A female belonging to a particular category defines a woman and being black is a member of a dark-skinned people, especially one of African or Australian Aboriginal ancestry. A black woman is just a category belonging to a community of color that is the “opposite white”. White the symbol of purity meaning no harm determining that a white woman is a pure female, the opposite of a black woman. There is not a fine line between white and black women. They are both a part of the same “category”, but so different described in dictionaries, media, and society. Black women are angry, fierce, erotic, and curvy. They are the Welfare Queens of human civilization. White woman can be best described as Starbucks lovers, housewives, consisting of a dumb …show more content…
Not only has she graduated from two exceptional Ivy League colleges (Princeton and Harvard), she is also a lawyer. She was raised on the South Side of Chicago, had opportunities to study at prestigious universities, returned to her hometown, married, and raised two beautiful daughters. Unlike Barack, Michelle has two black parents and a black sibling, and she comes from a city readily associated with black life and politics. She even has a family tree that traces back to American slavery. Observers comfortably frame Michelle Obama as angry Sapphire figure, but how is that possible when she is one out of the few mothers who hold degrees from the most reputable schools around the world. Again, her critique was taken as evidence of her ideational anger. Michelle Obama is the most known example of an African American woman who has worked hard to become who she is today and is probably the most idealistic perfect woman. Still the success and difficulty she has experienced in gaining accurate recognition is emblematic, if not typical, of black women’s citizenship struggles. She is still only seen as the stereotypical black woman in the eyes of supremacist even though she has out succeeded the majority of people today. One could assume that Michelle Obama is someone who could be looked to as faultless representation of how black women can achieve and obtain such incredible power. Unfortunately, not even the first lady is respected even with her credentials. For example. there were attempts to frame her with the common trope of hypersexuality. In the heat of the general election fight, Fox News referred to her as “Barack’s baby mama”. Instead she fights strong against these over rationalized comments because she knows she is better than what they say. If Michelle Obama, the First Lady of the United States, is not recognized as credible, than it is clear that no black woman will ever be
Professor Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, writes that a racial caste system existing in America reflect the Jim Crow laws that were "separate but equal" from the time of the Civil War until the passage of the Civil Rights Acts in the mid 1960's and which continue today. She is a graduate from Stanford Law School and Vanderbilt University and clerked for Justice Harry A. Blackmun on the United States Supreme Court and for Chief Judge Abner Mikva on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Subsequently, she was on the faculty of Sanford Law School serving as the Director of the Civil Rights Clinic before receiving a Soros Justice Fellowship and an appointment to the Moritz College of Law and the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University. Professor Alexander has litigated civil rights cases in private practice while associated with at Saperstein, Goldstein, Demchak & Baller law firm, with additional advocacy through the non-profit sector, as the Director of the Racial Justice Project for the ACLU of Northern California.
Anne Moody’s memoir, Coming of Age in Mississippi, is an influential insight into the existence of a young girl growing up in the South during the Civil-Rights Movement. Moody’s book records her coming of age as a woman, and possibly more significantly, it chronicles her coming of age as a politically active Negro woman. She is faced with countless problems dealing with the racism and threat of the South as a poor African American female. Her childhood and early years in school set up groundwork for her racial consciousness. Moody assembled that foundation as she went to college and scatter the seeds of political activism. During her later years in college, Moody became active in numerous organizations devoted to creating changes to the civil rights of her people. These actions ultimately led to her disillusionment with the success of the movement, despite her constant action. These factors have contributed in shaping her attitude towards race and her skepticism about fundamental change in society.
As a women, Obama rises above stereotypes as she has become an ivy league graduate (after both of her parents did not go to college), a lawyer, and an influential public speaker to all people. In fact, Obama campaigned for her husband's presidential bid throughout 2007 and 2008, as well as spoke at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Later, she returned to deliver a speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention, and again during the
On May 2, 2016 Jill Filipovic wrote an article in the New York Times that addresses the topic of women in power and how women can be at a disadvantage due to the fact that they just simply are not a man. Filipovic started her article by addressing the topic of race and how Representative Donna Edwards was accused of playing the race card during her election. In todays society many women have a hard time getting hired, trusted to execute a role, or even getting paid less by companies. Due to these issues many women such as Hillary Clinton is now being accused of “playing the women card” in her debates for presidency. The purpose of this piece of rhetoric is to argue that women are not just “playing the woman card” but that discrimination
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.
The traditional role of the First Lady is slowly evolving. Modern First Ladies are not stopping at challenging the rules of the game. They are creating a new game entirely. A game that does not rely on a patriarchal society’s idea of how women should behave. A game without the pressure of rules. A game that is not based on who played it before, but based on these women’s individual choices. Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama are defying and changing the traditional role of the First Lady through the influence of Eleanor Roosevelt and 4th wave feminism.
African-American women, then and now, have buried their talents, gifts, and ideas under the bias judgments and opinions of those who racially profile them. As narrated by Patricia Collins, “Reclaiming Black women’s ideas involves discovering, reinterpreting, and, in many cases, analyzing for the first time the works of individual U.S. Black women thinkers who were so extraordinary that they did manage to have their ideas preserved.” Thus, we can find our identity, uniqueness, hidden in the extraordinary works of these women; in fact, Maria Stewart was one of those women. A domestic servant who became a journalist, lecturer, educator, evangelist, and a women's rights activist. The first African-American woman to make public speeches for and
She, like the narrator of Klass’s story, “Not a Good Girl,” is an intellectual, having attended both Princeton University and Harvard School of Law, but these prestigious schools so do not exempt her from the harsh criticism she endures. She is an advocate for the health of children, looking to end the obesity epidemic that plagues America, yet, critics can only seem to focus on her masculine stature, particularly her muscular biceps. This criticism stems from the idea that the First Lady is to be elegant and feminine, a trophy for the President to parade around, and the idea of Michelle Obama’s arms being too muscular and her skin being too dark, inhibits people from seeing her as a woman. Taking this all into consideration, the comparison between Hillary Clinton’s time as First Lady and Michelle Obama’s time as First Lady paints the image that women being in power are becoming a normalcy. During Barak Obama’s campaign trail, the criticism of Michelle’s career while also being a mother of two was less in focus while Hillary, on the other hand, was condemned by journalists and citizens of America for being such an independent woman, and somewhat emasculating to her husband, Bill Clinton (McGinley, 2009,
The notion of a woman being first in anything is foreign in most parts of the world. Millions of women struggle against poverty, discrimination, and sexual violence. But Michelle Obama offers a beacon of hope to that message. Her personal story, being born into a blue-collar family on the South Side of Chicago’ overcoming racism throughout her life; graduating from multiple Ivy League institutions; and then making more money than her husband, makes her a captivating figure for woman to watch all across the globe. Michelle Obama represents the first time many women have seen their class and color reflected in America’s first lady, and because of this, there is no way to deny that she is a symbol for women not only in America, but for all women around the
Barack Obama was born in Honolulu in 1961, and went on to become President of the Harvard Law Review and a U.S. senator representing Illinois. In 2008, he was elected President of the United States, becoming the first African-American commander-in-chief. He served two terms as the 44 president of the United States.
Michelle Obama’s ‘Let’s Move!’ campaign was supposed to help solve the issue of childhood obesity, but it actually made it worse due to misleading evidence. She measured that at the time of her election about 40% of the school age children were either overweight or obese at the time. The actual percentage was closer to 20%. By doing incorrect calculations, she provoked a great deal of unnecessary excitement. She has modified the lunches into much less appealing versions of the school food, however, by doing so, she has not only caused many students to not eat their lunches, instead they devour an excessive amount of the unhealthy options that are still allowed in the schools today.
Black women empower themselves by creating self definition and self-valuations that enable themselve to establish positivity. This would be known as the meaning of self-definition and self-valuation. Studying the social reality of black women, to take the positive and multiple that image and repel the negative. It is also controlling the representation of black womanhood. Society has taught black women that racism, sexism, and poverty are inevitable for them and keep them oppressed. However, black women are confronting and dismantleing the interlocking of the overarching structure of domination in terms of race, gender, and class oppression.
She’s not meant to be fearless or triumph through difficult times. She is instead supposed to be dainty, elegant, flimsy, and a helpless maiden in need of saving. So,” her career choice must match that, which takes the form of either a caretaker, nurse, or motherly role.” With race, you can either believe in its existence or be blind to it, because of schools that are no longer segregated or because of a black president, but we are still separated. Ethnic groups, and foreigners, whether American citizens or not are still looked down upon. When you look at the history of when the 13th Amendment was established it was meant to abolish slavery, but it was just changing the title. Instead of slaves, they are called prisoners. When the amendment was made, it did as it said with a loophole. Crime would not be tolerated, and the prisoners would work. It was over any little of crime that a person of color would be arrested, and put to work, and why would they not? The Amendment changed what the title was, but not their master status. How racist, and ignorant minds viewed people of color. As lower and inferior animals. That still does not deserve basic rights. Now immigration is another racial
“Racism and sexism must be confronted at the same time; to wait for one to end before working on the other reflects an incomplete understanding of the way racism and sexism, as forms of oppression, work to perpetuate each other” (blackfeminism.library). Black feminist struggles against institutionalized, systematic oppression rather than against a certain group of people, be they white men or men of color.While it often requires no stretch of the imagination to infer man-hating in some early (and some recent) feminist writings, the goal of feminism is the end of sexism. It is only a sane response of an oppressed people to work toward their own liberation. Finally, the assumption that feminists are nothing but lesbians reveals the homophobia which persists in many black communities as well as a misunderstanding of both lesbians and motivations for joining the feminist movement”.For a single movement to deal with all of the issues listed requires multi-focused, strategic action, which is exactly what was needed for black and Third World women”(blackfeminsim.say). It was important for black feminism to address the ways that racism, sexism,classism and heterosexism all worked to perpetuate each other. In these two definitions of black feminism/womanism, one can see the complementary nature of one's personal life in relation to one's political life. From the personal, the striving toward wholeness individually and within the community, comes the struggle against those forces that hinder individuals and communities unwhole. The personal is political, especially for black women.Black feminist writings were to focus on developing theory which would address the simultaneity of racism, sexism, heterosexism,and classism in their lives. In addition, the
There is an African proverb which says, ,[1] “If you educate a man you educate an individual, but if you educate a woman you educate a nation” This nation, the United States of America, one nation under God, a nation which has been educated by our daughters, our sisters, our mothers, and our grandmothers. There are several reasons that Americans should be comfortable with the idea of a woman President. Women are as smart, and capable as men. Many women now have had the necessary administrative experience to do the job. A woman president may be less likely to resort to a war than men are. In this thesis, the point I will argue, is that America is ready for a female president. I will have paragraphs in my essay, about the legal qualifications to be a presidential candidate in this country, about a current female candidate who is legally qualified, smart, and capable and has administrative experience. I will mention an opposing view from a 2012 presidential candidate who is female. America is ready for a female president, and if not now…When.