Ask a Sista: Black Women Muse on Politics, Policy, Pop Culture and Scholarship

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NetRootsNation 2011
Ask a Sista: Black Women Muse on Politics, Policy, Pop Culture and Scholarship

Featuring:

Jenifer Daniels | @thefriendraiser
Zerlina Maxwell | @ZerlinaMaxwell
Janee Bolden | @JaneeTMB
Cheryl Contee | @ch3ryl
Chloe Hilliard | @ChloeHilliard
Dr. Goddess (Kimberly Ellis) | @drgoddess

'Left of Black': Episode #33 featuring Lisa B. Thompson

Left of Black #33

w/ Lisa B. Thompson

May 9, 2011

Left of Black host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined via Skype by scholar and playwright Lisa B. Thompson. Neal and Thompson discuss the images of Black middle class women, the Tony Award nominated musical The Scottsboro Boys and the role of Black men in the production of Black women’s art.

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—>Lisa B. Thompson is a playwright and associate professor of English at the State University of New York, Albany where she teaches courses in African American literature, drama, theory, and cultural studies. Her book, Beyond the Black Lady: Sexuality and the New African American Middle Class (2009), explores black middle class female sexuality through works by African American women authors. Her critically acclaimed off-Broadway play, Single Black Female, which was nominated for a 2005 LA Weekly Theatre Award for best comedy, has been produced throughout the US; in 2010 the play received its international debut in Toronto.

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Left of Black is a weekly Webcast hosted by Mark Anthony Neal and produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University.

Janet Jackson Talks About Her Struggles with Body Image

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Black Women and Advertising--Imani Perry on the Pepsi "Love Hurts" commercial

Are Black Women Invisible?

Do Black women go unnoticed more often?

Are Black Women Invisible?
by Melissa Burkley, Ph.D.

Fifty-five years ago, Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a White man, and in doing so, provided the spark that set off the Civil Rights movement. Her actions that day were undeniably brave, but are even more impressive in the wake of recent research suggesting Black women are invisible. No, I don't mean invisible in the superhero kind of way; I mean invisible in a sociocultural way. That is, Black women are more likely than other racial/gender groups to go unnoticed or unheard.

Surely there are examples of Black women whose voices have a strong impact on our society. Michelle Obama serves as a role model for many people in this country, and whether she is promoting gardening or a new cardigan from J. Crew, people listen to her. Oprah is another example of a Black woman who holds enormous sway over our thoughts and actions (and the books we read). A recommendation from Oprah can launch a product (e.g., Airborne) or a career (e.g., Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz) and some argue it can also mar an entire industry (e.g., beef). But do these influential women represent the exception to the rule?

In a 2010 article published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Amanda Sesko and Monica Biernat examined the intriguing idea that Black women are socially invisible. In their first study, these researchers wanted to test if Black women were more likely to go unnoticed in a crowd, so they conducted a study to see how well people remembered Black women's faces. They showed White participants a series of photos depicting men and women who were White or Black. Later, participants were shown a new series of photos-some of the photos were new and some were the same photos they had seen before.

Participants simply had to indicate if they had seen the face before. What they found is that participants' memory was worst at remembering whether they had seen a Black female face before or whether it was new. The same did not occur for Black male faces, suggesting it was something more than just the fact that the target was of another race than the participant. As the researchers pointed out, these results suggest that Black women are more likely than Black men or White men and women to go unnoticed by others in a group or social situation.

Read the Full Essay @ Psychology Today

Do we need a body count to count?: Notes on the serial murders of Black women

Do we need a body count to count?:
Notes on the serial murders of Black women
by The Crunk Feminist Collective

Debra Jackson. Click. Henrietta Wright. Click. Barbara Ware. Click. These are some names of Black women who were sexually assaulted, drugged, murdered, and dumped in LA alleys and the backstreets by a former city trash collector. As news broke about a serial killer dubbed the Grim Sleeper, I found myself at the computer clicking on the still images of 180 nameless, numbered Black women and girls published by the LA Times. I sat with each photo picturing each life—and remembering the life of my aunt who was murdered years ago.

For women who are poor, who are Black, who are substance abusers, who are single/mothers, who are sex workers, and for women who possess no Olan Mills yearbook portrait like that of Natalee Holloway, how do we make sense of their lives? Do we see them?

Read the Full Essay @ The Crunk Feminist Collective

8 Reasons to Address Romance in the Black Community: A Panel Discussion

Mad at 'Mad Men'

The creators of Mad Men get so many things right in this period television series. Too bad they get black women so wrong.

Mad at 'Mad Men'
by Salamishah Tillet

In Mad Men, AMC's seminal series on the 1960s advertising scene, all the women are white, all the blacks are men and, well, the rest of us non-male colored folks are housekeepers and Playboy bunnies. At least, that's what one would think watching the show lauded by The Washington Post as "TV's most feminist show."

Mad Men is all about progressive gender politics -- as long as it comes wrapped in white skin. For female viewers who both enjoy Mad Men and come wrapped in brown skin, watching the show can be a frustrating experience.

For the fourth season, Mad Men, which comes to a close on Sunday, the civil rights movement serves as little more than a decorative backdrop. Now set between 1964 and 1965, the show continues to wonderfully detail the fall and the failures of its patriarch, Don Draper, while also exploring the limited gender roles that stifle white suburban housewives, like Betty Draper-turned-Francis, and the sexual harassment and gender discrimination that plague working women, like Peggy Olson and Joan Harris.

In fact, the show's creative representations of white male chauvinism and a budding white feminist movement is best captured in the ninth episode of this season, "Beautiful Girls," which oddly pits the fomenting civil rights movement against the budding feminist movement. When Abe, a white male hipster, sits down with Peggy and waxes philosophic about revolution -- particularly the upheaval in Greece and the civil rights movement in America -- Peggy quickly interrupts, "Most of the things that Negroes can't do, I can't do, and no one seems to care." Abe chides: "All right, Peggy, we'll have a civil rights march for women."

The civil rights movement, it seems, was for black men only.

Part of the reason the show gets away with such a reductionist version of the civil rights era is that for the past two seasons, there have been few references to the major battles and gains of this significant social movement. Significant moments of the '60s, from the March on Washington to the Birmingham Bombing to President Lyndon Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or the Voting Rights Act, are either mentioned in passing or show up as grainy news footage on TV.

Black male historical figures like Malcolm X, Nat King Cole and Harry Belafonte are mentioned only briefly by the show's white characters. Or they're strangely used as the shadowy metaphor for the societal oppression of white women, like Betty Draper dreaming about Medgar Evers when she is heavily sedated for her third child's birth, or when the Muhammad Ali-Sonny Liston fight serves as a backdrop for Peggy Olsen's duel with her family.

Read the Full Essay @ The Root

Pink Ribbons for Black Women

Pink Ribbons for Black Women
by Mark Anthony Neal

In 1979, R&B singer Minnie Riperton died of breast cancer at the age of thirty-one. With a five-octave vocal range, Riperton was best known for songs like “Memory Lane ” and “Lovin’ You.” (She’s also the mother of Saturday Night Live alumnus Maya Rudolph). However, for many Americans in the 1970s, Riperton was more than just an incredible singer, but the public face of breast cancer.

Riperton understood that with celebrity came responsibility, so she publicly announced her trauma on national television, confiding in Tonight Show guest host Flip Wilson-and the rest of the country. Riperton would soon become the first African-American public spokesperson for the American Cancer Society, receiving the organization’s “Courage Award” at a White House ceremony with then-President Jimmy Carter. Nearly thirty years after her death, black women continue to be at the forefront of preventative outreach efforts.

In comparison to white women, black women are less likely to get breast cancer. However, black women are far more likely to die from it, in many cases because they are typically diagnosed at a much later stage than are white women. In addition, white women have longer survival rates once they contract the disease, even while black women are diagnosed at younger ages. To further complicate the situation, cancer tumors found in black women tend to be more aggressive than those found in white women.

Among the more obvious reasons for these discrepancies is that black women, particularly poor black women, often don’t have the same healthcare resources that their white peers do. The National Cancer Institute suggests that even when black women do have access to healthcare, they are less likely to receive state-of-the-art diagnostic treatments and procedures.

Also, the health issues of black men are often more prominently addressed than those of black women. Thus, concerns about breast cancer among black women are often overshadowed by legitimate concerns for the high incidence of hypertension and prostate disease among black men, even though such diseases also disproportionately affect black women as well.

In the spirit of Minnie Riperton’s work three decades ago, Susan G. Komen for the Cure (the foundation responsible for the ubiquitous pink ribbons during Breast Cancer Awareness Month) began the “Circle of Promise” campaign to mobilize awareness about breast cancer in the black community, dispel myths that prevent black women from seeking early treatment and empower black women to become strong advocates for themselves and their loved ones. Susan G. Komen for the Cure estimates that in 2007, nearly 20,000 black women were diagnosed with breast cancer and more than 5,000 succumbed to the disease.

To help spread the word, the Circle of Promise campaign has employed the talents of a group of national ambassadors, including actress Gabrielle Union, artist Synthia Saint James, health expert Dr. Rovenia Brock and vocalist Lalah Hathaway (daughter of the late soul legend Donny Hathaway).

When asked about her involvement with Circle of Promise, Hathaway states, “I call it my grown-up job. It charges me to talk with women, particularly African-American women, about their health, because breast cancer is killing us at such an alarming rate. We’re always the last to be diagnosed and the first to die.”

At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance--A New History of the Civil Rights Movement

A groundbreaking book by Danielle L. McGuire. The author gives us the never-before-told history of how the civil rights movement began; how it was in part started in protest against the ritualistic rape of black women by white men who used economic intimidation, sexual violence, and terror to derail the freedom movement; and how those forces persisted unpunished throughout the Jim Crow era. Black women's protests against sexual assault and interracial rape fueled civil rights campaigns throughout the South that began during WWII and went through to the Black Power Movement. The Montgomery bus boycott was the baptism, not the birth, of that movement.

An Ode to Black Women

Artist, Larry "Poncho" Brown

An Ode to Black Women and a Fair, Firm Message to ALL Others
by Sharon D. Toomer, BBN Managing Editor

As a Black woman in America, I have never known a time in my life when I have felt more unsafe, vulnerable and unprotected. This acute sense of insecurity is sometimes a challenge to articulate. It is, however, a real and shared experience among the many Black women in my life and we continue struggling to give it voice. Behind closed doors, Black women increasingly describe feeling disdained, disregarded, rejected and dismissed. This societal hostility is a widespread sentiment that is not limited by socio-economic background, education, geography or age and was crystallized in the recent case of Shirley Sherrod.

The source of these feelings and experiences come from the larger society, but sadly, too frequently they come from within our own community. Whether in the projection of a caricature of our image in media, the unequal treatment and harsh punishments of the workplace or in the dismissal of our most urgent needs by law enforcement authorities and media, it seems that the attacks on Black women are endless and coming from all angles. Even our own men have taken to attacking us in public forums about everything from being “too demanding,” “too angry” and the laughable charge of “having too high standards,” to the most recent attack of not being fit for marriage.

I do not know what Black women ever did to merit this pattern of assault, but I do know this: this hostility is not good for the overall health and progress of Black communities as a whole and by extension for the whole of America. And here is why:

Read the Full Essay @ BlackandBrownNews

Who’s Afraid of the Single Black Woman?

Who’s Afraid of the Single Black Woman?
by Janell Hobson

It was during one of those rainy Sunday afternoons–what I call my solitude time in the comfort of my home–that I discovered William Wyler’s 1949 movie The Heiress on TCM. I surf through my cable channels oh so delicately, lest I see another image berating my existence as a black woman. Movies of old rarely knew we existed, or thought we did so only as maids.

In this movie, there were no black characters–only a shy “plain Jane” heroine, Catherine Sloper (Olivia de Havilland), who bears the condescension of her father and suffers heartbreak after her fiancé, Morris Townsend (Montgomery Clift), deserts her when he learns that she will no longer inherit an immense fortune. Eventually, she does inherit this fortune, but when the lowlife Morris predictably returns, Catherine rejects him, much to the chagrin of her aunt, who thinks a loser husband is preferable to none at all.

Needless to say, as a single black woman in my 30s who is quite comfortable with her single status–and I am not the only one, despite what family, church, community, media and the rest of society has to say–I was exhilarated when Catherine bolted the door on Morris and nobly ascended the staircase, the lamp she held leading her to new found self-awareness and independence. We have yet to see duplicated in contemporary films women of any color making such bold choices in rejecting a man without replacing him first (gasp!). I was not that surprised, then, when I went online in search of commentary and criticism on this classic film, to discover present-day audiences lamenting that Catherine would forego marrying a man, no matter how worthless he was, for an unknown and perhaps unmarried future.

I would like to think that this is a sentiment shared only by a few members of our society who are invested in traditional notions of gender and marriage. Yet I find countless blog posts and commentaries lamenting the state of single women–black women in particular. Offline, this anxiety, or what Danielle Belton of The Black Snob blog calls “marriage panic,” reverberates in CNN special reports, in Essence magazine, from church pulpits, and at black public forums. Then there’s Helena Andrew’s recent memoir, Bitch is the New Black, which is being marketed as a black Sex and the City,” focusing on the endless woes of a single black woman.

Except we have been down this road before: Think Terry McMillan’s Waiting to Exhale back in the 90s. While The Heiress is set in the nineteenth century, I can’t help but think our contemporary “marriage panic” is grounded in similar Victorian concerns; it’s all so nuclear-family-oriented, so pre-sexual revolution. In a time when queer communities are fighting for same-sex marriage rights, black heterosexuals are wringing their hands over the presumed inability to access basic heterosexual marriage rights.

Again, this is not surprising considering how, historically, one of the first things freed slaves did–having suffered the pain of being separated from partners, children and relatives–was to marry and establish themselves as legitimate citizens. That queer communities are fighting for the same “legitimacy” today means that we as feminists should scrutinize how all those marginalized in society are shut out from marriage and the social, political and economic benefits that come with it.

Read the Full Essay @ Ms. Magazine

10 Things I Want to Say to A Black Woman--Poetry by Joshua Bennett

Five Dead Niggers vs. Eleven Uttered Niggers: A Racial Scorecard

Saturday Edition
Five Dead Niggers vs. Eleven Uttered Niggers: A Racial Scorecard
by Mark Anthony Neal

One index of contemporary race politics in the United States is the recent arrest of accused Israeli serial killer Elias Abuelazam and Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s on-air utterings of the word “nigger.” On their own merit, the Abuelazam arrest, in which he is accused of stabbing thirteen men, five of them fatally, and virtually all of them Black, should easily trump the meltdown of yet another way-too visible, highly compensated so-called celebrity. But such is not the case; while Schlessinger’s rant has been the talk of the chattering class on faux news programs and the blogosphere, even eliciting an apology by Schlessinger herself, the Abuelazam case has been buried in newspaper accounts, as Tom Socca points out in his smart piece “How Many Black Men Do You Have to Murder to Make the Front Page of the New York Times?” At the crux of the media’s seeming disconnect is the reality that eleven uttered “niggers” are a better news story than five dead “niggers.”

The mainstream corporate media’s gravitation to the Schlessinger story, might be excused if it actually forwarded an honest and critical conversation about race—or rather Black/White relations—but a cursory listen to the Schlessinger broadcast, which has gone viral, is a quick reminder of that impossibility. Weeks after the Shirley Sherrod controversy, in which commentators collectively missed an opportunity to illuminate the realities of racial terror and violence for the Youtube generation, Schlessinger’s comparison of the racist sentiments felt by a black women caller involved in an interracial marriage, to the routines of “black comedians” on HBO is juvenile.

That mainstream media felt compelled to cover a story, that should have been outright dismissed as pure folly, only highlights how childlike mainstream corporate media’s coverage of race politics have been. At this point we shouldn’t expect anymore from an institution that has devoted a summer long vigil for a drug-addicted B-list, former child actor, who happened to spend a few days in jail for driving under the influence.

In the case of Abuelazam, the mainstream media is often reticent to claim racist intent, in the face of attacks that seem evidently racially motivated; no doubt this contributes to their unwillingness to highlight a story in which the vast majority of the victims are Black. Thus the Abuelazam case, which focuses on a series of murders over the past four months in Flint, MI (arguably ground zero for the current financial crisis), like a similar case involving a series of murders of Black women in Rocky Mount, NC last year has flown way below the radar.

Giving mainstream corporate media some benefit of the doubt that they want to get the story right—indeed Abuelazam own mysterious racial identity complicates this—the darker explanation of their coverage is the fact that their core audiences could really care less about the death of a bunch of niggers, whether they be the men in Flint, Michigan, the too many black women victims of domestic violence (often at the hands of men who look just like them) or even the world’s most popular basketball player being burned in effigy in Cleveland.

How Long Has the Essence Train Been Gone

Tell Me, How Long Has the Essence Train Been Gone?
by phillisremastered

Yesterday, I found out from cultural critic Michaela Angela Davis (a Facebook friend) that Essence Magazine has hired Fashion Director Elliana Placas. The issue, of course, is that Placas is White, and Essence is a magazine that has been focused on Black women since 1968.

Davis is very upset, and since she is also a writer, I can understand her concern; Essence is one of the few places that has consistently provided employment to Black female journalists–and Black stylists and designers. Davis was quote in Clutch Magazine as saying that “I feel like a girlfriend died.” (Click on this to read the article.)

However, I have to tell you that what has made me so sad was not Essence’s hiring of a White Fashion Director, but that I really don’t care in the least anymore what happens to Essence magazine and I haven’t for a long, long time.

Like all of the African American women I know– and also, all the biracial women of African descent that I know, too—I grew up on Essence. It was lovely seeing all those super-fine, super-bad Sisters in cute, fly outfits, faces beat to perfection, and hair that was natural yet impeccably coifed. “You don’t need chemicals and you don’t need to be light-skinned to be pretty, either, though our beauty comes in all shades and hair textures”—this is what Essence said to Sisters each month.

The only other magazine that featured Black women on such a scale was Ebony, but let’s face it, Ebony wasn’t slick like Essence, which was just as classy as Glamour, Elle, or Vogue—magazines that might have a Sister on the cover every two or three years. Ebony, on the other hand, featured staged and sometimes, well, cheesy photo essays.

And Ebony clearly wasn’t about a Black woman’s point of view. It was invested in a traditional view of the Black family: Brother in the front, Sister and children to the side or the back, looking up at The Black Man adoringly and always deferring to him. Which is the way it was ‘sposed to be, right?

Always, Ebony let Sisters know that if they would just get on board the Patriarchal Man-As-Head train, everything would be great in the Black community. Meanwhile, there was a woman’s liberation movement going on with White Women AND Black Women. But, Ebony implicitly stated each month, this movement was for lesbians, straight man-haters who didn’t have daddies, and ugly women with buck-teeth who couldn’t get no man in the first place.

Essence, on the other hand, started off as a publication supporting “Strong Black Women.” In fact, Marcia Ann Gillespie was editor-in-chief of Essence for nine years. Gillespie used to be editor of Ms. Magazine, a mainstream “official” feminist magazine.

So, in the beginning, Essence was about putting black women first. Then, came the nineties.

Read the Full Essay @ Phillis Remastered

Chlorine and Curls:Black Women and Swimming

WYNC
Chlorine and Curls: Why Many Black Women Won't Go Swimming
by Jenna Flanagan

Glitches: Crunk Feminist Collective on the Boondocks

Glitches: The Ballad of Ebony Brown
by Jalylah Burrell

The novelist and poet Paul Beatty once wrote, “not being ticklish, I see laughter as a learned response and not a reflexive one.” Reflecting on his own developing sense of humor, Beatty recalled being the butt of the first joke, a jibe about the darkness of his complexion, he’d ever heard. I’m the butt of many of the jokes in the television and film I watch. It’s difficult to laugh from that crappy station although not for “The Boondocks” miraculous Ebony Brown who giggles after being called a wildebeest by Uncle Ruckus at dinner with Robert and then picks up the check. Aaron McGruder is a sharp, if sometimey, satirist but I conserved my chuckles last night. The episode prickled as a reminder that the joke is disproportionately on black women. The skin we’re in.

Read the Full Essay @ The Crunk Feminist Collective

Since We're Talking About Single, Black, Professional Women...

How Does It Feel to Be a Black, Female, Single Problem?

by Farai Chideya

It’s open season on black womanhood. Nightline became the latest media outlet to tackle the issue of why black women aren’t married. The problem is not the topic, but the approach. Like a recent series of articles, books, and television segments (and one Nightline did last year), the show’s focus was on the purportedly low value of black women in the dating marketplace and the wisdom of black women’s choice to stay single versus marrying men who don’t fit their criteria.

Let’s get real for a minute here. Yes, black women are sometimes taken for granted by black men, and men of other races. (I’m thinking here of musician John Mayer saying he had a “David Duke c**k,” because it only responded to white woman. Black womens’ response, for the most part: awesome, dude! Less disfunction for us!) Black women also get oddly, back-handedly criticized for being too functional — for being the majority of black college graduates and growing old alone. In reality, black women with college degrees are more likely to have married by age 40 than those with high school degrees (70 to 60 percent). For white women, high school educated women are slightly more likely to have married than college-educated ones (88 to 86 percent).

Read the Full Essay @ FaraiChideya.com

Where Have All the Black Women Gone?

special to NewBlackMan

A Divinity School Student Wonders Aloud About the Absence of Black Women's Voices at an Elite Divinity School

Where Have All The Black Women Gone?: Just A Reflection

by Sean Palmer

Let me begin with the caveats: I have had a wonderful time in the Duke Divinity School, and have enjoyed my interaction with professors, staff, and students in the main. I say this because what I’m about to say is going to make people more uncomfortable than they might already be. And, this will probably have people thinking for quite some time. Another caveat: I write not to impress anybody, and not on behalf of an organization. I write on behalf of me…noticing a challenging reality to the Duke Divinity experience.

As I was meandering through the new course listing bulletin, and as I was reflecting on the recent comments on Facebook about “white men” feeling “spurned” in classes like Ethics and Black Church Studies, I noticed an interesting development. What I noticed is that only one black woman will be teaching next semester, Dr. Joy Moore, who also does double duty as the Director of the Black Church Studies department…working with alumni, students, and administration. Now I know that we are in a period of lean times…but does this mean that reduction is being done at the expense of diversity? This has me asking…what happened to the other black female voices? And maybe as a black man I shouldn’t be pushing the question, but I feel a strong Womanist stance in my “ruah” that is ecclesial, not subversive, that wants to know where are all the black women professors going (or have gone)? Does anybody care…is anybody noticing? And how can we justify this when there are over 40 black women enrolled in classes throughout the Divinity school? This means that black women represent more than 50% of the black population in the Duke Divinity School…and no one is scrambling, rushing to ensure that “sister-scholars” are a part of the dynamic theological environment which Duke asserts!

Are the other black faculty aware of this? Are they helping administration make decisions that don’t roll back Duke’s longstanding Black faculty initiative? Are we, as students giving voice and support to administrators and faculty who need to know that we are thinking? And, do we recognize that beyond a physical diversity presence, black faculty, and black female faculty in particular, help to deconstruct paradigms that cause white women and men to feel “spurned” without taking into consideration the entire church. Black female faculty make it possible for both black men and women at Duke to attend to their work, rather than attending to teaching their classmates, which ultimately assumes a level of education around critical black theological perspectives. Black students are here to learn too! Black women faculty ensure that all students are taught from more than a white and/or male perspective, and that students can identify research, professional, and personal mentors commensurate with interests and cultural perspective.

Moreover, I am uncomfortable about the kind of silence that permeates black student culture at Duke Divinity, which quietly says, “put your head down and graduate.” But, my peers, too much is at stake. We are here because somebody paid a heavy cost for our admission. We are here because our children need us to be here. The doors must continue to be open for black faculty, administration, and students. We stand on the shoulders of too many, and too many need us to keep the doors open! While many of us are challenged by a notion of violent overthrow…we should also be challenged by biting silent acquiescence. If the black women faculty are first, who shall be next? At what cost? It is my prayer that all of the sister-scholars haven’t been strategically slowly herded out of here. I pray that our institution has (and continues) to be supportive to sister-scholars who choose to make Duke their academic headquarters. I pray that preachers and prophets will walk into their calling not just to pass tests, but to be a beacon of hope for those who cannot speak. Today, I speak hoping somebody will hear me…and thanking God for the future harvest! Amen!

What Does Five Dollars Mean to Black Women?

What Does Five Dollars Mean to Black Women?

by Renee Martin

What can you buy for five dollars? What if five dollars was all that stood between you and hunger and homelessness? Five dollars is not a safety net; it’s barely a bag of chips. Yet according to a study reported in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, it is the median net worth of single Black women.

Single white women in the prime of their working years (ages 36 to 49) have a median wealth of $42,600. That’s still only 61 percent of their single white male counterparts, but married or cohabiting Black women are lower still, with a net worth of $31,500.

In other words, Black women continue to exist in a perilous economic state whether they are cohabitating or single. Instead of fixating on the marital status of Black women–a common media topic–we need to focus on the way that sexism and racism combine to form the basis of oppression.

Black men have a history of suggesting gender conformity, in the guise of racial uplift, that serves to oppress Black women. For example, comedian Steve Harvey wrote Act like a Lady and Think like a Man last year in the hopes of teaching Black women how to repair and hold onto relationships. The book is dependent upon many essentialist notions regarding gender to sell its point.

Following in Harvey’s footsteps, Jimi Izrael, a columnist for The Root, released his book The Denzel Principle: Why Black Women Can’t Find a Good Black Man this February. At The Root, Izrael wrote the following:

Eligible Black men, we think, can have their pick of educated Black women (assuming they even date Black women), as if merely having a job, an education and a pulse makes a woman ‘wife material.’ While there may be a lot of women available to Black men, MOST are not women you would want to spend your life with. I’m twice divorced, currently single and not taking applications because no qualified applicants have come down the pike. They are mostly variations on a few themes.

Responding to the report in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Black Lunatic had this to say:

There is a notation that the median income for a married woman, or co-habitating woman, is about $31,000, so that’s proof that stable relationships improve finances. All I can offer is the idea that first step has to be increasing the number of folks getting and staying married.

It is hardly surprising that Black men would use this study as yet another excuse to inform Black women that marriage is what’s best, when they have invested so much time and effort in publicly supporting the institution in their recent writings. Of course, the fact that marriage increases the work load of women is not factored into their benevolent suggestions. This is hardly an unbiased suggestion. If we were to settle and be understanding, in the manner that Black men have suggested, we would be in an even more precarious position.

Read the Full Essay @ Ms. Blog