Unfortunately, “George Jefferson”—Sherman Hemsley—recently
died. At the news of his passing, after saying a quick pray, I busted out
singing and dancing. I was doing the George Jefferson while singing (and I use
this term loosely)
Well we're movin on up,
To the east side.
To a deluxe apartment in the sky.
Movin on up,
To the east side.
We finally got a piece of the pie.
Of course I had to belt out the last line and hold the note
at pie. My poor child, born in 1999, looked at me as though I’d suddenly grown
another head. Oh well, she’ll understand one day why and how I justified my
behavior.
As a child of the 70s it was not often that I saw any
situation or even folk that looked like me on TV. So for the few that where
there, they represented more than just a TV show. Please don’t get me started
on the love affair I had with Penny (aka Janet Jackson from Good Times) or even Tootie (Kim Fields)
from Facts of Life. I have to chuckle
when I think of how I looked forward to seeing someone who closely resembled me
in our cultural depictions. The Jefferson's was right up there in my must see
shows.
The passing of Hemsley caused me to think of not what his
show,
The Jeffersons, represented at
that time in history; but to think about how we “see” black women socially,
culturally, politically, and economically. One of my favorite moments, it
happened in just about every show, was George yelling for Weezy. She was his
backbone, his rock, his stabilizers. Weezy brought reason to an often
unreasonable man. George Jefferson could not have existed without Weezy. Weezy
the fictional Black woman played the often (projected upon us) role of the "real"
Black woman—she brought humanity to her man. However, we rarely heard Weezy as
an individual, who was worthy of concern. What were Weezy’s concerns outside of
those for her family and friends? What was she passionate about except to ensure
that George behaved?
These are important
questions for us to consider at this moment in time when the ideologies of
“post-race” and “post-gender” are being rammed downed our throats and the
public space for Black women to protest seems to be disappearing.
So have Black women as a group finally moved up and got a
piece of the pie? As a group, not exactly. Simply put, Black women remain among
the poorest of the poor in the U.S. and also globally.
Black women as a group are poor, financially!
Over a quarter of
black women and nearly a quarter of Latina women are poor. Black and Latina
women are at least twice as likely as white women to be living in poverty.
Some might argue that Black women are poor because they lack
the necessary values—work ethic, etc. This ideology of the culture of poverty
is often used to punish Black women. Some argue that Black women are poor
because we emasucalte our men and don’t allow them be “real” men. By “real” I
assume that they are constructing men as the primary breadwinner, the disciplinarian—the roles we
often seen displayed when folk are talking about the “normal” family.
Yet, no one seems to be talking about Black women and poverty. Why?
What do we do about this? How do we stop
being the backbones or the mules (to borrow from Zora Neal Hurston) for
everyone else and claim our piece of the pie?
There is a systematic failure to "see" Black women and our poverty. Weezy's story of invisibility or visibility as it serves to reflect light on others, is in-part the story of Black women. I won’t spend time
deconstructing Weezy and how she played, to some extent, a stereotypical woman.
Instead, I want to focus on what does
movin’ on up for Black women look like and whether or not we finally get our
piece of the pie.
When I ask the question, Weezy did they forget you and did
you get your piece of the pie, I am really asking a question about privilege.
As I listen to the rhetoric of the current presidential
election cycle, I hear all the stories of men and women who pulled themselves
up by their boot strap (often ignored is how these individuals have access to a
set of resources not always available to Black women). Anny Romeny would have
us to believe that her experience of having to eat tuna represents economic
hardships she and Mitt endured. Left out of this narrative is her privilege—her
economic, racial, and political privilege. This narrative, that we can overcome
with hard work, does not tell the story of Black women’s survival. I often
wonder how a group of people can do so much with so little.
To unpack the story of Black women and poverty requires us
to consider how gender, race, and class intersect. Relying on a narrative of
personal will ignores how structures, processes, and practices influence how we
are able to live our lives on a daily basis. Such narratives ignore how
decisions, made in the past, provide different paths to different groups of
people. For example, many Black women cannot get a seat at the table of
academia as a result of a legacy—our fore-mothers and fathers often didn’t
attend college. It’s not a result of ability; they didn't
attend because they were not afforded the opportunity to do such.
So when I hear folk speaking about how they pulled
themselves up by their boot strap, I often want to ask, how did your legacy
help you—directly or indirectly. Often White female students condemn
affirmative action with claims that had it not be for affirmative action, they
would be in better schools. In response, I often ask if they ever heard of
legacy seats. More often than not, they haven’t. Many often they don’t
appreciate my response as it reminds them of white privilege.
Michael Hurwitz, in a
2007 Harvard University study, shows that legacy preferences increases the
applicant’s chances of admissions by approximately 23 percentage points. Sons
and daughters of alums, in comparison to siblings, nieces, etc., were more
likely to be advantaged, 45 percentage points, relatively to others.
Who you are matters? Yet, we continue to deny this. I’m not
suggesting that one is doomed if you weren’t born into a particular legacy.
However, we must recognize that for some of us without this legacy, life comes
with a particular set of struggles that are further compounded by the legacy of
the intersection of race, class, and gender. It is only when we recognize the
functioning of these structures, challenge them, and replace them with a more
just and equitable set of practices and processes can we claim that Weezy has a
chance at getting her piece of the pie.
"If you White you alright/ If you Black Step Back" the
lyrics of this 1967 folk song captures the story line of Black and White
girlhood. Some in society espouse the notion of multiculturalism to promote an ideal of post feminism and post racism. Post racialism and post feminism are ideologies that function to suggest that racial
differences and gender discrimination are no longer salient (see McRobbie
2004). However, the discursive practices deployed actually work to reinscribe
racalized and gender tropes and hierarchies. The recent tweet concerning the
young actress Quvenzhane Wallis is by ONE incident that makes evident how the
construction of Black girlhood embodies racalized and gendered tropes that
strips them of their girlhood and by default their innocence even in a "post" racial and "post" gender society.
