Developing friendships between black and white women has been difficult for many years. Although black and white women share common grey spaces, it is the effects of racism that caused one culture to be seemingly set at a higher level on the hierarchical scale. The perceived distance created limits on both races which as a result created a wall of silence and a lack of solidarity. Even though oppression and past hurts have prolonged the mending of what could become an authentic healing there are still positive views on what could be accomplished if women of all races came together to form a mutual bond. Based on the views of a white woman writer and culture I will discuss the limits placed on black and white women and how the two could form a place of reconciliation.
In Can’t Quit You Baby, Tweet (also known as Julia) the black housekeeper, and Cornelia the white privileged woman, come together and a servant-served relationship is established. According to the article Holding My Sister’s Hand: Feminist Solidarity, a servant- served relationship is “a hierarchical, power-based relationship unmediated by sexual desire” (94). This in terms represents the privilege that white women have over black women even if they were in the same social class.
In the text, we see that Cornelia is a middle class woman who stays at home working with Tweet in the kitchen while both their husbands work. The kitchen represents a place of familiarity and commonality within their expected roles. In other words, even though Cornelia was seen to hold a superior position over Tweet, they still had a form of common ground reinforced by gender oppression where all men were seen as superior to women in society. As stated before, there are some things that Corn...
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...hite woman’s home. Being that Douglas is white, could this story of reconciling a relationship with a black woman be her way of trying to get a movement going? The first step to reconciliation is listening and understanding but we also have to be willing to speak up and let our voices be heard. Women of all races have to understand the difference that each culture brings to the table. Each race has some type of positive experiences to offer but can we all put our differences to the side to solve this problem? The sad part is even though there is common ground, within that commonality lies fear. When will fear push us towards constructing a bridge instead of running away from the tools to fix it? It’s all in a matter of time, but if we put all the past hurt, pain, strength, and wisdom gained from lessons together it would form a sisterhood that could be unbreakable.
In “The Warmth of Other Suns” by Isabel Wilkerson, the three main characters that the story follows face a great deal of inequality and racial prejudice in both the Jim Crow south that they left and the north that they fled to. Through their stories, as well as the excerpts from Wilkerson that serve to dispel some of the common myths and to explain some of the inequalities that others faced, one is able to make many connections between the problems that Ida Mae, George Starling, and Richard Foster, among many others, faced in their time and the obstacles to equality that our society still to this day struggles to overcome. A large reason as to why these obstacles still exist is that many have preconceived ideas about African Americans and African American Communities. However, numerous obstacles still survive to this day as a result of certain racist ideas.
The Author of this book (On our own terms: race, class, and gender in the lives of African American Women) Leith Mullings seeks to explore the modern and historical lives of African American women on the issues of race, class and gender. Mullings does this in a very analytical way using a collection of essays written and collected over a twenty five year period. The author’s systematic format best explains her point of view. The book explores issues such as family, work and health comparing and contrasting between white and black women as well as between men and women of both races.
Andrea Smith’s “Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy” introduces an alternative framework for the organization of women and people of color (Smith 67). Such framework is non-singular, contrasting the previous which have proven to be limiting to these groups (Smith 67). Through the discussion of the three pillars which are separate, but interrelated and heteropatriarchy within society Smith provides a helpful starting point for organizers to break from systems of oppression and ultimately deconstruct White supremacy (Smith 73).
To live in a world where there is no such thing as racism or stereotypes is a world that is imaginative. In Chimamanda Adichie’s transcript, “The Danger of a Single Story,” she writes about the ways in which people become single minded about races through the experiences they go through in life, as well as how people are misguided about cultural behaviors in reality versus what they see or hear. Ross Gay, author of the article, “Some Thoughts on Mercy,” focuses on the struggles black men go experience, as well as addresses the stereotypes that occur in this world. Both Adichie and Gay use childhood anecdotes to explain their first encounters with racism, include different perspectives to show the struggles of black people, and make assertions
Being a woman is hard work. We many have pressures on us from society to marry, bear children, be an upstanding citizen, and maintain some sort of career, all the while trying to understand our bodies and its changes; being a woman of color, or black woman, it’s even harder. Not only do we have to deal with everything a White woman does, and we also have the added pressure of defying stigmas and stereotypes within our own group of people. What stigma’s you ask? How about not being perceived as ignorant, uneducated, and or “ghetto”. The stereotypical misrepresentations of African-American women and men in popular culture have influenced societal views of Blacks for centuries. The typical stereotypes about Black women range from the smiling, asexual and often-obese Mammy to the promiscuous and the loud, smart mouthed, neck-rolling Black welfare mother is the popular image on reality television. These images portrayed in media and popular culture creates powerful ideology about race and gender, which affects every day experiences of Black women in America.
This book was written in the “age of Obama,” as Tim Wise calls it, and it seems to be even more necessary today, in the current “age of Trump.” Multiracial relations are strained and people have become very divided. Interestingly, when Wise pleads for white people to change the narrative and embrace the many different traditions and cultures that built our society he states, “We can continue to hold on to a fictional, nostalgic past, longing for a return to it” (Wise, 159). This is relevant to the current political climate that brought about the election of President Trump with the slogan “Make America Great Again.” Tim Wise encourages white people to put aside their fear and accept the change in multiracial relationships and educate ourselves to become better, to try harder, and to fight for equality with the power that we so unjustly
On Being Young-A Woman-and Colored an essay by Marita Bonner addresses what it means to be black women in a world of white privilege. Bonner reflects about a time when she was younger, how simple her life was, but as she grows older she is forced to work hard to live a life better than those around her. Ultimately, she is a woman living with the roles that women of all colors have been constrained to. Critics, within the last 20 years, believe that Marita Bonners’ essay primarily focuses on the double consciousness ; while others believe that she is focusing on gender , class , “economic hardships, and discrimination” . I argue that Bonner is writing her essay about the historical context of oppression forcing women into intersectional oppression by explaining the naturality of racial discrimination between black and white, how time and money equate to the American Dream, and lastly how gender discrimination silences women, specifically black women.
For this assignment, the movie “The Help” was chosen to review and analyze because it presents a story of fighting injustice through diverse ways. The three main characters of the movie are Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan, a young white woman, Aibileen Clark, and Minny Jackson, two colored maids. Throughout the story, we follow these three women as they are brought together to record colored maids’ stories about their experiences working for the white families of Jackson. The movie explores the social inequalities such as racism and segregation between African Americans and whites during the 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi.
Although the institutionalization of the fields of Black and Women’s Studies were still years away, the aforementioned black women, along with many others, were essential to the development of the epistemological and theoretical concepts that would later become the foundation. We can clearly see gaps in the literature in the area of Black Women’s Studies, as the writers discuss these women from the standpoint of either the Africana or Feminist Tradition. Some make mention of the intersection of racial and gendered oppression, but only in passing
In our society of today, there are many images that are portrayed through media and through personal experience that speak to the issues of black motherhood, marriage and the black family. Wherever one turns, there is the image of the black woman in the projects and very rarely the image of successful black women. Even when these positive images are portrayed, it is almost in a manner that speaks to the supposed inferiority of black women. Women, black women in particular, are placed into a society that marginalizes and controls many of the aspects of a black woman’s life. As a result, many black women do not see a source of opportunity, a way to escape the drudgery of their everyday existence. For example, if we were to ask black mother’s if they would change their situation if it became possible for them to do so, many would change, but others would say that it is not possible; This answer would be the result of living in a society that has conditioned black women to accept their lots in lives instead of fighting against the system of white and male dominated supremacy. In Ann Petry’s The Street, we are given a view of a black mother who is struggling to escape what the street symbolizes. In the end though, she becomes captive to the very thing she wishes to escape. Petry presents black motherhood, marriage and the black family as things that are marginalized according to the society in which they take place.
Feminist theory is a term that embraces a wide variety of approaches to the questions of a women’s place and power in culture and society. Two of the important practices in feminist critique are raising awareness of the ways in which women are oppressed, demonized, or marginalized, and discovering motifs of female awakenings. The Help is a story about how black females “helped” white women become “progressive” in the 1960’s. In my opinion, “The Help” I must admit that it exposes some of our deepest racial, gender, and class wounds as individuals and social groups, and that the story behind the story is a call to respect our wounds and mutual wounding so that healing may have a chance to begin and bring social injustice to an end. The relationship between Blacks and whites in this novel generally take on the tone of a kindly, God-fearing Jesus Christ-loving Black person, placidly letting blacks and whites work out their awkwardness regarding race and injustice. Eventually both the black and white women realize how similar they are after all, and come to the conclusion that racism is an action of the individual person, a conclusion mutually exclusive of racism as an institutionalized system that stands to demonize and oppress people based on the color of their skin and the location of their ancestry.
The challenges and conflict in a black male-female relationship that occurred centuries ago still occur today. Like almost every relationship that exist, the female use more words to make a point and convey her emotions more and the male uses less words and convey less emotions. Females use conversation to think through a problem and work towa...
Being a African American woman or man in the 1800's came with consequences. The consequences were one's that one didn't ask for but were given due to the color of their skin. Slavery among African American's was the way of life during the time. Along with slavery, came sexual exploitation, control over their lives, and sexual abuse. Through these negatives, one positive did occur as well. Love was sometimes the one positive thing these slaves had to hold onto. There were many forces working against slaves, to keep them from true happiness and freedom of living life the way slaves wanted. My goal in this paper is to reveal the forces that were working against the relationships between slaves and
Women have battled for centuries to be equivalent to men. In “The Color Purple," Alice Walker illustrates the theme of women’s heartache, racist acts, and complications of a day to day woman. The Color Purple took place during a demeaning era to not only African American women but African Americans in general were treated inhumane. African American women submitted themselves to controlling men due to the belief of that’s how it should be. During this time, women were used for manual and sexual labor. They were referred as one’s property, hardly spoken of or treated like human-beings. Women faced lack of self-love and identity therefore the definition of love was clouded.
Williams also evaluates the story of Hagar in order to compare Hagar’s life with the lives of contemporary black women so to underscore their shared histories under oppressive forces. Ethicists Katie Canon understands Black Feminist Consciousness as more accurately identified as Black Womanist Consciousness according to Alice Walker’s concept and definition. Canon’s failure to describe the two as distinct personal identifiers suggests that she understands Black female consciousness as womanist thereby imposing an identity on women who might not claim womanist subjectivity. This point is further made through Junior’s scholarship as it reflects that African American women do not universally accept the “womanist” definition or identifying title. In addition, while Junior notes bell hook’s concerns about how the term womanism connotes a negativity that pits Black women with white women, none of the scholars raise questions about or discuss whether the identity markers of “feminist” or “womanist” inhibit collaboration and solidarity among Black