50 Years later and the Bombings Continue

It might seem like a bit of hyperbole, the title. After all no one has bombed a church and killed four innocent Black girls in the last fifty years. So it must be a bit overdramatic of me to suggest that some fifty years later racism is still a key factor in the deaths of Black girls and Black women in the U.S.

I listened to the brief nods of recognition given to the 50^th anniversary of the bombing of the 16^th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. This was the bombing that resulted in the deaths of Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Denise McNair. Many talked about what a horrific event this was and how it helped to fuel the modern Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. In the midst of the brief ceremonial recognition period, there was very little historical context provided and the coverage I saw did not ask how such acts of racialized-gendered violence are still present today.

This was the case because so many of the brief references dealt explicitly with the ideologies of racism and White supremacy as though it was not dynamic and continual. Whether intentional or not, there seems to be a desire to have such behavior only be couched in the past—a past that seems to start and end with the bombings and the immediate aftermath. What is ignored is the long history and continuing racialized-gendered treatment of Black women that is evident in the U.S.

I won’t rehash much of this history. Several have done a wonderful job of detailing Black women’s lives during the slavery era, the Emancipation Period, and the 1960s. Instead, I want to focus on how the bombings continue today and why there seems to be no protest.

I whish that I could offer a complete overview of Black women’s socio-political and economic position in the United States, but I can not do so at this time. Even more so, I wish that I could present a historical review of their socio-political and economic position of Black women. While we have little bits and pieces of this story, it remains disjointed. Instead, I present a snapshot of a few issues that I believe capture the nebulous position of Black women in the United States and show how racialized-gender continue to influence their lived realities.

Black women and Incarceration

According to the Sentencing Project, 

“The number of women in prison, a third of whom are incarcerated for drug offenses, is increasing at nearly double the rate for men. These women often have significant histories of physical and sexual abuse, high rates of HIV infection, and substance abuse. Large-scale women's imprisonment has resulted in an increasing number of children who suffer from their mother's incarceration and the loss of family ties.”

Additionally,

Black women, in comparison to other groups of women, are experience higher rates of incarceration according to the Sentencing Project. Black women, in 2010, relative to White women were incarcerated at nearly 3 times the rate (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).

Black women and AIDS

The CDC informs us that “At some point in their lifetimes, an estimated 1 in 32 black/African American women will be diagnosed with HIV infection, compared with 1 in 106 Hispanic/Latino women and 1 in 526 white women.” While the rate of infection seems to be decreasing, Black women remain disproportionately impacted by HIV and AIDS

Black Women, employment and wealth

According toThink Progress, “Unemployment rates have declined for most subgroups of women since the start of the recovery, but not for adult African-American women.”  

The National Women’s Law Center states, 

“The June 2013 unemployment rate for adult African-American women (12.0 percent) was higher than their rate at the beginning of the recovery in June 2009 (11.8 percent), and was nearly 1.7 times higher than their rate at the beginning of the recession in December 2007 (7.1 percent).”

“Black women working full-time, year-round were typically paid only 64 cents for every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men. Hispanic women working full-time, year-round were typically paid only 54 cents for every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men.”

Finally,

“African American women have continued to increase in educational attainment more rapidly than white women, yet the proportion of African American women in the service sector still hovers around 25 % compared to 15.4 % of White women. In addition, African American women are under-represented in management-level and professional positions and face significant barriers in the transition from low-wage jobs to professional occupations.”

What does this mean for Black Women and the Black Community?

Black women have made substantive progress since they were forcibly brought to the U.S. They have made improvements in terms of accessing education for example. However, the data above paints a grim picture for Black women as a group. They highlight how race and gender influence Black women’s experiences.

Gendered-racism is the thread that undercuts all of the above issues. Structural inequalities, and oppressive structures, rooted in race and gender hierarchies, are at the heart of the growing health and economic crises. These growing crises threaten to take Black women away, often thought of as the backbone of the community, from the community. So while there might not be bombings of churches in the U.S. today, the underlying ideologies that led to the bombings continue.

Consequently Black women continue to die and no one seems to be sounding the alarm.

This is the fourth post of my 31-day blogging challenge. This is the second post under the general theme of “Critical Social Issues” You can tweet me at Dr_JZ using hash tag #31dbc to share your thoughts. 

113rd Congress: Should I get excited?

 

January 3, 2013 and the “freshman” class of the 113^th Congress has been sworn in. A few days prior a dear friend of mine sent me the above picture with the statement “I'm sure you can do something with this imagery!” I looked at the picture, shrugged my shoulders and continued contemplating life (mine) in the New Year. Then I watched Dianne Sawyer’s interview (1/3/2013) with a number of these women and I became intrigued. I listened to how the women conceptualize themselves as law makers. One said that women are not filled with testosterone and that makes them different from their male counterparts. They talked about abortion and women’s rights and other issues one has come to expect such panels to deal with. I almost ignored the segment on ABC Nightly News as it started (at least the start for me) on how many children were shared between the women. My thought was please, not this again. Nevertheless, I set aside my bias and listened. But I came away with more thoughts than could be answered in the two-minute segment (or however long it was).  

 

 

I taught Women and Politics last semester—perfect timing. Leading up to the election and after the election my students and I discussed not only why women run for elective office, but also the barriers they face and how women of various social locations confront these barriers. We discussed how women confront the masculinist structure that is Congress. After the election we talked about whether or not the newly elected cohort will be able to change how Congress functions or will they be confined to working within the structure as is.

Many tout this as the most diverse Congress to date. This diversity covers a wide spectrum including:

1.      The House Democrat Caucus-it is projected that the majority now comprises of women and non-white individuals. The Republican counterpart remains heavily White and male.

2.      Religious & Racial Diversity—the House of Representatives now has its first Hindu member and the senate has its first Asian-American woman (the second woman of color to serve in the Senate). Twenty-eight Latinos are now serving in the House and three in the Senate.

3.      Sexuality—the Senate now has its first openly gay member.

4.      Gender-- The Senate now has 20 women (of 100 members) and there are 81 women in the House of Representatives (of 441 members of which 435 are voting members and 6 are non-voting members).

 
In the face of it all, this is indeed something to celebrate. But… I do wander what does this all mean for Black women? Between 1917 and 2012   

“A total of 31 African American or black women have served in Congress (1 in the Senate, 30 in the House), including the 15 serving in the 112th Congress. Eight Hispanic women have been elected to the House; seven serve in the 112th Congress. Six Asian American women have served in the House, including four in the 112th Congress.”

Of the 43 current African American Congresspersons (a drop from 44), a total of 17 are women (these includes two non-voting members). So, there are 17 (out of 435 members) Black women in the House of Representatives and zero (out of 100 members) in the Senate, but why should we care?

Symbolic vs. Substantive Representation: Why we should care

 

Who will represent Black women? This is a question of substantive versus symbolic representation. While both are valuable, I’m inclined to advocate for substantive representation which would result in policy changes—positive changes-- that would enhance the lived realities of Black women. There are so many issues that Black women need to pay attention to; depending on how Congress acts on these issues will show how and if Black women matter, in a substantive manner, to this most diverse Congress. Below I explore only a few of the issues that I think we ought to pay attention to.

 

1.      Violence Against Women Act (VAW). The 112^th House, as it came to its end, failed to act on the VAW Act. The GOP leadership refused to introduce the Act for re-authorization. The bill passed in the Senate would have extended domestic violence protections to approximately 30 million LGBT individuals, First American women and undocumented immigrants. Black women need this legislation. Consider the following:  

 

“Various groups experience domestic violence at disproportionate rates. The NVAWS found that African-American and Native American/Alaskan Indian women and men reported higher rates of domestic violence than did women and men from other communities of color(Tjaden & Thoennes, 2000), while Asian/Pacific Islander women and men tended to report lower rates of intimate partner violence than did women and men from other minority backgrounds(Tjaden & Thoennes, 2000). It also found that 23.4% of Hispanic/Latina women had been domestic violence victims in their lifetime(Tjaden & Thoennes, 2000). The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) reported that African-American women experienced domestic violence at a rate 35% higher than Caucasian women(Rennison & Welchans, 2000).

An important consideration with respect to race and domestic violence is the impact of economic class. A National Institute of Justice (NIJ) publication suggests that "African-Americans and whites with the same economic characteristics have similar rates of intimate violence, but African-Americans have a higher overall rate of intimate violence due in part to higher levels of economic distress and location in disadvantaged neighborhoods"(Benson & Fox, 2004).”

 

2.      HIV/AIDS: Simply put we need a comprehensive, well-funded, national HIV/AIDS policy. Having said this, I recognize that this might not occur in the foreseeable future. In the meantime, there are a few policy issues that Black women need to press Congress on. For one, we need to pres them on funding for the AIDS Drug Assistance Program. We also need to advocate for funding (increased) for the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program, which provides care to low income people with the disease and Housing Opportunities for People with AIDS (HOPWA).

 

3.      The Economy. There are so many issues to discuss related to the economy including the high rates of unemployment among African Americans—regardless of gender and/or age. We also need to advocate, in the coming months, on how the “fiscal cliff” will be addressed. The fiscal-cliff might have been averted, but it is not over. The 2013 Congress must now address what is referred to as the sequestration requirements. Sequestration, implemented by the Budget Control Act of 2011, is approximately $1 trillion in automatic cuts to federal government spending over the next decade. This means that this Congress must now create a deficit reduction plan designed to identify $1.2 trillion in budgetary cuts over the next decade. We need to pay attention to a number of areas that might be affected by these cuts, including for example the Affordable Health Care Act in general and the Prevention and Public Health Fund specifically. Federal employees are not off the hook, yet. A substantial number of African Americans are employed by the federal government. How they handle this economic “crisis” has implication for education parity (Head Start among other programs), access to affordable health care, and adequate and safe housing. 

Congresswoman Maxine Waters

Finally, we need to pay attention to committee assignments as this is often used to mute and silenced those who might challenge the status quo. When Shirley Chisholm, first Black woman elected to Congress, was elected she was initially appointment to a minor subcommittee of the Agriculture Committee. She challenged this appointment and the power structure changed her appointment to the Veterans Affairs Committee. She bucked the system by challenging power structures, she made many uncomfortable with her presence and her words. Hers is but one method of radical representation for substantive change. We have to wait to see if this celebrated 113^rd congress will in the words of Shirley Chisholm “breathe fire”. In the meantime, we cannot sit back and wait for our elected officials to act, we must also act. It is time for us, the voting public, to also “breathe fire” and demand substantive policy that positively affects the lived reality of Black women.

One Black Woman’s Open Letter to President Obama and Mitt Romney

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."

Child poverty Not only must we address the poverty rate of Black women, but we must also pay attention to child poverty. As stated in Color Lines, “More than one in three black kids—a full 36 percent of black youth—live in poverty and 31 percent of Latino kids lives in poverty. In 2009, … 16 states reported poverty rates for black children that were upwards of 40 percent. And in five states, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Arkansas and Alabama, more than 40 percent of Latino kids there lived in poverty. However, no state has a white children’s poverty rate that’s over 23 percent.”

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?