Women's History Month and "Women and minorities"

"The writings and speeches of both Matilda and Maria preceded other "feminist" pioneers like the Grimke Sisters, by several years..."

Dear friends,

With all of the talk about"women" by Hillary Clinton herself, and others like her, where the humanity of African American women is downright ignored, by the former using the phrase "women and minorities", it is, perhaps, instructive that we recall the fact that African American women have been at the forefront of all womanist movements in this country, historically...

For example, if we look at a child who is born in 2014, and go back roughly eight generations, or @200 years (that's about the time that the grandmother of the grandmother of the aforementioned child's grandmother's grandmother lived), we can appreciate the fact that, during that period, a woman named Matilda wrote to the "Freedom's Journal", an African American newspaper of that day, "Messrs. Editors...Will you allow a female to offer a few remarks upon a subject that you must allow to be all important? I don't know that in any of your papers, you have said sufficient upon the education of females. I hope you are not to be classed with those, who think that our mathematical knowledge should be limited to 'fathoming the dish-kettle,' and that We have acquired enough of history, if we know that our grandfather's father lived and died...I would address myself to all mothers- it is their bounden duty to store their daughters' minds with useful learning. They should be made to devote their leisure time to reading books, whence they would derive information, which could never betaken from them." ( A Documentary History of the Negro People in the U. S., edited by Herbert Aptheker)

Matilda's letter was published four years prior to any known work by Maria Stewart, the African American woman from Massachusetts who has been called the first American-born woman to speak in public. The writings and speeches of both Matilda and Maria preceded other "feminist" pioneers like the Grimke Sisters, by several years. As a matter of fact, about Mrs. Stewart's speeches, Philip Foner quoted Eleanor Flexner as saying that they heralded the arguments the Grimkes were to use a few years later. (see The Voice of Black America, Vol.1, edited by Foner)

Hardly ever mentioned, if not avoided altogether, in discussions concerning the African American experience are the historic roles of African American women in preserving the heritage of African American people, in the midst of a "double jeopardy", that is, being both African American AND a woman. (see essay by Francis Beale called"Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female", from the anthology entitled The Black Woman, edited by Toni Cade (Bambara)

Hillary Clinton and her supporters do not have that problem (i.e., double jeopardy). Unfortunately, instead, she and her fellow"women" perpetuate racism, while, simultaneously, doing harm to others. That is able to happen, because in a socially-stratified society such as Ours, one can belong to an oppressed group, yet, also be part of an oppressor group, at the same time. The Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill trial proved that adequately. In other words, Thomas was "oppressed" as a Black, but an "oppressor" as a man.

Consequently, while Hillary and many of her supporters are "oppressed" as women, they are "oppressors" as "white" people. Again, the Black woman has no such duality in her identity. That is why it is completely inane for European American (so-called "white) journalists to call Michelle Obama "unpatriotic" when she proclaimed to be proud of this country "for the first time" in her life, regarding her husband's success in campaigning for his nomination as the official candidate for the Democratic party. After all, was Michelle Obama supposed to be proud, heretofore, of a country that enslaved her ancestors by law, and whose law enforcement agents and many of her other fellow citizens continue to, randomly, inflict injury, for purely "racial" reasons, upon African American people?

Let's keep it real!

G. Djata Bumpus