women believed black liberation could only be achieved by the formation of a strong black patriarchy. Many of the black women interviewed in Inez Smith Reid’s book Together Black Women, published in 1972, openly stated that they felt the role of the female should be a supportive one and that the male ought to be the dominant figure in all black liberation struggles. Typical black female responses were:

  I think the woman should be behind the man. The man should be up first before the woman because Black woman has been over Black man through time in this country. Through no fault of their own they acquired better jobs and better status. They weren’t equal to the White men and women but they were above Black men. And now that the revolution is taking place socially I think Black women shouldn’t be foremost in the life. I think it should be Black men ‘cause men represent the symbol of the races.

  or:

  I think a Black female can be one of the greatest assets in the revolution or in the struggle. I think black women have a history of perseverance and strength. I would not like to see that strength turn into domineering tendencies or bossism but

  I do think we can be that silent strength that the Black man needs to fight the battle for his wife or his woman and his family.

  A large number of black women, many who were young, college-educated, and middle class, were seduced in the 60s and 70s by the romanticized concept of idealized womanhood first popularized during the Victorian age. They stressed that woman’s role was that of a helpmate to her man. And for the first time in the history of black civil rights movements, black women did not struggle equally with black men. Writing of the 60s black movement in Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman, Michelle Wallace comments:

  Misogyny was an integral part of Black Macho. Its philosophy, which maintained that black men had been more oppressed than black women, that black women had, in fact, contributed to that oppression, that black men were sexually and morally superior and also exempt from most of the responsibilities human beings had to other human beings, could only be detrimental to black women. But black women were determined to believe—even as their own guts were telling them it was not so—that they were finally on the verge of liberation from the spectre of the omnipotent blonde with the rosebud lips and the cheese-cake legs. They would no longer have to admire another woman on the pedestal. The pedestal would be theirs. They would no longer have to do their own fighting. They would be fought for. The knight in white armor would ride for them. The beautiful fairy princess would be black.

  The women of the Black Movement had little sense of the contradictions in their desire to be models of fragile Victorian womanhood in the midst of revolution. They wanted a house, a picket fence around it, a chicken in the pot, and a man. As they saw it, their only officially designated revolutionary responsibility was to have babies.

  Not all black women succumbed to the sexist brainwashing that was so much a part of black liberation rhetoric, but those who did not received no attention. People in the U.S. were fascinated with the image of the black female—strong, fierce, and independent—meekly succumbing to a passive role, in fact longing to be in a passive role.

  Although Angela Davis became a female heroine of the 60s movement, she was admired not for her political commitment to the Communist party, not for any of her brilliant analyses of capitalism and racial imperialism, but for her beauty, for her devotion to black men. The American public was not willing to see the “political” Angela Davis; instead they made of her a pos
ter pinup. In general, black people did not approve of her communism and refused to take it seriously. Wallace writes of Angela Davis:

  For all her achievements, she was seen as the epitome of the selfless, sacrificing “good woman”—the only kind of black woman the Movement would accept. She did it for her man, they said. A woman in a womans place. The so-called political issues were irrelevant.

  Contemporary black women who supported patriarchal dominance placed their submission to the status quo in the context of racial politics and argued that they were willing to accept a subordinate role in relationship to black men for the good of the race. They were indeed a new generation of black

  females—a generation that had been brainwashed not by black revolutionaries but by white society, by the media, to believe that woman’s place was in the home. They were the first generation of black women to face competition with white women for the attention of black men. Many of them accepted black male sexism solely because they were afraid of being alone, of not having male companions. The fear of being alone, or of being unloved, had caused women of all races to passively accept sexism and sexist oppression. There was nothing unique or new about the black woman’s willingness to accept the sexist-defined female role. The 60s black movement simply became a background in which their acceptance of sexism, or patriarchy, could be announced to the white public that was so convinced that black women were more likely to be assertive and domineering than white women.