Black and Multiracial Politics in America

Chapter 14. Deconstruct to Reconstruct: African American Women in the Post–Civil Rights Era

Chapter 14 Deconstruct to Reconstruct African American Women in the Post–Civil Rights Era Mamie Locke Black women have often been linked to many of American society’s ills, including sexual promiscuity, welfare dependence, idleness, and poverty. Additionally, many of black America’s seemingly intractable problems are inextricably linked to gender issues. Yet, the literature on black politics virtually ignores the role of gender as a viable explanatory factor. Unfortunately, scholarship mirrors reality as black women have endured sexism in their indefatigable fight against racism. This is evident in the civil rights movement, in which black women played a formidable role but one that, until very recently , has gone relatively unacknowledged. Similarly, in the second-wave feminist movement, black women and their issues were long seen as peripheral to the overall political thrust of the National Organization of Women (NOW). While many white women were working toward the elimination of the proverbial glass ceiling, black women were fighting for jobs. While white women were fighting for more equity in the home, many black women struggled to keep their homes intact while also providing daily sustenance and shelter for their children. While white women were engaged in high-profile efforts to dismantle legislation prohibiting abortion, many black women and others were fighting for individual access to affordable and efficient health care services. Certainly, there were issues on which black and white women saw eye to eye, but the overwhelming feeling was that “color” in American society had driven an inextricable wedge between black and 375 white women. To paraphrase the title of Barbara Smith’s landmark anthology on black women’s experience, “all the women were white and all the Blacks were men.” Black women, Mamie Locke argues, must break down the negative stereotypes and images rooted in centuries of oppression and proactively construct more positive images. Locke argues that the “Million Woman March” served as a starting point for this process but that black women’s struggle for empowerment is fraught with challenges. Chief among them is the need to develop an ideology and a mechanism for incorporation that is attainable and practical and, at the same time, welcoming to other women of color. On October 25, 1997, more than one million African American women from across the United States gathered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for a day of “repentance, resurrection, and restoration.” This Million Woman March called together African American women from all walks of life to express dissatisfaction with the deterioration in the condition and lives of African Americans. It was a call for cessation of the activities that were destroying people and communities. As stipulated in the March’s mission statement, the purpose of the Million Woman March was to go beyond simply being a feel-good event. It was designed to lead African American women in the call to self-determination . “Our focus is centered around the reasons why and what it will require to eliminate this DESTRUCTION” (Philadelphia Daily News, October 24, 1997). The Million Woman March was also an effort to draw attention to the alarming statistics that continue to marginalize African American women in a nation where blackness and femaleness are not considered positive attributes. The data show that 94 of 1,000 African American teenage girls are victims of violent crime. The AIDS rate for African American women is eighteen times higher than that for white women. In 1992 the high school dropout rate for African American females was 6.7 percent, compared to 3.3 percent for African American men and 4.4 and 3.8 percent for white females and males, respectively. In the area of employment and earnings, the picture remains dismal. In 1996 African American women earned thirty dollars less per week than African American men did, forty dollars less per week than white women, 376 m a m i e l o c k e and $134 less per week than white men did. The median household income for African American families was $21,027, for white families $35,126. Only 19.5 percent of African American women were in managerial and professional jobs in 1992, compared to 28.5 percent of white women (Philadelphia Daily News, October 24, 1997). The data document the disconnectedness of African American women from the social and political system, define their condition in the aftermath of the civil rights movement, and underscore the need for a united voice...