Black Like Me: Gender, Justice and the Black Agenda

By Makani N. Themba
SeeingBlack.com Political Columnist

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When someone asks me to name the dominant influence on African-American nationalism today, my answer is quick and easy: Leave It to Beaver. Yes, Ward, June and the Beav are shaping Black discourse more than DuBois, Cabral or Fanon. Think for a moment of the images evoked from nationalist rhetoric—"a woman's rightful place," "restoring Black manhood," "the Black man will take his rightful place as leader." The healing of the Black family has become synonymous with reshaping our families to look like the White nuclear family of 50s television. In fact, so popular has this rhetoric become that it drew over one million men to Washington, D.C. (supported in large part by organizing efforts and donations by and from women).

First, I should confess that I went to the Million Man March. Sure, I had other business while in Washington, D.C. but I went to see the march—and the standing room only rally the night before—in order to gauge the event and its meaning for myself. After all, I had watched good friends mobilize local organizing committees for the effort. They had fried fish, sold t-shirts, collected donations and hustled buses all across the country. And yes, they were mostly women working to make sure their Black men would march triumphantly on Washington.

The march certainly confirmed that there is widespread belief in our community that African-American women's issues are not African-American issues. In fact, discourse on gender politics at any level is usually greeted like pork at the mosque. After all, we are told, feminism is a White thing and there's no need to understand.

However, the roots and implications of anti-feminism are deeper than the character of mass events or our spokespeople. African-American feminists and their words are ruthlessly censored and ridiculed in Black public discourse. African-American women who raised criticism of the Million Man March for its treatment of gender issues were lumped along with White supremacists as "tools of the White man." The march, of course, is not the only example of such censorship and exile. The debate around the Clarence Thomas- Anita Hill affair and the O.J. Simpson trial are both examples of how African-American discourse on the gender politics so basic to understanding these events was stifled.

There is an unspoken credo among the anti-feminists that liberation comes from waiting in line: men first then women, just like the White folk. To the extent that we can recreate their businesses, their families and their wealth as we imagine them to be; if we can organize ourselves in line just right, we will develop the moral fortitude to be free. Further, to talk to African-American men, given all they are already going through, about ways in which they, too, can be oppressors not only messes up the line, it adds strength and power to the opposition. Therefore, issues of gender oppression must wait.

And wait we have. Virtually no African-American women's organizations work on gender issues. Most focus on a broader social service or economic agenda that does not confront men on male privilege or even oppression of women. Even C. Delores Tucker's controversial efforts through the National Black Women's Political Caucus to regulate rap music focuses mostly on violence, not oppressive portrayals of women which is often worse in contemporary ballads than in rap. African-American women "leaders" have gladly abdicated leadership on gender issues for fear of reprisal from their male counterparts. Perhaps its most devastating result is that African-American women are denied a cosmology or public conversation in which we can contextualize our lives as women—the way we can as African Americans. Without this larger context, we internalize the oppression and blame ourselves.

It's time for a new covenant between Black men and women. One that allows our mutual oppression to nurture empathy and encouragement and enables us to dialogue honestly and critically on our oppression. Current rhetoric that encourages us to build Black community by buying Black and "going back" to the fanciful days of Donna Reed will certainly lead us astray. If we endeavor to learn from models, let us look to countries like Cuba, Haiti and South Africa where men and women are working—and struggling—with one another to build nations virtually from scratch. It is an imperfect process but there are clear lessons so far. There will be no redemption by consumption. There will be no liberation without a culture of constructive criticism and mutual solidarity. There will be no freedom if we do not fight for it, forge it and defend it. And until feminism becomes a Black thing, we will never understand.

-- September 29, 2002

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