17 Davis, Women, Race, and Class, 7.
18 Bonnie Thornton Dill, “The Dialectics of Black Womanhood,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 4 (1979): 543-55, especially 547. Smith and Stewart, “Approaches to Studying Racism,” 1, make a similar point.
19 In slavery, there was 100 percent labor force participation by black women. In 1910, thirty-four percent were in the official labor force. In 1960, the figure was forty percent, and by 1980, it was over fifty percent. Comparable figures for white women are eighteen percent in 1890, twenty-two percent in 1910, thirty-seven percent in 1960, and fifty-one percent in 1980. For a more detailed discussion, see Phyllis A. Wallace, Black Women in the Labor Force (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1980).
20 Angela Davis, “Reflections of the Black Woman’s Role in the Community of Slaves,” Black Scholar 3 (December 1971): 2—16, offers an enlightening discussion of the irony of independence out of subordination. See also Deborah Gray White, Ar’n’t I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South (New York: W. W. Norton, 1985), for a more detailed analysis of the contradictions of the black female role in slavery. For a discussion of the role of black women in the family, see Robert Staples, The Black Woman in America (Chicago: Nelson Hall, 1973); Robert Hill, The Strengths of Black Families (New York: Emerson Hall, 1972); Herbert Guttman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750 to 1925 (New York: Random House, 1976); Carol Stack, All Our Kin: Strategies for Survival in a Black Community (New York: Harper & Row, 1974); and Charles Willie, A New Look at Black Families (New York: General Hall, 1976). For a discussion of black women’s community roles, see Bettina Aptheker, Woman’s Legacy: Essays on Race, Sex, and Class in American History (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1982); Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America (New York: William Morrow, 1983); Lerner, Black Women; Sharon Harley and Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, eds., The Afro-American Woman: Struggles and Images (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1978); Linda Perkins, “The Impact of the ‘Cult of True Womanhood’ on the Education of Black Women,” Journal of Social Issues 39 (1983): 17—28; and the special issue, “The Impact of Black Women in Education,” Journal of Negro Education 51, no. 3 (Summer 1982).
21 See Robert Staples, “The Myth of the Black Matriarchy,” in his The Black Family: Essays and Studies (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1971), and The Black Woman in America. Also see hooks, Ain’t I a Woman and Cheryl T. Gilkes, “Black Women’s Work as Deviance: Social Sources of Racial Antagonism within Contemporary Feminism,” (working paper no. 66, Wellesley, MA: Wellesley College, Center for Research on Women, 1979). However, more recently Robert Staples has argued that black women who are too independent will be unable to find black mates and that black men are justified in their preference for a more traditionally feminine partner (“The Myth of Black Macho: A Response to Angry Black Feminists,” Black Scholar 10 [March—April 1979]: 24—32).
22 See White, Ar’n’t I a Woman? and Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work and the Family, From Slavery to the Present (New York: Basic Books, 1985).
23 Michael Albert et al., Liberating Theory (Boston: South End Press, 1986), 6.
24 For further discussion of suffrage and racism, see Davis, Women. Race, and Class; Giddings, When and Where I Enter; Harley and Terborg-Penn, The Afro-American Woman, and Barbara H. Andolsen, “Daughters of Jefferson, Daughters of Bootblacks”: Racism and American Feminism (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1986).
25 See Gloria Joseph and Jill Lewis, Common Differences: Conflicts in Black and White Feminist Perspectives (New York: Avon, 1981); Diane K. Lewis, “A Response to Inequality: Black Women, Racism, and Sexism,” Signs 3 (1977): 399—61; and bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (Boston: South End Press, 1984), for extended discussions of the dynamics of structural subordination to and social conflict with varying dominant racial and sexual groups.
26 Lewis, “A Response to Inequality,” 343.
27 Giddings, When and Where I Enter; Harley and Terborg-Penn, The Afro-American Woman; and Davis, “Reflections on the Black Woman’s Role in the Community of Slaves.”
28 See Evans, Personal Politics; and Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981).
29 Michele Wallace, Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman (New York: Dial, 1979). See also Linda C. Powell, “Black Macho and Black Feminism,” in Smith, Home Girls, 283—92, for a critique of Wallace’s thesis.
30 For statements by Truth, Stewart, Cooper, Ruffin, and Harper, see Loewenberg and Bogin, Black Women in Nineteenth-Century American Life; and Lerner, Black Woman; for Lorde, see Lorde, Sister Outsider; for Davis, see Davis, Women, Race, and Class; for Beale, see Frances Beale, “Double Jeopardy,” and “Slave of a Slave No More: Black Women in the Struggle,” Black Scholar 12, no. 6 (November/December 1981): 16—24; and for Murray, see Pauli Murray, “The Liberation of Black Women,” in Women: A Feminist Perspective, ed. Jo Freeman (Palo Alto, CA: Mayfield, 1975), 351—63.
31 Regarding the church, see Pauline Terrelonge Stone, “Feminist Consciousness and Black Women,” in Freeman, ed., 575—88; Joseph and Lewis, Common Differences; Jacqueline Grant, “Black Women and the Church,” in But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women’s Studies, ed. Gloria T. Hull et al. (Old Westbury, NY: Feminist Press, 1982), 141—52; and Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, “ ’Together and in Harness’; Women’s Traditions in the Sanctified Church,” Signs 10 (Summer 1985): 678—99. Concerning politics, see La Rue, The Black Movement; Mae C. King,, “The Politics of Sexual Stereotypes,” Black Scholar 4 (March/ April 1973): 12—22; and Manning Marable, How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America (Boston: South End Press, 1983), especially chapter 3. For a discussion of sexual victimization, see Barbara Smith, “Notes for Yet Another Paper on Black Feminism, or Will the Real Enemy Please Stand Up,” Conditions 5 (1979): 123—27, as well as Joseph and Lewis, Common Differences. For a critique of the notion of the matriarch, see Stone, Feminist Consciousness; and Staples, “The Myth of the Black Matriarchy.”
32 See Murray, “The Liberation of Black Women”; and Stone, Feminist Consciousness.
33 Evelyn Brooks Bennett, “Nannie Burroughs and the Education of Black Woman,” in Harley and Terborg-Penn, The Afro-American Woman, 97—108.
34 Aldon Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change (New York: Free Press, 1984); and Carson, In Struggle.
35 See the recent publication by Jo Ann Gibson Robinson, The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1987).
36 Cornel West, “The Paradox of the Afro-American Rebellion,” in The Sixties without Apology, ed. Sohnya Sayres, Anders Stephanson, Stanley Aronowitz, and Fredric Jameson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984).
37 Lorde, Sister Outsider, especially 66—71; hooks, Feminist Theory; Linda Burnham, “Has Poverty Been Feminized in Black America?” Black Scholar 16, no. 2 (March/April 1985): 14—24; and Maria C. Lugones and Elizabeth V. Spelman, “Have We Got a Theory for You! Feminist Theory, Cultural Imperialism and the Demand for ‘The Woman’s Voice,‘” Women’s Studies International Forum 6, no. 6 (1983): 573—81.
38 Davis, Women, Race, and Class, 53—54.
39 Andolsen, “Daughters of Jefferson,” 78.
40 Giddings, When and Where I Enter, 348.
41 Mary Frances Berry, Why ERA Failed: Politics, Women’s Rights, and the Amending Process of the Constitution (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986).
42 Lewis, “A Response to Inequality.”
43 Karen Kollias, “Class Realities: Create a New Power Base,” in Building Feminist Theory: Essays from Quest, ed. Quest staff (New York: Longman, 1981), 125—38, especially 134.
44 Brenda Eichelberger, “Voices on Black Feminism,” Quest: A Feminist Quarterly 4 (1977): 16—28, especially 15.
45 Burnham, “Has Poverty Been Feminized
?” 15.
46 For discussion of women, employment, and the labor movement, see Diane Balser, Sisterhood and Solidarity: Feminism and Labor in Modern Times (Boston: South End Press, 1987); Carol Groneman and Mary Beth Norton, eds., “To Toil the Livelong Day”: America’s Women at Work, 1780—1980 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987); Philip S. Foner, Women and the American Labor Movement: From World War I to the Present (New York: Free Press, 1980); Bettina Berch, The Endless Day: The Political Economy of Women and Work (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982); and Mary Frank Fox and Sharlene Hesse-Biber, Women at Work (Palo Alto, CA: Mayfield, 1984). For blacks, see Marable, How Capitalism Underdeveloped; Richard Polenberg, One Nation Divisible: Class, Race, and Ethnicity in the United States since 1938 (New York: Penguin, 1980); Philip S. Foner, Organized Labor and the Black Worker, 1649—1973 (New York: International Publishers, 1976); and Dorothy K. Newman et al., Protest, Politics, and Prosperity; Black Americans and White Institutions, 1940—75 (New York: Pantheon, 1978).
47 See Balser, Sisterhood and Solidarity, for a detailed consideration of the contemporary union activities of women, especially their efforts to organize clerical and other pink collar-workers.
48 See Jones, Labor of Love; Giddings, When and Where I Enter; and Davis, Women, Race, and Class, for an examination of black women’s work roles and labor activism.
49 See Delores Janiewski, “Seeking ‘a New Day and a New Way’: Black Women and Unions in the Southern Tobacco Industry”; and Elizabeth Clark-Lewis, “‘This Work Had a End’: African-American Domestic Workers in Washington, D.C., 1910—1940,” both in Groneman and Norton, “To Toil the Livelong Day.”
50 Heidi Hartmann and Zillah Eisenstein provide theoretical critiques of monist Marxism as an adequate avenue for women’s liberation. Both Lydia Sargent and Sara Evans detail the sexual politics of the Left (see Heidi Hartmann, “The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism,” in Sargent, Woman and Revolution; Eisenstein, “Reform and/or Revolution: Toward a Unified Women’s Movement,” in Sargent, Woman and Revolution, 339—62; Sargent, “New Left Women and Men: The Honeymoon Is Over,” in Sargent, Woman and Revolution, xi-xxxii; and Evans, Personal Politics).
51 See Combahee River Collective, Combahee River Collective Statement: Black Feminist Organizing in the Seventies and Eighties (New York: Kitchen Table Press, 1986), 12-13.
52 Marable, How Capitalism Underdeveloped.
53 Joseph and Lewis, Common Differences, 38.
54 Lewis, “A Response to Inequality,” 341.
55 For information on the development of black feminist scholarship and academic programs, see Patricia Bell Scott, “Selective Bibliography on Black Feminism” in Hull et al., But Some of Us Are Brave; Black Studies/Women’s Studies Faculty Development Project, “Black Studies/Women’s Studies: An Overdue Partnership” (Women’s Studies, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1983, mimeographed); Nancy Conklin et al., “The Culture of Southern Black Women: Approaches and Materials” (University: University of Alabama Archives of American Minority Cultures and Women’s Studies Program, Project on the Culture of Southern Black Women, 1983); the premiere issue SAGE: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women I, no. I (Spring 1984); and the establishment of Kitchen Table: A Women of Color Press, New York. The Center for Research on Women at Memphis State University, the Women’s Research and Resource Center at Spelman College, and the Minority Women’s Program at Wellesley College are among the academic centers.
56 See Andrew Cherlin and Pamela Waters, “Trends in United States Men’s and Women’s Sex-Role Attitudes: 1972-1978,” American Sociological Review 46 (1981): 453-60. See also, Janice Gump, “Comparative Analysis of Black Women’s and White Women’s Sex-role Attitudes,” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 43 (1975): 858-63; and Marjorie Hershey, “Racial Difference in Sex-Role Identities and Sex Stereotyping: Evidence against a Common Assumption,” Social Science Quarterly 58 (1978): 583-96. For various opinion polls, see “The 1972 Virginia Slims American Women’s Opinion Poll” and “The 1974 Virginia Slims American Women’s Opinion Poll,” conducted by the Roper Organization (Williamstown, MA: Roper Public Opinion Research Center, 1974). See Barbara Everitt Bryant, “American Women: Today and Tomorrow,” National Commission on the Observance of International Women’s Year (Washington, D.C.: GPO, March 1977). Gloria Steinem, “Exclusive Louis Harris Survey: How Women Live, Vote and Think,” Ms. 13 (July 1984): 51—54.
57 For analyses of the influence of socioeconomic class and race on feminist attitudes, see Willa Mae Hemmons, “The Women’s Liberation Movement: Understanding Black Women’s Attitudes,” in The Black Woman, ed. LaFrances Rodgers-Rose (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1980), 285-99; and Ransford and Miller, “Race, Sex, and Feminist Outlook.”
Jacquelyn Grant
Jacquelyn Grant is among a small group of “womanist” scholars doing pioneering work in theology. She teaches systematic theology at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, Georgia, and is founding director of Black Women in Church and Society, a program that focuses on black women’s leadership development and the enhancement of participation of black women in the church. “Black Theology and the Black Woman,” which appeared in Black Theology: A Documentary History (1979), is an early essay on sexism in the black church. Grant’s most significant publication is White Women’s Christ and Black Women’s Jesus: Feminist Christology and Womanist Response (1989), in which she articulates her own womanist theology.
BLACK THEOLOGY AND THE BLACK WOMAN
Liberation theologies have arisen out of the contexts of the liberation struggles of black Americans, Latin Americans, American women, black South Africans, and Asians. These theologies represent a departure from traditional Christian theology. As a collective critique, liberation theologies raise serious questions about the normative use of Scripture, tradition and experience in Christian theology. Liberation theologians assert that the reigning theologies of the West have been used to legitimate the established order. Those to whom the church has entrusted the task of interpreting the meaning of God’s activity in the world have been too content to represent the ruling classes. For this reason, say the liberation theologians, theology has generally not spoken to those who are opposed by the political establishment.
Ironically, the criticism that liberation theology makes against classical theology has been turned against liberation theology itself. Just as most European and American theologians have acquiesced in the oppression of the West, for which they have been taken to task by liberation theologians, some liberation theologians have acquiesced in one or more oppressive aspects of the liberation struggle itself. Where racism is rejected, sexism has been embraced. Where classism is called into question, racism and sexism have been tolerated. And where sexism is repudiated, racism and classism are often ignored.
Although there is a certain validity to the argument that any one analysis —race, class, or sex—is not sufficiently universal to embrace the needs of all oppressed peoples, these particular analyses, nonetheless, have all been well presented and are crucial for a comprehensive and authentic liberation theology. In order for liberation theology to be faithful to itself, it must hear the critique coming to it from the perspective of the black woman—perhaps the most oppressed of all the oppressed.
I am concerned in this essay with how the experience of the black woman calls into question certain assumptions in liberation theology in general, and black theology in particular. In the Latin American context, this has already been done by women such as Beatriz Melano Couch and Consuelo Urquiza. A few Latin American theologians have begun to respond. Beatriz Couch, for example, accepts the starting point of Latin American theologians, but criticizes them for their exclusivism with respect to race and sex. She says:... we in Latin America stress the importance of the starting point, the praxis, and the use of social science to analyze our political, historical situation. In this I am in full agreement with my male colleagues ... with one qualitative diff
erence. I stress the need to give importance to the different cultural forms that express oppression; to the ideology that divides people not only according to class, but to race, to sex. Racism and sexism are oppressive ideologies, which deserve a specific treatment in the theology of liberation.1
More recently, Consuelo Urquiza called for the unification of Hispanic American women in struggling against their oppression in the church and society. In commenting on the contradiction in the Pauline Epistles that undergird the oppression of the Hispanic American woman, Urquiza said: “At the present time all Christians will agree with Paul in the first part of [Galatians 3:28] about freedom and slavery that there should not be slaves. ... However, the next part of this verse ... has been ignored, and the equality between man and woman is not accepted. They would rather skip that line and go to the epistle to Timothy [2:9-15].”2 Women theologians of Latin background are beginning to do theology and to sensitize other women to the necessity of participating in decisions that affect their lives and the life of their communities. Latin American theology will gain from these inputs, which women are making to the theological process.
Third World and black women3 in the United States will soon collaborate in an attack on another aspect of liberation theotogy—feminist theology. Black and Third World women have begun to articulate their differences and similarities with the feminist movement, which is dominated by white American women who until now have been the chief authors of feminist theology. It is my contention that the theological perspectives of black and Third World women should reflect these differences and similarities with feminist theology. It is my purpose, however, to look critically at black theology as a black woman in an effort to determine how adequate is its conception of liberation for the total black community. Pauli Murray and Theressa Hoover have in their own ways challenged black theology. Because their articles appear in this section (documents 39 and 37), it is unnecessary for me to explain their point of view. They have spoken for themselves.
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