Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Trump

by Duchess Harris

  The title of Wallace’s book reflected the author’s intent to shatter the myths that surround Black people, both men and women. Wallace claimed that even during slavery, Black men and women were equal and there were reasons why patriarchy did not characterize Black family patterns. Wallace historicized the notion of the Black macho and the ways in which white society tried to spread such myths in order to handle Black men and control them even after slavery was abolished. Lynching was a successful method that white men used to punish Black men who had excelled in their own societies. After lynching became socially and legally unacceptable, the white dominant society tried other ways to disempower Blacks through stereotyping. For Black men, stereotypes such as “coons” and “Toms” were prevalent and were perpetuated through movies and books. Black men either were unthreatening fools who missed the good old days of slavery or were hyper-threatening, uncontrollable aggressors who had to be curbed, lest they unleash social unrest and disorder.

  For Black women, similar dichotomous stereotypes existed with the Mammy and Jezebel images. When Wallace wrote her book, she criticized Black men for starting to internalize and believe in the stereotypes of Black women as Jezebel and Sapphire. Black men felt that Black women caused their own disempowerment and poverty. Wallace wrote that “the Americanized Black man’s reaction to his inability to earn enough to support his family, his impotence, his lack of concrete power, was to vent his resentment on the person in this society who could do least about it—his woman.”12 Wallace showed why these stereotypes started to appear in the American society and how they have lived on in official policies and documents such as the Moynihan Report . She claimed that Black men and women started having problems in their relationships when they started to copy white couples and internalize their problems. Wallace further claimed that Black men and women also internalized the stereotypes that existed about each other and about themselves. While Black women felt that they needed to be tougher on Black men because they were “no good,” Black men, especially in the early seventies, wanted to embody the “buck” stereotype, which was highly sexual and provocative, but was still created by white people. One of the issues that Wallace discussed is the highly taboo issue of the relationship between Black men and white women. She argued that within this white, racist, patriarchal society, it is not strange that the symbol of power and achievement for Black men has been to have a white woman. Indeed, “the notion of the Black man’s access to white women as a prerequisite of his freedom was reinforced.”13 The notions of the stereotypes, the Moynihan Report , and the sudden trend for Black men to be with white women all culminated in the Black Power movement in the 70s, which Wallace calls “the Black man’s struggle to attain his presumably lost ‘manhood.’”

  Wallace offered examples of the role of Black Power movement leaders such as Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael , noting that they represented the new “model” of what a man should be. The macho men were supposed to replace the so-called matriarchy with a much-needed patriarchy. Wallace claimed that very little was gained during the Black Power movement except further disempowerment of Black women and separation of Blacks along class lines. In the second part of her book, Wallace concentrated on the reactions of Black women with respect to the Black Power movement . There was a feeling that Black women’s place was behind their men, that they had already been liberated, and that being Black was more important than being female. In this section, Wallace shifted her focus from ordinary Black women to radical activists such as Angela Davis , whom Wallace admired although she was critical of the picture of her that the Black Power movement portrayed: a woman acting because of love and not because of political convictions. “For all her achievements, Davis was seen as the epitome of the selfless, sacrificing ‘good woman’—the only kind of Black women the movement accepted.”14 Wallace argued that there was an unwillingness to see a woman for her political convictions and actions. Women within the Black Power movement were supposed to find their place behind their men or their male leaders, but Wallace urged Black women to criticize Black men when criticism was necessary. Wallace’s frustration with the isolation and misunderstanding experienced by many Black feminists was articulated clearly in passages such as,If a Black female celebrity is pretty, or sexy or is married to a White man, she is called a talent less whore. If she’s elegant or highbrow or intellectual, she’s pronounced funny looking, uptight, and in need of a good brutal fuck. If she happens to appeal to a White audience, she is despised. If she’s independent, physical or aggressive, she’s called a dyke.15

  Wallace did not stop her criticism with the Black male leaders of the sixties and seventies, but continued with Black male authors, such as Ishmael Reed , whose work Wallace charged as being “talky, bitter, complicated, [and] accusatory.”16 She also criticized filmmaker Spike Lee for his treatment of Black female characters. Thus, Wallace was one of the first Black intellectuals to link the political with the social and to examine—and, importantly, to forcefully articulate—the ways in which racism in the political and social sphere impacted cultural productions in the creative and artistic sphere.

  Shortly before Wallace published The Black Macho, the poet Ntozake Shange had created a new literary genre with her “choreopoem,” which she titled “for colored girls who have considered suicide /when the rainbow is enuf.” The choreopoem, which debuted at the New Federal Theatre on Broadway in 1976, is a collage of pieces delivered by seven women in which they convey their individual experiences in African-American society and with Black men in particular. The women are named after the colors of the rainbow; significantly, they do not have their own names. Shange’s “for colored girls” attracted strong criticism as a production that was naïve, immature, and anti-male.17 Yet the fact that Shange asserted women’s right to have their own narratives and, moreover, the right to tell those narratives opened a door to a new type of creative cultural production that expanded opportunities for Black women to explore, discuss, and understand the issues that affected their lives, as well as present these issues before a broader and more diverse audience.

  Shange’s choreopoem and its subsequent revivals also served as a way to further illuminate both the shortcomings of sociopolitical movements constructed around identity, as well as misunderstandings of them. For instance, on April 24, 1994, The Washington Times reviewed a revival of “for colored girls,” with the critic proclaiming, “Black men and white people will find absolutely no redeeming images of themselves here.” These lines, which appeared in the beginning of the review, came 20 years after the play was written and first performed. The reviewer tries to find something redeeming within the play but still situates it only during the 70s, as if Black women, or other women of color or marginalized people, cannot see themselves in the play today. At the same time, the critic also failed to put “for colored girls” into an appropriate sociohistorical context. As a result, Shange’s best-known work continues to be misinterpreted and misunderstood.

  Robert Staples critiqued both Wallace and Shange in his essay, “The Myth of Black Macho: A Response to Angry Black Feminists ,” which was published in the March–April 1979 issue of the Black Scholar. Staples wrote that “watching a performance of ‘for colored girls’ one sees a collective appetite for Black male blood.”18 Even Black women scholars such as Jacqueline Trescott insisted that Shange’s men “are scheming, lying, childish, and brutal baby-killers, they are beasts humiliated for the message of sisterly love.”19 Critics like Staples and Trescott did not stop and ask themselves why these two Black women wrote as or what they did; instead, they judged and condemned these women writers and tried to protect the men’s behavior in the texts. Staples wanted to persuade his readers to accept the men’s behavior since he thought that, “there is a curious rage festering inside Black men, because, like it or not, they have not been allowed to fulfill the roles (e.g., breadwinner, protector) society ascribed to them.”20 Is this a valid reason why Black women should sit back and accept it
if Black men treat them badly? How does this reasoning improve the situation? If copying a white patriarchal system and behavior has not worked and does not work for Black men, why not put it aside and find a new and more just pattern of relationship that does not oppress Black women? Nowhere in his essay did Staples engage any of these questions.

  It is true that Black men have been and are victims within a racist, capitalistic system, but they also have their own responsibilities within it. Staples , for his part, did not acknowledge that people could be both victims and oppressors at the same time. In opposition to Staples , Neal Lester argues in his essay, “Shange’s Men: ‘for colored girls’ Revisited, and Movement Beyond,” that Shane attacked the abusive behavior in some Black men but not all because the characters in the play long for closeness and relationships with Black men despite their poor treatment. Neither Shange nor Wallace demanded abstinence, lesbianism, or a move away from Black men as a political action. They both expressed their love for Black men, but that love is not without conditions. Even if Shange showed the brutal side of some Black men through her characters, she did not minimize the victimization of Black men in this society. As Sandra H. Flowers wrote in “‘colored girls’ Textbook for the Eighties,” “I believe that Shange’s composition for Black men surfaces most noticeably in this poem and that her portrayal of Beow Willie recognizes some of the external factors which influence relationships between Black men and women.”21

  Shange’s play showed what kinds of ideals Black women were searching for. Shange insisted “[M]y target in ‘for colored girls’ is not Black men per se, but the patriarchy in general, which I view as universal in its oppression of women.”22 Shange also resisted the notion that she glamorized Black women at the expense of Black men, and insisted that her treatment of Black women was neither glamorizing nor uplifting, but rather a reflection of how she viewed reality. Black men, and some Black women, were not accustomed to seeing Black women stand up for a Black autonomous feminism that not only questioned racism within white feminist movements but also went against sexism within Black society. Such a stance is central to Wallace and Shange’s writing, since they did not attack all Black men—only the ones who abuse and oppress women and those who let other men do so without educating them to act otherwise. It is clear that the Black establishment was not ready for Wallace or Shange , since both women were so unapologetic for their strong feminist views and their insistence on sharing these views publicly.

  There are many similarities between Shange’s play and Wallace’s book, both of which criticize the way Black men have been socialized to oppress Black women in order to exert their own manhood. Both authors tried to create a sisterhood and a way for women to comfort one another and feel close to one another. The women in Shange’s play sing, “I found God in myself, and I loved her!” An important aspect of Shange’s play, unrecognized by male critics in particular, is that it opened the discourse about Black feminist theater and revealed a whole new—indeed, alternative—meaning to black power. It seems as though Shange’s play and Wallace’s book came before their time, since not only Black men but also some Black women could not understand them. Nonetheless, both texts were—and are—critical cultural products because they helped situate women in the political sphere and, as historical documents, help current readers to understand the sociopolitical realities of the 1970s for Black women.

  Wallace and Shange were not seen as isolated examples of angry Black feminists. John Cunningham wrote an article in The Guardian on August 13, 1987, titled “The New Black Man’s Burden .” In this article, Cunningham argued that “the revenge of the women” had gone too far and that people like Ntozake Shange , Michele Wallace , Alice Walker , and Maya Angelou all owed their fame and fortune to Black men, since it was through bashing men that these authors gained the reading public’s attention. The author accused the women of reinforcing racial stereotypes and dividing the Black community by portraying some Black men as abusive. Cunningham also quoted Ishmael Reed , who suggested that Black feminists were conspiring behind Black men’s backs with white conservatives in order to further marginalize and demonize Black men. Clearly, Cunningham’s failure to both contextualize and analyze these writers and their works thoughtfully was representative of a larger problem with sociopolitical movements of the day.

  While I do not wish to suggest that scholars, Black or white, should restrain themselves from articulating their beliefs, what is problematic about Cunningham’s framing of Black women writers’ work is that it was both shallow and lacking context. Furthermore, these types of limited analyses only served to further complicate and divide communities already sorely in need of unification. Similar problems were evident in the aforementioned essay by Robert Staples . In the essay in which Robert Staples responded to the controversy over Wallace’s book, Staples claimed that Shange and Wallace were influenced by white media, and he justified the behavior of Black men that Shange and Wallace criticized by arguing that Black men were socialized to behave in such a manner by the country’s capitalist system. Staples alleged that both Shange’s and Wallace’s work was limited in value because neither examined capitalism and its impact critically. He wrote,To completely ignore capitalism’s systemic features and its role in Black oppression is to adopt the normative approach of neo–conservative social analysis and bias no different than Whites, which makes [these texts] an example of the rightward turn in America.

  Staples also claimed that Black men did not have the institutional power to oppress Black women except in two areas—the church and the family, as if either of these institutions is a negligible aspect of Black women’s lives. Staples further claimed that Black men do not inherit anything from male supremacy since they are the truly disadvantaged, which, he asserted, cannot be said of Black women. According to Staples , Black women have more education, and their mortality rate is lower. He also claimed that since more than half of Black women are divorced, widowed, or never married, “this aloneness is a factor in the anger of Black women toward Black men.” Staples’ argument was reflective of an ideological framing of responses to Black women’s intellectual and cultural production during the period. In several articles by other critics, the phrase “angry Black feminists” was used frequently as if to suggest that Black feminists suffer from a disorder, that they are irrational, and therefore cannot be taken seriously. This attitude is a remnant of Victorian times, which is, sadly, still common whenever women try to go against the status quo and critique patriarchy. Male academics and critics were not, apparently, familiar with the practice of “theorizing from the self,” and if they were, they did not want to acknowledge such a practice as a rigorous academic approach. Instead, male critics such as Staples dismissed Black feminists’ theories wholesale, casting the female intellectuals as hysterics, traitors, and unqualified academics.23

  Despite the publication of many reviews and critical essays on Wallace and Shange , no Black male intellectual was ready to stand up for these Black feminists and say that there is at least something redeeming in them and their work. Additionally, almost half of the women scholars reviewing their work went against Wallace and Shange in a way that suggests they had internalized the negative sentiments against these two Black feminist writers. One example was the economist Julianne Malveaux , who wrote,[W]hile Wallace can be credited with bringing the social politics of Black people out of the closet, she does little to evaluate the discussion past those late evening conversations that happen often when we get together. Emotionally charged, bandying about lots of accusation, her book resolves nothing.24

  Yet Malveaux seemed to have missed the point entirely. Neither Wallace nor Shange intended to resolve any questions. Rather, they intended to pose questions that each reader was invited to answer from his or her own personal experience. Neither Wallace nor Shange claimed that they had answers; instead, they raised taboo issues and encouraged social dialogue to engage those issues.

  The critics, male and female alike
, could find little praiseworthy about Wallace’s or Shange’s work. Malveaux even accused Wallace of having written an “emotionally charged” book, privileging the cool detachment of traditional academic writing as a more legitimate narrative posture. Wallace, in particular, writing from within the establishment, railed against the notion that a work is considered more valid if the author is detached and dispassionate. Malveaux also condemned Wallace’s work as “hyped up” and the effect of manipulative white media. Based on the volume and tone of critical response, it seems that Wallace and Shange touched a raw nerve. Critic Terry Jones suggested that the content of Black Macho and for colored girls offered one of the most serious threats to Black people since the slave trade. He considered the works to constitute “[a] threat from within” the Black community. The not-so-subtle underlying message of the hostile criticism lodged against Wallace and Shange was that these women should “stop dwelling on the negative aspects of our existence.”

  Fifteen years after Black Macho was first published, Michelle Wallace wrote a new foreword for the 1990 edition. Her views had changed, and she admitted some mistakes, including her failure to acknowledge the Black women who had written before her, as well as the problems of “nationalism as a liberation strategy for women.” Wallace also confessed in the new foreword that if she were to write the same book again, she would not claim that Black Macho was “the crucial factor in the destruction of the Black Power movement .” Even though this construct remains important, Wallace acknowledged that it is difficult to back such a claim with hard evidence and data. Nonetheless, Black Macho remains a well-articulated account of the betrayal and frustration that was felt by many women in the Black Power movement at the time. Wallace’s book was one of the first published productions of Black feminist thought, in the same way that Shange’s choreopoem was one of the first Black feminist plays. Wallace’s “A Black Feminist’s Search for Sisterhood ,” which paved the way to the book Black Macho, is quoted in the Combahee River Collective’s A Black Feminist Statement , which came out just a few years before her book was published:[W]e exist as women who are Black feminists, each stranded for the moment, working independently because there is not yet an environment in this society remotely congenial to our struggle because, being on the bottom, we would have to do what no one else has done, we would have to fight the world. (“A Black Feminist’s Search for Sisterhood ”)