Ain't I a Woman

by bell hooks

  We talk about the black woman and the black man like we were separate because we have been separated, our hands reach out for each other, for the closeness, the completeness we are for each other, the expansion of consciousness that we provide for each other. We were separated by the deed and process of slavery. We internalized the process, permitting it to create an alien geography in our skulls, a wandering spirit that had us missing each other, and never never understanding just what it was. After we were gone from each other. My hand might rest on yours, and still you would be gone. And I, of course, not there, out wandering, among the rogues and whores of the universe.

  And so this separation is the cause of our need for self consciousness, and eventual healing. But we must erase the separateness by providing ourselves with healthy African identities. By embracing a value system that knows of no separation but only of the divine complement the black woman is for her man. For instance we do not believe in the “equality” of men and women. We cannot understand what the devils and the devilishly influenced mean when they say equality for women. We could never be equals... nature has not provided thus. The brother says, “Let a woman be a woman... and let a man be a ma-an...”

  Although Baraka presents this “new” black nation he envisions as a world that will have distinctly different values from those of the white world he is rejecting, the social structure he conceived was based on the same patriarchal foundation as that of white American society. His statements about woman’s role were not unlike those white men were expressing at this same period in American history. White males interviewed for the book The American Male expressed concern that the growing presence of white women in the work force was threatening their masculine status, and expressed sentimental feelings of longing for the old days when sex-role patterns were more sharply delineated. Like Baraka, they comment:

  Those were the days, all right. A man was a man, and a woman was a woman, and each of them knew what that meant. Father was the head of the family in the real sense of the term. Mother respected him for it and received all the gratifications she needed or wanted at home, doing her well-defined jobs.. Man was strong, woman was feminine—and there was little loose talk about phony equality.

  It is no mere coincidence that at the same time white men were expressing doubts and anxieties about their masculine role, black men chose to publicly proclaim that they had subjugated black women. Finally, the black man who had seen himself as the loser in the all male competitive struggle with white men for status and power could show a trump card—he was the “real” man because he could control “his” woman. Baraka and other black men could label white men effeminate and non-masculine. In Home, Baraka includes an essay called “american sexual reference: black man” which begins with the homophobic statement:

  Most American white men are trained to be fags. For this reason it is no wonder their faces are weak and blank, left without the hurt that really makes—anytime. That red flush, those silk blue faggot eyes.... Can you, for a second, imagine the average middle-class white man able to do somebody harm? Without the technology that at this moment still has him rule the world? Do you understand the softness of the white man, the weakness, and again the estrangement from reality.

  Ironically, the “power” of black men that Baraka and others celebrated was the stereotypical, racist image of the black man as primitive, strong, and virile. Although these same images of black men had been evoked by racist whites to support the argument that all black men were rapists, they were now romanticized as positive characteristics. The American public was impressed by Baraka and others like him who heralded the

  emergence of black manhood. They reacted to groups like the Black Muslims with their emphasis on strong black manhood with fear, but also with awe and respect.

  From their writings and speeches, it is clear that most black political activists of the 60s saw the black liberation movement as a move to gain recognition and support for an emerging black patriarchy. When critics of the black power movement argued that a contradiction of values emerged from black men who espoused black power while at the same time choosing white female companions, they were informed that “real” men demonstrated their power by dating whomever they pleased. When Baraka was asked if a militant black man could have a white female companion he responded:

  Jim Brown put it pretty straight and this is really quite true. He says that there are black men and white men, then there are women. So you can indeed be going through a black militant thing and have yourself a woman. The fact that she happens to be black or white is no longer impressive to anybody, but a man who gets himself a woman is what’s impressive. The battle is really between white men and black men whether we like to admit it that is the battlefield at this time.

  Black men were announcing via the Black Power movement that they were determined to gain access to power even if it entailed breaking from mainstream American society and setting up a new black sub-culture. White male patriarchs were alarmed by the assertions of militant black men whom they knew had every justifiable reason to be angry, hostile, revengeful, and they reacted with violent resistance. Despite the fact that they were able to resist and defeat black militants, white men were impressed by the sight of black men wearing the badge of their newly affirmed manhood. The Black Power movement had a great impact on the psyches of white Americans. Joel Kovel argues in White Racism: A Psychohistory that the black power movement completely changed white perceptions of black people. He contends:

  Through open defiance, encouraged by leaders such as Malcolm X and his radical successors, blacks have cleansed the symbol of blackness, stripped it of its accumulated false humility, and have in effect proceeded toward the regeneration of their own symbolic matrix based upon a positive concept of blackness. That this return to dignity has been possible at all, is a testimonial to the strength of humanity to resist oppression, and a great sign of hope for black and white alike. That it should have to become real through anger and destruction may seem deplorable, but it is unhappily necessary under the crushing terms of the Western symbolic matrix that would not, could not, itself grant humanity to those who had once been property. Here, in this heroic act, is a real break in the endlessly destructive dialectic of our matrix.

  Many white men responded favorably to the demands of black power advocates with their emphasis on restoring black men their lost masculinity precisely because their sexism enabled them to identify sympathetically with this cause. The patriarchal privileges black men demanded in the name of black power were precisely the longings sexist patriarchal white men could empathize with. While white men and women could not identify and sympathize with the black race that they had exploited for economic gain demanding reparations, they could easily relate to the desire of black men to assert their “manhood.” As Americans, they had not been taught to really believe that social equality was an inherent right all people possess, but they had been socialized to believe that it is the nature of males to desire and have access to power and privilege. In Michele Wallace’s controversial book, Black Macho and the Myth of the Super Woman, she dismisses the black power movement as ineffectual and suggests that black men were primarily interested in gaining access to the bodies of white women. She fails to understand that the 60s black movement did not merely eradicate many of the barriers that prevented inter-racial dating; it led to numerous social and economic gains for black people. However, the meaningful gains of the black power movement do not either justify or lessen the negative impact of anti-woman attitudes that emerged in much black power rhetoric.

  While the 60s black power movement was a reaction against racism, it was also a movement that allowed black men to overtly announce their support of patriarchy. Militant black men were publicly attacking the white male patriarchs for their racism but they were also establishing a bond of solidarity with them based on their shared acceptance of and commitment to patriarchy. The strongest bonding element between militant black men and white men
was their shared sexism—they both believed in the inherent inferiority of woman and supported male dominance. Another bonding element was the black male’s acknowledgement that he, like the white male, accepted violence as the primary way to assert power. White men reacted to black male violence with the excitement and glee men have traditionally expressed when going to war. Although they attacked black militants, they respected them for their show of force. Since the 60s black power movement, white men have more readily accepted black men on police forces and in more leadership positions in the armed forces. It has been traditionally acceptable for men to put aside their racist feelings in those spheres where men bond on the basis of their sexuality. Despite overt racism in the sports arena, it is there that black men were first able to gain a degree of positive recognition of their masculine prowess. Racism has always been a divisive force separating black men and white men, and sexism has been a force that unites the two groups.

  Men of all races in America bond on the basis of their common belief that a patriarchal social order is the only viable foundation for society. Their patriarchal stance is not simply an acceptance of a social etiquette based on discrimination against women; it is a serious political commitment to maintaining political regimes throughout the United States and the world that are male-dominated. John Stoltenberg discusses the political structure of patriarchy in his essay “Toward Gender Justice” published in a book of readings, For Men Against Sexism. In his essay he describes characteristic features of patriarchy:

  Under patriarchy, men are the arbiters of identity for both males and females, because the cultural norm of human identity is, by definition, male identity—masculinity. And, under patriarchy, the cultural norm of male identity consists in power, prestige, privilege, and prerogative as over and against the gender class women. That’s what masculinity is. It isn’t something else.

  Attempts have been made to defend this norm of masculinity as having a natural basis in male sexual biology. It has been said for example, that male power in the culture is a natural expression of a biological tendency in human males toward sexual aggression. But I believe that what is true is the reverse. 1 believe that masculinist genital functioning is an expression of male power in the culture. I believe that male sexual aggression is entirely learned behavior, taught by a culture which men entirely control. I believe, as I will explain, that there is a social process by which patriarchy confers power, prestige, privilege, and prerogative on people who are born with cocks, and that there is a sexual program promoted by the patriarchy (not Mother Nature) for how those cocks are supposed to function.

  Stoltenberg also emphasizes that patriarchy is maintained by male bonding on the basis of shared sexism:

  The social process whereby people born with cocks attain and maintain masculinity takes place in male bonding. Male bonding is institutionalized learned behavior whereby men recognize and reinforce one another’s bona fide membership in the male gender class and whereby men remind one another that they were not born women. Male bonding is political and pervasive. It occurs whenever two males meet. It is not restricted to all-male-groupings. It is the form and content of each and every encounter between two males. Boys learn very early that they had better be able to bond. What they learn in order to bond is an elaborate behavioral code of gestures, speech, habits and attitudes, which effectively exclude women from the society of men. Male bonding is how men learn from each other that they are entitled under patriarchy to power in the culture. Male bonding is how men get that power, and male bonding is how it is kept. Therefore, men enforce a taboo against unbonding—a taboo which is fundamental to patriarchal society.

  Racism has not allowed total bonding between white and black men on the basis of shared sexism, but such bonding does occur.

  The black male quest for recognition of his “manhood” in American society is rooted in his internalization of the myth that simply by having been born male, he has an inherent right to power and privilege. When racism prevented black people from attaining social equality with whites, black men responded

  as if they were the sole representatives of the black race and therefore the sole victims of racist oppression. They saw themselves as the people who were being denied their freedom, and not black women. In all his protest fiction, black novelist Richard Wright emphasized the de-humanizing effects of racism on black men as if black women were in no way affected. In his short story “Long Black Song” the hero Silas who has just killed a white man cries out in his rage:

  The white folks ain never gimme a chance! They ain never give no black man a chance! There ain nothing in yo whole life yuh kin keep from em! They take yo lan! They take yo freedom! They take yo women! N then they take yo life!

  Wright relegates women to the position of property—they become for him merely an extension of the male ego. His attitude is typical of patriarchal male thinking about women.

  Black men are able to dismiss the sufferings of black women as unimportant because sexist socialization teaches them to see women as objects with no human value or worth. This anti-woman attitude is endemic to patriarchy. In Leonard Schein’s essay “All Men Are Misogynists,” he argues that patriarchy encourages men to hate women:

  Patriarchy’s foundation is the oppression of women. The cement of this foundation is the socialization of men to hate women.

  Looking at our development as males, it is easy to see how misogyny originates. As young children, our first attraction is to our mother, a woman. As we grow older, we learn to transfer our love for our mother to an identification with our father.

  The patriarchal nuclear family makes all its members dependent upon the male (father-husband). It is in this oppressive atmosphere that we grow up, and are extremely sensitive to this hierarchy of power even as children. We realize, more than adults know, that our father (and society in his image, from policeman to doctor to president) is powerful, and that our mother is powerless. She has to scheme and manipulate through sympathy to get what she wants.

  Racism does not prevent black men from absorbing the same sexist socialization white men are inundated with. At very young ages, black male children learn that they have a privileged status in the world based on their having been born male; they learn that this status is superior to that of women. As a consequence of their early sexist socialization, they mature accepting the same sexist sentiments their white counterparts accept. When women do not affirm their masculine status by assuming a subordinate role, they express the contempt and hostility they have been taught to feel toward non-submissive women.

  Black men have been sexist throughout their history in America, but in contemporary times that sexism has taken the form of outright misogyny—undisguised woman-hating. Cultural changes in attitudes toward female sexuality have affected male attitudes toward women. As long as women were divided into two groups, virgin women who were the “good” girls and sexually permissive women who were the “bad” girls, men were able to maintain some semblance of caring for women. Now that the pill and other contraceptive devices give men unlimited access to the bodies of women, they have ceased to feel that it is at all necessary to show women any consideration or respect. They can now see all women as “bad,” as “whores,” and openly reveal their contempt and hatred. As a group, white men expose their hatred by increased exploitation of women as sex objects to sell products and by their wholehearted support of pornography and rape. Black men expose their hatred by increased domestic brutality (white men also) and their vehement verbal denouncement of black women as matriarchs, castraters, bitches, etc. That black men should begin to see the black woman as their enemy was perfectly logical given the structure of patriarchy. Schien writes of male hatred of women:

  ... Psychologically, we objectify the people we hate and consider them our inferiors.

  A second situation which feeds on, deepens, and solidifies our hatred of women develops a little later in time. We begin to realize our privileged position in society as male
s. The Orthodox Jew prays to God every morning thanking “Him” that he was not born a woman. Subconsciously we intuit that our privilege can only be maintained if women are kept “in their place.” So we live in constant fear, as the threat to our power is everywhere (even, and especially, in our bedroom). This fear of the challenge to our power explains our paranoid hatred toward the “Uppity Woman.”

  Black women have always been regarded as “too uppity.” White men decided this during slavery. When Moynihan first published his report on the black family in 1965 perpetuating the emasculation theory, black men responded initially by exposing the weaknesses and flaws in his argument. They first argued that his assertion that they were emasculated was ridiculous and untrue but it was not long before they began to make the same complaint. Their endorsement of the idea that black women were castraters of men allowed them to bring out of the closet misogynist attitudes. While they embraced on one hand the matriarchy myth and used it to urge black women to be more submissive, on the other hand they communicated the message that their manhood was not threatened by black women because they could always use brute force and physical prowess to subjugate them.

  It has always been acknowledged in lower class black communities that the ability to act as breadwinners was not the standard black men used to measure their masculine status. As one black man stated: