The Struggle Continues Many feminists addressed the plight of African American women during the New Negro movement in the US. They shared the same problems and visions but some differ in strategy. The African American educator Elise McDougald’s essay “The Struggle of Negro Women for Race and Sex Emancipation” employs an interesting strategy to gain individuality amongst African American women. While displaying the direct issues similar to those of her allies, McDougald approaches her antagonists with an unusual method. This was an extremely audacious essay and a great subject to debate for that reason.
Political Intersectionality is described as a categorization conflict that women of color experience particularly in racism and sexism issues. She states that women of color are often absent from any civil rights issues because anti-racism strategies are developed by men of color and anti-sexist strategies are developed by white women. This leaves women of color absent from any form of political and social justice. In terms of domestic violence, Crenshaw gives a personal anecdote of being denied domestic violence cases and statistics for women of color. She shows how this example signifies how “women of color can be erased by the strategic silences of antiracism and
Every day, we are bombed with images of African American women lowering their standards by posing half naked and having silly arguments on social media. Women are portrayed as angry, loud, fighters and demanding. Many shows are examples of these characteristics such as house wives of Atlanta, Love & Hip Hop and Bad Girl Clubs. In these shows, women are very angry and confused so they act out. By this, people outside of the African American race may not understand so they go by what they see.
It uses sex as a distraction to get the audience’s attention while it approaches matters that are important to a specific minority. Especially in a world where only one standard of women is praised and any others are degraded (in this case the black women). In any culture a woman’s sexuality is a big part of her reputation but if her sexuality is distorted or demoralized she must find another way to uplift it and make it her own.
Angry whites in the South during this period of time would go to any measure to satisfy their hate for an individual of a different race. Rosaleen really changes during this trial; she becomes bitter towards whites, even towards Lily, whom she is close to. Continuing on page 52 Rosaleen learns about the black Madonna. “If Jesus’ mother is black, how come we only know about the white Mary?” The quote is what Rosaleen was thinking when she saw the picture Lily had found in her mother’s items. This is not just a picture of a black version of Mary; it is a picture of the African American’s gaining their rightful freedoms in 1964.
. In popular culture, black people are creating the media that portrays them, often as commodities. Yet in many ways - rap videos, for instance, that glorify the ghetto and present women as sex objects - they are reinforcing negative images,” (Potier). Many rap videos, lyrics, and TV characters, and the limited amount of diverse images of black women is poison to the African-American female community. These negative elements of the media only create a harder obstacle, creating equality in the mass media, for African-American women to
The white woman only relates on some of these issues. To the contrary the black woman identifies with all of the issues and the white woman refuses to embrace the entire struggle of the black woman creating a vein of contention. The most prevalent issue that I have found among this sisterhood is the “black man’. The black man uses his relationship with the white woman as a sort of trophy. In his relationship with his black woman we find that as we move up the economic ladder, the black woman is used as a helpmate until he achieves any level of success and is then discarded and treated as she is passé.
I feel that society makes a big fuss over certain things that are not worth making a fuss over, and we as African Americans need to look past all of the faults in certain situations and grasp the definition behind it. The first claim made by Robinson is that “Everyone seems to have a visceral reaction to the film Precious and the African American images it portrays.” By this, she is stating that the reactions of everyone to the film and its portrait of African Americans are based on instinct and not on reasoning. I solely agree with this, and feel that the negative feedback given about the film is unnecessary. Many people are over thinking and over analyzing this film instead of taking it for face value. The blame for over analyzing is placed upon the society that we currently live in.
The Affect of Colorism and the Beauty Queue on Black Women The issue of colorism torments the lives of Black women around the world, as seen in Latin America, North America and the Caribbean. The idea of beauty continues to manifest as it determines the privileges of a woman. In today’s society, beauty is everything; it affects the lives of women because everyday a woman is judged by her physical appearance, which makes her constantly insecure about herself. Many women are consumed by the notion of beauty, which is reinforced by the beauty queue. According to Margaret Hunter, “the beauty queue is a rank ordering of women from lightest to darkest where the lightest get the most rewards and the darkest women get the least”.
The tyranny civilians felt was surreal. In “Aint I a Woman”, Sojourner Truth anxiously talked about how and why African-American women did not have the same rights as white men had and why there was no equality between them. Bell Hooks’, “Talking Back” also shares significance with what Truth had to express. Hooks conveys that even though women have the right to speak, they are not being listened to and what they say does not make a difference in the matter. Thoreau’s “Resistance to Civil Government”, has many similarities with Martin Luther King Junior’s letter.