Black Woman Thesis

Stereotypes are apart of this world. They take place in all races and shapes and sizes. This type of thinking goes into how we approach our daily lives and how we interact with people. The angry black women is stereotype that says all black women are angry or have something to be mad about.This stereotype is meant to be a negative it is meant to oppress the black women. This stereotype strips the black women of right to be angry it makes her want to do everything she possibly can to not be the angry black women. I believe that the black woman should have the right to be angry because how they are treated inside and outside their culture. I think the stereotype is uninformed because it should not be a negative there is much to be angry about.

Chapter Four will summarize the metaphor of Black female character’s bondservant role, and how the Black church portrayed them. I will look at how each individual writer: Phyllis Wheatley, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and James Baldwin was influenced by Christianity, politics, and racialism. I will examine historical periods between 1880 and 1920, in which the black church served as the most influential component by which Black female characters rallied against psychological and physical defeat. I will focus on the National Baptist Convention, which was the largest religious movement among the Black community at that time.

Women’s issues during slavery and even into the Reconstruction Era were not held as top priorities within the social structure of life during those times. The main political and social issues were within the male spectrum, and therefore left women’s rights and values in second place, behind men. Within the nineteenth century, there were four specific characteristics that society deemed should be associated with a woman; piety, purity, domesticity, and submissiveness. However, this was not the case when it came to black women. They were not able to exemplify the expected worldview of womanhood due to their circumstances.

The United States prides itself on being a land of opportunities, and in many ways it is. We look at countries like South Africa, which not long ago was segregated through the laws of Apartheid, and we are glad that we are so much further along than the land of Mandela. However, every now and then we need to stop and ask ourselves just how far along we really are, and we have to wonder if many of the once oppressed countries we helped free are not passing us up in the area of civil rights and opportunity.

This paper discusses the experiences of African American Women under slavery during the Slave Trade, their exploitation, the secrecy, the variety of tasks and positions of slave women, slave and ex-slave narratives, and significant contributions to history. Also, this paper presents the hardships African American women faced and the challenges they overcame to become equal with men in today’s society. Slavery was a destructive experience for African Americans especially women. Black women suffered doubly during the slave era.

The systematic, oppressive dehumanization of black womanhood was not a mere consequence of racism. It was a calculated method of social control, manipulation, and misogyny. With capitalism on the forefront of the American society during the Reconstruction years, and a booming manufacturing economy was on the rise, white supremacy capitalism patriarchy needed a group to be at the very bottom of the social hierarchy, a scapegoat. That scapegoat was black women. Manumitted black women showed that when given the same opportunities to live their lives like humans, they surpassed and excelled in all areas. Their success was a direct challenge to the racist ideologies that darker races were inherently inferior. Racist

Black womanhood is extremely complex because this is a group of people who have marginalized for centuries. There is a burden put on black women that other groups do not experience. Being a woman in today’s society is a burden alone, but on top of that being African American presents another set of obstacles. Linda Brent in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Janie Crawford in Their Eyes Were Watching God, are both black women who are oppressed by society as a whole, particularly males. Since they have to face twice the amount of oppression, they have even more of a reason to fight for their basic human rights of liberty and respect. By looking at Linda Brent’s fight for independence as a slave, we can see how even though Janie was not a slave, she still fights for independence within her relationships with men. This is important because it shows how Jacobs and Hurston believed that domesticity and over sexualization limits the power of black women therefore they have to be physically and mentally strong.

During the 19th century, black women faced a plethora of hardships culminating from hundreds of years of oppression and denigration while simultaneously fighting for equal rights with all other women. One of the biggest obstacles that was necessary to overcome was one of the most common ideologies of the West, the Cult of True Womanhood. This Victorian ideal of womanhood defined women within a domestic sphere and required them to be subservient to their husbands (Broude). These women gave up much more than their rights outside of the home, they were taken advantage of physically, mentally and sexually. The majority of women during this time did not meet this standard of true womanhood and never could hope to. This ideal and the common stereotypes of the time were questioned by an African-American woman named Sojourner Truth.

‘New Negro’ was a social and cultural movement within the black community that spanned from the nineteen-tens into the nineteen-thirties. This movement marked a significant shift in the black identity, as it was a collective effort for self-redefinition. Scholar Erin D. Chapman in her work Prove It on Me: New Negroes, Sex, and Popular Culture in the 1920s asserts that New Negroes sought to redefine themselves and their social positions through active participation in producing, consuming, and commodifying in the “interracial arena of social communication and negotiation.” (7) This newfound power over image and boundaries did not necessarily mean that power over the black public discourse and re-edification belonged to the community as a whole; in fact, black women were saddled with a new role that was rather constricting. Cherene Sherrard-Johnson claims that, “The New Negro woman, styled as the ideal template for measuring black femininity, [was] a constrained throwback to Victorian womanhood” (840). Chapman’s assessment of New Negro womanhood coincides with Sherrard-Johnson’s perception; the former extensively discusses the constricting expectation of the ideal ‘race motherhood’—which required black women to wholly devote all of their time, energy, and ability into creating and maintaining a stable, exceptional, and modern, black household to do her part in collective racial uplift (Chapman

“Look at me! Look at my arm! I have plowed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me- and ar’n’t I a women?” These wise phrases came from the African-American abolitionist and women’s right activist, Sojourner Truth, in her speech titled “Ar’n’t I a Women”. This bright and diligent soul was born into slavery in 1797 and struggled to escape the plantation with her infant in 1826. Through reading, the reader is able to deduce the anger, frustration, and sadness of Truth’s experience. One can only image the severe and harsh conditions slavery imposed on black females. Slavery in the 19th century was a brutal punishment and unrealistic expectation for African American slave women. The book Through Women’s Eyes contains an intriguing image on page 215 titled “How Slavery Improves the Condition of Women” conveys the living form of black women as they get beat and whipped by white men and even mistresses; furthermore, the reader had the ability to analysis the image using the knowledge from the book Ar’n’t I a Women written by Deborah Gray White.

The Columbia Guide to African American History Since 1939 talked about a very controversial topic: racial naming issue. Over the course of history, the African American concerned about their titles as a respond to the white supremacy and how each title reflected the greater problem in the society. The term “Negro” was at first promoted because it represented the people of African descendant. However, since the term originated from the slavery era, later generation refused and preferred the term “Black” or “African American”. The paragraph that explained why the term “Black” was initially rejected fascinated me.

African American women never receive the true recognition they deserve; and as women we need to know who we are, and why we are important to this nation and to the world. African American women have several contributions to the United States. Their contributions are in fashion, entertainment, art, literature, economics, education, and so much more. Throughout the years these contributions have increased and are continuing to skyrocket as the days go by. Many African American women have made history due to their hard work, and dedication and most of the time it goes unnoticed due to their skin tone and their sexuality. Black women also face several negative stereotypes. They are often seen as angry, ignorant, hostile human beings. It often makes it harder for them to be taken seriously. There are several factors to the stereotypes and are often false, and give black women a bad outlook. Black women are our fighters against slavery, representation of women’s suffrage, the majorettes for the march on civil rights, and the hardworking women in both world wars.

Black woman were depicted through this myth as breadwinners, running “female-headed households” because they were forced to join labor forces due to the circumstances of black life, the poor low social class working for white supremacists without any other opportunities (79). The black men fighting to obtain control and power emulated the highest societal symbol of power, white men and white supremacy, and therefore viewed power as the ability to oppress another; black men viewed matriarchal figures as a threat to their position as “the sole boss,” so internalization of this myth lead to black men to consider black females “as a threat to their personal power” leading to black males demanding that black woman assume a “passive subservient role in the home” under their power

A reoccurring theme that has transcended throughout American history is the idea of slavery, therefore, racial discrimination between black and white individuals. In today’s modern day, there has been a decrease in racial discrimination, however looking back a couple hundred years ago racial discrimination was predominate and could be characterized as a violent relationship between black and whites. Although racial discrimination affected both man and women alike, women also faced discrimination between the sexes; yes, in the 1800’s slavery can be viewed as cruel and miserable for blacks as a whole, women, on the other hand, suffered a more internal pain, being stripped of their womanhood, thus, beginning to “hate” what is known as the “white women”.

I don't think I quite remember when I started to identify as a black feminist. There was never that moment of clarity because to me black women are equal to everyone, we deserve to be recognized and celebrated just like everyone else. This movement was founded on the historical disadvantage of women. Black feminism to be specific is the desire for equal access to opportunities for females, not systemic racism, sexism, mass incarceration etc. People get so hung up on the word but fail to realize that feminism fights for gender equality in a culture that has historically devalued women. Feminism isn't about making women stronger, we're already strong. It's about society acknowledging that strength and treating us as equals. What everyone fails