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Double Jeopardy: To Be Black
and Female by Frances
Beal (1969)
(Editors Note: Frances Beal was active in the Student Non-Violent
Coordinating Committee when this widely reprinted essay was written.)
In attempting
to analyze the situation of the black woman in America, one crashes
abruptly into a solid wall of grave misconceptions, outright distortions
of fact and defensive attitudes on the part of many. The system of
capitalism (and its after birth...racism) under which we all live,
has attempted by many devious ways and means to destroy the humanity
of all people, and particularly the humanity of black people. This
has meant an outrageous assault on every black man, woman and child
who reside in the United States.
In keeping
with its goal of destroying the black race's will to resist its subjugation,
capitalism found it necessary to create a situation where the black
man found it impossible to find meaningful or productive employment.
More often than not, he couldn't find work of any kind. And the black
woman likewise was manipulated by the system, economically exploited
and physically assaulted. She could often find work in the white
man's kitchen, however, and sometimes became the sole breadwinner
of the family This predicament has led to many psychological problems
on the part of both man and woman and has contributed to the turmoil
that we find in the black family structure.
Unfortunately,
neither the black man nor the black woman understood the true nature
of the forces-working upon them. Many black women tended to accept
the-capitalist evaluation of manhood and womanhood and believed,
in fact, that black men were shiftless and lazy, otherwise they would
get a job and support their families as they ought to. Personal relationships
between black men and women were thus torn asunder and one result
has been the separation of man from wife, mother from child, etc.
America
has defined the roles to which each individual should subscribe.
It has defined "manhood" in terms of its own interests and
"femininity" likewise. Therefore, an individual who has
a good job, makes a lot of money and drives a Cadillac is a real "man,"
and conversely, an individual who is lacking in these "qualities"
is less of a man. The advertising media in this country continuously
informs the American male of his need for indispensable signs of his
virility the brand of cigarettes that cowboys prefer, the whiskey
that has a masculine tang or the label of the jock strap that athletes
wear.
The ideal
model that is projected for a woman is to be surrounded by hypocritical
homage and estranged from all real work, spending idle hours primping
and preening, obsessed with conspicuous consumption, and limiting
life's functions to simply a sex role. We unqualitatively reject
these respective models. A woman who stays at home, caring for children
and the house often leads an extremely sterile existence. She must
lead her entire life as a satellite to her mate. He goes out into
society and brings back a little piece of the world for her. His
interests and his understanding of the world become her own and she
can not develop herself as an individual, having been reduced to
only a biological function. This kind of woman leads a parasitic
existence that can aptly be described as "legalized prostitution".
Furthermore,
it is idle dreaming to think of black women simply caring for their
homes and children like the middle class white model. Most black
women have to work to help house, feed and clothe their families.
Black women make up a substantial percentage of the black working
force and this is true for the poorest black family as well as the
so-called "middle class" family.
Black
women were never afforded any such phony luxuries. Though we have
been browbeaten with this white image, the reality of the degrading
and dehumanizing jobs that were relegated to us quickly dissipated
this mirage of "womanhood". The following excerpts from
a speech that Sojourner Truth made at a Women's Rights Convention
in the 19th century show us how misleading and incomplete a life this
model represents for us:
...Well,
chilern, whar dar is so much racket dar must be something out o'kilter.
I tink dat 'twixt de niggers of de Souf and de women at de norf
all a talkin' 'bout rights, de white men will be in a fix pretty
soon. But what's all dis here talkin' 'bout? Dat man ober dar say
dat women needs to be helped into carriages and lifted ober ditches,
and to have de best place every whar. Nobody ever help me into carriages,
or ober mud puddles, or gives me any best places...and ar'nt I a
woman? Look at me! Look at my arm...l have plowed, and planted,
and gathered into barns, and no man could head me - and ar'nt I
a woman? I could work as much as a man (when I could get it), and
bear de lash as well - and ar'nt I a woman? I have borne five chilern
and Iseen ‘em mos’ all sold off into slavery, and when
I cried out with a mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard --and
ar’nt I a woman?
Unfortunately,
there seems to be some confusion in the Movement today as to who has
been oppressing whom. Since the advent of black power, the black male
has exerted a more prominent leadership role in our struggle for justice
in this country. He sees the system for what it really is for the
most part. But where he rejects its values and mores on many issues,
when it comes to women, he seems to take his guidelines from the pages
of the Ladies Home Journal.
Certain
black men are maintaining that they have been castrated by society
but that black women somehow escaped this persecution and even contributed
to this emasculation. Let me state here and now that the black woman
in America can justly be described as a "slave of a slave."
By reducing the black man in America to such abject oppression, the
black woman had no protector and was used, and is still being used
in some cases, as the scapegoat for the evils that this horrendous
system has perpetrated on black men. Her physical image has been maliciously
maligned; she has been sexually molested and abused by the white colonizer;
she has suffered the worst kind of economic exploitation, having been
forced to serve as the white woman's maid and wet nurse for white
offspring while her own children were more often than not, starving
and neglected. It is the depth of degradation to be socially manipulated,
physically raped, used to undermine your own household, and to be
powerless to reverse this syndrome.
It is
true that our husbands, fathers, brothers and sons have been emasculated,
lynched and brutalized. They have suffered from the cruelest assault
on mankind that the world has ever known. However, it is a gross
distortion of fact to state that black women have oppressed black
men. The capitalist system found it expedient to enslave and oppress
them and proceeded to do so without signing any agreements with black
women.
It must
also be pointed out at this time, that black women are not resentful
of the rise to power of black men. We welcome it. We see in in it
the eventual liberation of all black people from this corrupt system
under which we suffer. Nevertheless, this does not mean that you
have to negate one for the other. This kind of thinking is a product
of miseducation; that it's either X or it's Y. It is fallacious reasoning
that in order the black man to be strong, the black woman has to
be weak.
Those
who are exerting their "manhood" by telling black women
to step back into a domestic, submissive role are assuming a counter-revolutionary
position. Black women likewise have been abused by the system and
we must begin talking about the elimination of all kinds of oppression.
If we are talking about building a strong nation, capable of throwing
off the yoke of capitalist oppression, then we are talking about the
total involvement of every man, woman, and child, each with a highly
developed political consciousness. We need our whole army out there
dealing with the enemy and not half an army.
There
are also some black women who feel that there is no more productive
role in life than having and raising children. This attitude often
reflects the conditioning of the society in which we live and is
adopted (totally, completely and without change) from a bourgeois
white model. Some young sisters who have never had to maintain
a household and accept the confining role which this entails, tend
to romanticize (along with the help of a few brothers) this role
of housewife and mother. Black women who have had to endure this
kind of function as the sole occupation of their life, are less
apt to have these utopian visions.
Those
who project in an intellectual manner how great and rewarding this
role will be and who feel that the most important thing that they
can contribute to the black nation is children, are doing themselves
a great injustice. This line of reasoning completely negates the
contributions that black women have historically made to our struggle
for liberation. These black women include Sojourner Truth, Harriet
Tubman, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Mary McLeod Bethune and Fannie Lou
Hamer to name but a few.
We live
in a highly industrialized society and every member of the black
nation must be as academically and technologically developed as
possible. To wage a revolution, we need competent teachers, doctors,
nurses, electronic experts, chemists, biologists, physicists, political
scientists, and so on and so forth. Black women sitting at home
reading bedtime stories to their children are just not going to
make it.
ECONOMIC EXPLOITATION OF BLACK WOMEN
The economic
system of capitalism finds it expedient to reduce women to a state
of enslavement. They oftentimes serve as a scapegoat for the evils
of this system. Much in the same way that the poor white cracker
of the South who is equally victimized, looks down upon blacks
and contributes to the oppression of blacks, --So by giving to
men a false feeling of superiority (at least in their own home
or in their relationships with women,) the oppression of women
acts as an escape valve for capitalism. Men may be cruelly exploited
and subjected to a11 sorts of dehumanizing tactics on the part
of the ruling class, but they brave someone who is below them -
-at least they're not women.
Women
also represent a surplus labor supply, the control of which is
absolutely necessary to the profitable functioning of capitalism.
Women are systematically exploited by the system. They are paid
less for the same work that men do and jobs that are specifically
relegated to women are low-paying and without the possibility of
advancement. Statistics from the Women's Bureau of the U.S. Department
of Labor show that the wage scale for white women was even below
that of black men; and the wage scale for non-white women was the
lowest of all:
White Males----------- $6,704.
Non-white Males ------4,277.
White Females ---------3,99l.
Non-white Females-----2,861
Those
industries which employ mainly black women are the
most exploitative in the country. Domestic and hospital workers are
good examples of this oppression; the garment workers in New York
City provide us with another view of this economic slavery. The International
Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) - whose overwhelming membership
consists of black and Puerto Rican women has a leadership that is
nearly lily-white and male. This leadership has been working in collusion
with the ruling class and has completely sold its soul to the corporate
structure.
To add
insult to injury, the IGLOO has invested heavily
in business enterprises in racist, apartheid South Africa. --With
union funds. Not only does this bought-off leadership contribute
to our continued exploitation in this country by not truly representing
the best interests of its membership, but it audaciously uses funds
that black and Puerto Rican women have provided to support the economy
of a vicious government that is engaged in the economic rape and
murder of our black brothers and sisters in our Motherland - Africa.
The entire
labor movement in the United States has suffered as a
result of the super exploitation of black workers and women. The
unions have historically been racist and chauvinistic. They have
upheld racism in this country (and condoned imperialist exploitation
around the world) -and have failed to fight the white skin privileges
of white workers. They have failed to fight or even make an issue
against the inequities in the hiring and pay of women workers.
There has been virtually no struggle against either the racism of the
white worker or the economic exploitation of the working woman, two
facts which have consistently impeded the advancement of the
real struggle against the ruling capitalist class.
This racist,
chauvinistic and manipulative use of black workers and women,
especially black women, has been a severe cancer on the American
labor scene. It therefore becomes essential for those who understand
the workings of capitalism and imperialism to realize that the
exploitation of black people and women works to everyone's disadvantage
and that the liberation of these two groups is a stepping stone
to the liberation of all oppressed people in this country and around
the world.
This document was obtained by the Herstory Project from the Women's
Studies Resources | Duke Special Collections Library-A project of
The Digital Scriptorium, Special Collections Library, Duke University.
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/wlm
. Please contact this collection for information about reproducing
this article.
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