Ain — страница 2

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be complicit in the devaluation of black womanhood that helps maintain existing structures of domination. To the extent that black men are socialized to see black females as their enemies, particularly those who are professionally employed, misogynist and sexist assaults are legitimized. Black women face a culture where practically everyone wants us to stay in our place (i.e. be content to accept life on the bottom of this society’s economic and social totem pole). Significantly, even when individual black women are able to advance professionally and acquire a degree of economic self-sufficiency, it is in the social realm that racist and sexist stereotypes are continually used both as ways of defining black women’s identity and interpreting our behavior. For example: if a

black woman sits at a predominantly white corporate board meeting where a heated discussion is taking place and she interrupts, as everyone else has been doing, her behavior may be deemed hostile and aggressive. Often when I lecture with a black male colleague and I challenge his points, rather than being perceived as more intellectually competent, I am deemed castrating, brutal, etc. The reverse happens if he challenges me in a particularly winning way. He is seen as just more brilliant, more capable, etc. Even in feminist circles, individual black women are often subjected to different standards of evaluation than their peers. When the nationally recognized black woman writer Toni Cade Bambara died, the mass media paid little or no attention. Almost a year after her death Ms.

magazine published a long article in which a black woman writer focused on the poor housekeeping skills of the writer and her failure to conform to a standard of desired friendship. Nothing was said about the content of her work or its impact; this was a blatant example of devaluation. It is easy to devalue and de-legitimate black females who do not conform to standards of bourgeois decorum, who do not come from the right class backgrounds. No one objects. Often individual black women are so worried that they will be regarded through the lens of racist/sexist stereotypes that portray us as dominating, vicious and all-powerful, that they refuse to make any courageous non-conforming act. They may be more conservative in standpoint and behavior, more upholding of the status quo,

than their non-black and female counterparts. They may refuse to consider taking any action in relation to individual self-actualization or group participation that would be seen as rebellious or transgressive. Anti-feminist backlash, coupled with narrow forms of black nationalism which wholeheartedly embrace patriarchal thinking, has had a major impact on black females. Fear of male rage, disapproval and rejection leads some of us to be wary of feminist politics, to reject feminist thinking. Yet if we do not bring feminism out of the closet and into our lives, racist/sexist images that ensure and perpetuate the devaluation of black womanhood will continue to gather cultural momentum.