Now that the Democratic primary race is down to two candidates, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, confrontations between their advocates are beginning to heat up and of course racism is raising its ugly head. Cleveland’s Nina Turner (a black spokeswoman for Sanders) and Hillary Rosen (a white Biden supporter) went head-to-head on CNN’s Cuomo Prime Time with Turner later being dismissed as an “angry black woman.”
This kind of cheap shot is wrong on many levels but that doesn’t prevent it from routinely being used against black woman who dare to speak their minds.
However, if any demographic has a legitimate right to be angry in America, it’s black women, who, according to which study you believe, earn between 25-39% less than white males for doing the exact same work. But the origins of anger for black women run deeper than mere income disparity. Indeed, the root causes can be traced all the way back to 1619, when the first Africans were brought to the shores of the New World.
The type of slavery that was eventually instituted in America — where Africans were bred similar to cattle or other livestock — placed a premium on the lives and bodies of black females. But the premium proved to be a heavy burden.
White greed and concupiscence soon combined with the result being enslaved black women eventually thrust into an unwanted hegemonic advantage over her mate. Thus the black family — when it was left intact and not torn apart by members being placed on the auction block — developed into a matriarchy. This family structure was totally foreign to the Africans since it was completely unfamiliar in the land from which they originated.
This placed a tremendous burden on the enslaved black women. They innately knew that if they were going to survive this devilish holocaust into which they had been thrust via kidnapping, it would survive by them hoisting the entire race onto their strong backs and carrying this heavy burden until their men could once again stand up and take their rightful place as the head of their families — a process that is still incomplete.
Indeed, beginning with Peter Williams Jr., Samuel Cornish and John Russwurm (all three free black members of the Episcopal Church in the early 1800s who started the first black newspaper in America, Freedom’s Journal, in 1827) black men, similar to white men, tend to denigrate the contributions of their women. But in the case of Africans trapped in America the hierarchy was purposefully turned on its head by those seeking to maintain and perpetuate the yoke of total oppression.
To prevent uprisings slave masters sought to emasculate black males by doubly subjugating them: First to the white overseer and then to his black mate — and with the exception of the occasional violent insurrection the strategy worked.
For black women to know that her mate (the enslaved were not allowed the dignity of marriage, so technically they were not husband and wife) had to stand idly by with his head hung low while white monsters had their way sexually with any black female they so desired is the original wellspring of black female angst.
Now, fast-forward to the year 2020 and she has bootstrapped herself up to middle-class status — doctor, lawyer, competent professional — and still, when her young black son leaves the safety of his home she has to worry if some trigger-happy white cop is going to gun him down before he can return.
So, you tell me: Does the black female have a legitimate right to her anger?
