During this presidential election cycle, I waited
with bated breath to hear the candidates speak to me; to speak to issues of
concern to me as a Black woman. I watched each debate waiting in anticipation
and after each debate I found myself with a growing sense of frustration. My frustration
resulted from my feelings of marginalization which seemingly intensified as the
election cycle progressed. My marginalization was not the result of the
simplistic notion of winners of the debates. Instead, I felt increasingly
marginalized because I (Black women) was not discussed. We were invisible. I
was rendered invisible because not once did either of you address, in a substantive
and critical manner, any of the issue discussed below. Left out of the
conversation were issues of: food insecurity, HIV/AIDS,
the raced-gendered impact of the wage gap, or the ever-growing incarceration of
Black and Brown women.
On the night before this so-called critical
election, as the networks run a steady stream of election polls designed to
predict the results, I’m still waiting. I’m waiting for one of you, in your “closing”
statements, to address me. I’m waiting for one of you to tell me why I should
vote for either one of you. The side-show of the media aside, this is indeed a
critical election. I argue that this is a critical election but often not for
the same reasons the media tells me it is. It seems that once again politics
has rendered me invisible. So I pen this letter to both of you.
As you work to attract the “woman” vote, I remind
you that there is no homogeneous woman. Not all women occupy the same social
location. The intersection of race, class, sexuality and gender results in
different experiences for women. As Black women have long pointed out, we are
not simply marginalized as a result of our race or gender. Instead, we are
marginalized as a result of the intersection of multiple intersecting socially
constructed identities.
Given this, there are a few issues that I would encourage
you both to consider. These include:
Poverty: Black women are
increasingly poor. When you speak of the middle-class or tax-cuts for the wealthy you are failing to
address this growing epidemic among Black women. “The poverty rate for
Hispanic and black women rose even more than the poverty rate for women
generally – for Hispanic women to 25.0 percent in 2010 from 23.8
percent in 2009 and for black women to 25.6 percent in 2010 from 24.6 percent
in2009."
Unemployment:
In the most recently released unemployment rates, it was reported that the
unemployment rate among Black women “fell from 12.6% to 12.4%.”
Unemployment for Black women remains above the national average. As we discuss
the economic recovery, we have to ask, what has been the Black woman’s
experience?
Food insecurity:
“Overall, 15.4 percent of women experienced household food insecurity in 2008;
this varies, however, by race and ethnicity. Non-Hispanic Asian/Pacific
Islander and non-Hispanic White women were least likely to be food insecure
(10.3 and 11.1 percent, respectively), compared to more than one-quarter of
Hispanic, non-Hispanic Black, and non-Hispanic American Indian/Alaska Native
women. Non-Hispanic American Indian/Alaska Native and non-Hispanic Black women
were also more likely to have very low food security (13.4 and 10.2 percent,
respectively).” Simply put, Black women, and by default, their families, are
hungry. There is a relationship between their experiences with hunger,
unemployment and poverty. Some of these details get lost when we speak of women
as a group.
Wage Gap:
When you speak of the wage gap and pay equity for women, as a result of
treating women as a monolithic group, you lose sight of the fact that not all
women share the same experience. One’s experience with employment
discrimination, measured via wages, depends on his/her social location. Consider
that “Black women, in comparison to White women have median weekly earnings of
$595 and $703 respectively. Latina women’s median weekly earnings is $518.”
When we speak of the gender wage gap, it is imperative that we discuss how this
is raced. Additionally, wage discrimination is not the only form of
discrimination women confront in the paid labor force. So please, don’t
simplify the issue of employment discrimination by treating women in a
monolithic manner or by failing to consider the wide spectrum of discrimination
women, based on class, sexuality and race, face.
Incarceration: “In 2010, black women were
incarcerated at nearly 3 times the rate of white women (133 versus 47 per
100,000). Hispanic women were incarcerated at 1.6 times the rate of white women
(77 versus 47 per 100,000).” A number of factors contribute to the ever
expanding rate of incarcerated Black women. For example, the often construction
of Black women as “bad Black mothers” and the other negative stereotypes of
Black women rooted in images such as Jezebel and Sapphire result in the
implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, held belief that Black women are inherently
corrupt and immoral. Thus, the protections afforded to other women are often
denied to Black women.
In
thinking of the Black women and incarceration we also have to ask, what is the
impact of Black women’s incarceration on the Black family? While not
categorized in terms of the gender of the incarcerated parent, the data shows
that “1 in 15 black children, 1 in 42 Latino children, and 1 in 111 white
children had a parent in prison in 2007. Black children are 7.5 times more
likely and Hispanic children are 2.6 times more likely than are white children
to have a parent in prison.” How will either of you address such collateral
damage?
As we prepare to elect the president of the United
States, I pause and think of the nature of representation. What does political
representation, from a Black feminist perspective, mean? Representation is not
simply a benefit of those who can contribute, financially, to your campaign. As
elections become more and more expensive and as we spend millions of dollars in
key states and among key demographics, we need to ponder who is left out.
During
the 2008 Presidential election, for the first time in U.S history Black women, among
all voters, “had the highest voter turnout rate.” Additionally, Black women’s
voter participation “increased 5.1 percentage points, from 63.7% in 2004 to
68.8% in 2008” (Lopez and Taylor 2009). Yet, this history of Black women’s
participation in presidential politics remains virtually unseen. Black women have been
politically engaged. We are participating. However, this participation has not
necessarily resulted in representation.
Black women have been, historically and
systematically, politically neglected and misused. Via institutional and social
practices and processes, we have been rendered invisible. Black women’s
experiences remain unchallenged, in part, because women are constructed as a
homogeneous group. Policy discourses, when not treating women in a monolithic
manner, are apt to use negative systems of representing Black womanhood and
center her often as the source of all that ails the Black community. Consequently, we are seen but never really seen—we are the invisible voting bloc.
As a result of this invisibility, political, social
and economic structures and processes lack the willingness to pay attention to
the needs of Black women. The passive neglect, omission and misuse of Black
women in the political and social spheres have long been challenged by Black
women activists. They have waged various campaigns designed to bring
recognition to their plight—a plight that is indeed different from that of
other women and Black men. This letter is my small contribution to the
longstanding Black woman’s fight for recognition.
As a Black woman I am not looking for symbolic representation.
Instead, I am concerned with how either one of you will explicitly address the
problems faced by Black women, some of which I detail above. Will you represent
me?
