Black women

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Black women is a term which can be used to describe women who are of Sub-Saharan African and Afro-diasporic descent. Blackness as a concept is a colonial invention, which was used to justify slavery based on the ever-shifting, socially constructed definitions of race. Who is defined by others as Black and who defines themselves as Black continues to evolve across time and different societies.[1] This means the term "Black women" describes a multi-faceted cultural identity with different meanings around the world.[2][citation needed] The related term misogynoir is used to describe the overlapping injustices of misogyny and racism black women experience, such as the stereotype of the angry black woman. The way these two forms of bias interact means that some women, particularly in the US, prefer the term over other alternatives such as the more general phrase "women of color."[3]

Black internationalism[]

Historians Keisha N. Blain and Tiffany Gill define as "a global political, intellectual, and artistic movement of African-descended people engaged in a collective struggle to overthrow global white supremacy in its many forms."[4] The concept can also be used to address the ways in which international globalization has further reinforced historic patterns of discrimination.[5]

Intersectionality and misogynoir[]

Main articles: Intersectionality and Misogynoir

Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw developed the theory of intersectionality, which highlighted the overlapping discrimination faced by Black women (on the basis of both race and gender) in the United States. The theory has been influential in the fields of feminism and Critical Race Theory as a methodology for interpreting the ways in which overlapping social identities relate to systems of oppression.[6] More recently the term misogynoir has been created to describe the specific effect of intersectionality on black women.[7] Part of the reason that the that these more specific terms were created, is that black women have been historically left out of movements for both racial justice and feminist equality.[8]

Around the world[]

Africa[]

Main article: Maputo Protocol

The 2003 Maputo Protocol on women's rights in Africa set the continental standard for progressive expansion of women's rights. It guarantees comprehensive rights to women including the right to take part in the political process, to social and political equality with men, improved autonomy in their reproductive health decisions, and an end to female genital mutilation.[9]

Ghana[]

Women play a modest role in Ghana's two major political parties, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and New Patriotic Party (NP), as well as in the Convention People's Party (CPP). The first president, Kwame Nkrumah (CPP), made Ghana the first African nation to introduce a quota in 1959, reserving 10 seats for women in Parliament. Ghana has recently been laggard, however, with a representation of 11% women after the election in 2012 and 13% after the election in 2016.[10]

Tunisia[]

In Tunisia black women are victims of double discrimination, facing prejudice both because of their gender and race.[11] They are often "stigmatised, hyper-sexualised, and objectified".[12] It has been noted that this sexualization of black Tunisian women leads to them being viewed as objects by Arab men to "achieve sexual satisfaction" and face sexual harassment.[13]

The feminist movement in the Arab world—including Tunisia—has been labelled as racist, failing to take into consideration the issues of women that are not Arab; this has led to parallels between Arab feminism and white feminism.[14] In 2020, four black Tunisian women created the Facebook group Voices of Tunisian Black Women in an attempt to bring to light these issues affecting them, which they felt were not being discussed in the Me Too movement.[11]

Caribbean society[]

Jennifer Palmer argues that in the plantation world of the colonial Caribbean, women of color were typically treated as property owned by white men. In the French islands, race and gender shape popular assumptions about who could own property. However there were legal loopholes that sometimes opened up windows of opportunity for women of color to be landowners.[15]

United States[]

American slavery[]

Main article: Slavery in the United States

Black slaves, many of whom were women, were often abused by their owners and other white people.[16] This abuse extended beyond the physical and psychological abuse directly related to how slaves were treated, and include the exploitation of black women slaves in order to advance different scientific practices and techniques.[citation needed] Black female slaves were sexually abused by White men and were forced to breed with their White male slave masters to bear mulatto children to maintain White supremacy, have more slaves to pick cotton and produce superior slaves in the South.[17] Black female slaves received the same treatment in Brazil, Central America, Mexico, Peru and the Caribbean.[18][19] However, rape of white women was prevented and feared.[20]

Increased risk for health problems[]

Black women are often at a higher risk to contract these diseases than white women, but they also are at a higher risk to die from them as well. According to the American Cancer Society, the death rate for all cancers for black women is 14% higher than that of white women.[21] While the probability of being diagnosed with cancer in black women is one in three, the chance of dying from cancer is one in five.[21] Cancer is not the only disease that disproportionately affects African-American women. Lupus is two-three times more common in women of color, but more specifically one in every 537 black women will have lupus.[22] Black women are also at a higher chance of being overweight thus making them open to more obesity-related diseases.[23] There is also a racial disparity when it comes to pregnancy related deaths. While there are 12.4 deaths for every 100,000 births for white women, the statistics for black women is 40.0 deaths for every 100,000 births.[24] In a 2007 US study of five medical complications that are common causes of maternal death and injury, black women were two to three times more likely to die than white women who had the same condition.[25] The World Health Organization in 2014 estimated that black expectant and new mothers in the United States die at about the same rate as women in countries such as Mexico and Uzbekistan.[26] A 2018 study found that "The sexual and reproductive health of African-American women has been compromised due to multiple experiences of racism, including discriminatory healthcare practices from slavery through the post-Civil Rights era."[27] Another 2018 study found that darker skin tones were underrepresented in medical textbook imagery and that these omissions "may provide one route through which bias enters medical treatment".[28]

Famous leaders[]

Some of the most important artistic and political leaders in history have been black women. For instance, Queen Qalhata and Candace of Meroe are important, early African queens.[29][30][31] In Africa, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf served as President of Liberia for 12 years.[32]

In the United States, Toni Morrison was the first black woman Nobel laureate. Shirley Chisholm was an important Democratic candidate for U.S. President in the 1970s. In the 2020 United States presidential election, Kamala Harris was named Joe Biden's running mate, making her the first black woman to be on a major party ticket. Biden won the election, making Harris the first black person and black woman to be Vice President of the United States.[33]

See also[]

References[]

  1. ^ Coates, Ta-Nehisi (2014-06-23). "How Racism Invented Race in America". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2021-09-16.
  2. ^ Tsri, Kwesi (2016-04-02). "Africans are not black: why the use of the term 'black' for Africans should be abandoned". African Identities. 14 (2): 147–160. doi:10.1080/14725843.2015.1113120. ISSN 1472-5843.
  3. ^ "As a black woman, I hate the term 'people of colour'". The Independent. 2020-05-19. Retrieved 2021-09-16.
  4. ^ Blain, Keisha N., and Tiffany M. Gill (eds), To Turn the Whole World Over: Black Women and Internationalism (University of Illinois Press, 2019), p. 2.
  5. ^ Brown, Jeffery (2002-01-01). "Black Internationalism: Embracing an Economic Paradigm". Michigan Journal of International Law. 23 (4): 811. ISSN 1052-2867.
  6. ^ Adewunmi, Bim (2014-04-02). "Kimberlé Crenshaw on intersectionality: "I wanted to come up with an everyday metaphor that anyone could use"". New Statesman. Retrieved 2020-06-30.
  7. ^ "Misogynoir: where racism and sexism meet". the Guardian. 2015-10-05. Retrieved 2021-09-16.
  8. ^ "The Routledge Companion to Black Women's Cultural Histories". Routledge & CRC Press. Retrieved 2021-09-17.
  9. ^ Christine Ocran, "The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa." African Journal of International and Comparative Law 15.1 (2007): 147-152.
  10. ^ Diana Højlund Madsen, "Gender, Power and Institutional Change–The Role of Formal and Informal Institutions in Promoting Women’s Political Representation in Ghana." Journal of Asian and African Studies 54.1 (2019): 70–87.
  11. ^ Jump up to: a b Bajec, Alessandra (November 19, 2020). "Giving a voice to Tunisia's black women, victims of double discrimination". Radio France Internationale. Archived from the original on February 20, 2021. Retrieved May 8, 2021.
  12. ^ Bajec, Alessandra (December 29, 2020). "The Black Tunisian women fighting 'double discrimination'". openDemocracy. Archived from the original on January 3, 2021. Retrieved May 8, 2021.
  13. ^ ElHajjaji, Chouaib (April 17, 2018). "Black Tunisian women: ceaseless erasure and post-racial illusion". openDemocracy. Archived from the original on January 26, 2021. Retrieved May 8, 2021.
  14. ^ Alghoul, Diana (April 1, 2017). "Why is the Arab feminist movement so racist?". Middle East Monitor. Archived from the original on November 12, 2020. Retrieved May 8, 2021.
  15. ^ Jennifer L. Palmer, "The fruits of their labours: Race, gender and labour in the eighteenth-century French Caribbean." French History 32.4 (2018): 471-492.
  16. ^ Greenberg, Kenneth S; White, Deborah Gray; Harris, J. William (1987). "Black Women and White Men in the Antebellum South". Reviews in American History. 15 (2): 252. doi:10.2307/2702176. JSTOR 2702176.
  17. ^ "Slavery in the U.S. | Boundless US History". courses.lumenlearning.com.
  18. ^ see "American Slavery in Comparative Perspective" (2019)online
  19. ^ David Gaspar and Darlene Clark Hine, eds. More than chattel: Black women and slavery in the Americas (Indiana University Press, 1996).
  20. ^ Olds, Madelin (1995). "The Rape Complex in the Postbellum South". Black Women in America. pp. 179–205. doi:10.4135/9781483326962.n10. ISBN 9780803954557.
  21. ^ Jump up to: a b "Cancer Facts & Figures for African Americans" (PDF).
  22. ^ "Lupus facts and statistics". Lupus Foundation of America. Retrieved 2018-11-29.
  23. ^ Gillum, Richard F. (1987–2008). "Overweight and Obesity in Black Women: A Review of Published Data From The National Center for Health Statistics". Journal of the National Medical Association. 79 (8): 865–871. ISSN 0027-9684. PMC 2625572. PMID 3508218.
  24. ^ "Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance System | Maternal and Infant Health | CDC". www.cdc.gov. 2018-08-07. Retrieved 2018-11-29.
  25. ^ Tucker, Myra J.; Berg, Cynthia J.; Callaghan, William M.; Hsia, Jason (2007). "The Black–White Disparity in Pregnancy-Related Mortality From 5 Conditions: Differences in Prevalence and Case-Fatality Rates". American Journal of Public Health. American Public Health Association. 97 (2): 247–251. doi:10.2105/ajph.2005.072975. ISSN 0090-0036. PMC 1781382. PMID 17194867.
  26. ^ Organization, World Health (2014-05-12). "World health statistics 2014: a wealth of information on global public health". apps.who.int. hdl:10665/112739. Retrieved 2020-06-22.
  27. ^ Prather, Cynthia; Fuller, Taleria R.; Jeffries, William L.; Marshall, Khiya J.; Howell, A. Vyann; Belyue-Umole, Angela; King, Winifred (2018-09-24). "Racism, African American Women, and Their Sexual and Reproductive Health: A Review of Historical and Contemporary Evidence and Implications for Health Equity". Health Equity. 2 (1): 249–259. doi:10.1089/heq.2017.0045. ISSN 2473-1242. PMC 6167003. PMID 30283874.
  28. ^ Louie, Patricia; Wilkes, Rima (April 2018). "Representations of race and skin tone in medical textbook imagery". Social Science & Medicine. 202: 38–42. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2018.02.023. PMID 29501717.
  29. ^ Vercoutter, Jean (1976-01-01). The Image of the Black in Western art. Morrow. ISBN 9780688030865.
  30. ^ Walker, Robin (2006-01-01). When We Ruled: The Ancient and Mediœval History of Black Civilisations. Every Generation Media. ISBN 9780955106804.
  31. ^ Sertima, Ivan Van (1984-01-01). Black Women in Antiquity. Transaction Books. ISBN 9780878559824.
  32. ^ "Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf". Forbes.
  33. ^ Lerer, Lisa; Ember, Sydney (7 November 2020). "Kamala Harris Makes History as First Woman and Woman of Color as Vice President". The New York Times. Retrieved 14 November 2020.

Further reading[]

  • Blain, Keisha N., and Tiffany M. Gill (eds). To Turn the Whole World Over: Black Women and Internationalism (University of Illinois Press, 2019). 280 pp. online review.
  • Blain, Keisha N. Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018).
  • Busby, Margaret (ed.), New Daughters of Africa: An international anthology of writing by women of African (Myriad Editions, 2019).
  • Coquery-Vidrovitc, Catherine. African Women: A Modern History (1997).
  • Hafkin, Nancy, and Edna G. Bay. Women in Africa: Studies in social and economic change (Stanford University Press, 1976).
  • Harris-Perry, Melissa V. Sister Citizen: Shame, stereotypes, and Black women in America (Yale University Press, 2011).
  • Hine, Darlene Clark, and Kathleen Thompson. A Shining Thread of Hope: The History of Black Women in America (1999).
  • Hooks, Bell. Ain't I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism (Routledge, 2014).
  • Jones, Jacqueline. Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family, from Slavery to the Present (2nd edn. 2010).
  • Nelson, Nicki. African Women in the Development Process (Routledge, 2013).
  • Scales-Trent, Judy. "Black women and the constitution: Finding our place, asserting our rights." Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 24 (1989): 9–44.
  • Smith, Barbara (ed.), Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (Rutgers University Press, 2000), primary sources.
  • Stichter, Sharon B., and Jane Parpart. Patriarchy and Class: African women in the home and the workforce (Routledge, 2019).
  • Strobel, Margaret. "African women." Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 8.1 (1982): 109–131.
  • Vaz, Kim Marie, ed. Black Women in America (Sage Publications, 1995).
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