Black women have been doing it for themselves for a long time. Sojourner Truth was the first black woman to take a white man to court. Her free son was taken and illegally sold into slavery. She took her former owner to court and won. She got her son back. "Ain't I a woman too?" she asked. Some of us are still asking.
Harriet Tubman was famous for her adventures with the Quakers and the Underground Railroad. Once she escaped, she made thirteen trips back for relatives and others and never lost a single person. She also worked as a spy during the Civil War. Fearless. Brave.
Rosa Parks. Fannie Lou Hammer. Sistahs who got sick and tired of being sick and tired.
While Betty Friedan and others were looking for a way out of being housewives, black women longed for the opportunity to stay home and raise their children. The difference being that we were kidnapped and made to work without pay, without rights. We were raped at will and murdered without consequence. To this day we (as black women and women of color) do not receive the attention of the national media when we go missing.
We pay more for everything. We are on the bottom of the economic rung. Our infants die at a higher mortality rate and our men are incarcerated at levels that are appalling. Still.
One of the side effects of living life as a black woman in America can be a kind of fearlessness. I don't know any black women who live in fear. Fear is a luxury for those who don't have real problems to solve. Fear is a paralytic, We know we got to keep on keeping on.
Most of us do our best with what we have. We don't jump out of windows when the stock market crashes. Everyone I know can tell you stories about mothers and grandmothers that made meals outta nothing.
Many of us have those babies intentional or not. Hyde took away the black woman's ability to get abortions through anything federally supported a long time ago. With the support of a majority Democratic Congress.
Blacks in general and black women specifically make up the most loyal base of the Democratic Party. You wouldn't know this by reading this site.
Here it seems white male privilege insists on the right to tell us to shut up and sit down. Shut up about racism. Sit down in the presence of bullies.
It ain't that kind of party.
It wasn't that kind of party back in the sixties when so called revolutionary brothers tried to relegate black female revolutionaries to the kitchen and the bedroom.
It ain't that kind of party now when some so called progressives try to shout us down and tell us what we can say or think or talk about. There is no gentle way of saying this. White folk do not get to tell me what is or isn't racist. Racism is not a benefit of the doubt situation. Not for me. Not for any black folk I know.
As far as this black woman is concerned, white male privilege does not extend itself here. Some of them were on big wheels while I was having cans and bottles thrown at me. You may not be familiar with the face of racism. I am. And I see it here at this site. Often. And I will not pretend otherwise. I am going to call it out. In the spirit of Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hammer and thousands of other black women who could not be silenced except by death and who never quit fighting.
The revolution will be blogged.
Now run and tell that.
Editorial Note
Amazinggrace will no longer participate in these threads. She is sick and tired of dealing with the toxic nature of this site. She will contribute news items and did so today. I just have to learn how to post them.
Here are some links
Amazingrace News Editor
The Ghost of Bobby Lee
African American Women a Corrective Force in History
Guiding Principles of Black Women's Movement
Julis Cooper the most gifted female public intellectual