SISTER CITIZEN: SHAME, STEREOTYPES AND BLACK WOMEN IN AMERICA by Melissa V. Harris-Perry

First of all, you’ve got to love a scholarly book that opens with a poem to set the tone, Kate Rushin’s “Bridge Poem.” I haven’t been in academia for a long while, so maybe this is how they roll now, but still I’m impressed!

This sister can write! Melissa Harris-Perry has written a textbook-worthy tome that is an engaging and compelling read. Sister Citizen has all the footnotes, tables and graphs you’d expect from an academician, but they don’t get in the way of the story.

I thought I knew all about the stereotypes of black women Harris-Perry covers, but then I’d never read a thoroughly researched documentation of them. I also thought at my age I was beyond being shocked, but Sister Citizen describes some atrocities that actually stunned me. Along with other works on black life by young scholars, this kind of research on a neglected topic exonerates my long-ago decision. I dropped out of graduate studies decades ago because my dissertation topic on African American literature was deemed “academically invalid.” This was near the beginning of the bitter struggle to get universities to accept Black/African American Studies as credible. Apparently, however, according to an incident at Duke University that Harris-Perry writes about, that legitimacy is still being questioned in some places.

If anything makes reading this work difficult, it is the subject matter, especially for a black woman. As I read the chapter on “Myths” discussing the prevailing images that have been cultivated about black women, I relived painful memories of my own experiences. I escaped being expected to be a Mammy, but many times I’ve been perceived as the Angry Black Woman, usually because I refused to submit to someone else’s idea of who I should be. Admittedly, there have also been occasions I’ve relished the role and played it for all it was worth to clear space for myself in antagonistic environments. My mother was so frightened by the myth of promiscuity that she verbally shoved me into marriage long before I was ready. She was terrified that her twenty-something daughter would be seen as a “loose” woman.

As Harris-Perry says, “These myths make black women feel ashamed—and shame has sweeping consequences for black women’s lives and politics.” (“Shame” deserves and gets a whole chapter.) It is disappointing to learn just how debilitating these stereotypes remain for black women fifty years after the civil rights movement. At the time we were involved in that struggle, I thought we were unraveling the misinformation. Of course, it was naïve of me to think a few years of passionate activism would repeal hundreds of years of profitable (for some) American traditions. Harris-Perry doesn’t just reiterate and document the impact of these myths on black women, but also shows how the myths work to shape public policy.

What I possibly love most about this book is how the author uses classic literature like Their Eyes Were Watching God and The Bluest Eye (two of my favorite novels) to explicate her narrative. And the motif of the crooked room is a brilliant and efficient description of black women’s effort to be themselves in American society.

Harris-Perry presents splendid examples of times when black women did not find a soft place to fall within the African American community. She also examines the depictions and roles of women in Katrina and other disasters. And she explains how Tyler Perry’s film interpretation of For Colored Girls Who Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf subverted Ntozake Shange’s original message. Sister Citizen closes with stories of well-known black women who battled powerful forces to stand firmly straight in the crooked room, including the country’s highest profile black woman, Michelle Obama.

This is a nutritive book including so much more than I’ve indicated here. Sister Citizen would be instructive for every American, but in particular, I wish every black woman would read it. This book examines and reveals reflexive behaviors we’ve engaged in and accepted for a long time, but that do not always serve us well. In particular, I saw myself in the chapter on “Strength.” It took many years for me to understand that being the proverbial “strong black woman” was draining me physically and emotionally. I had crafted such an impervious self-image that I felt deep shame when I needed to ask for help. Harris-Perry delineates the ways in which the laudable characteristic of strength can be counter-productive; something I had to learn the hard way.

Why African Americans aren’t embracing Occupy Wall Street

Don't Ignore Us!

The title of Stacy Patton’s article in the November 25, 2011 Washington Post, implies that the reader will learn why blacks haven’t embraced OWS, but after reading the article twice, I’m still not sure why.

Statements like the next two support the idea that blacks are “punishing” whites by not joining the protests.

“Perhaps black America’s absence is sending a message to the Occupiers: ‘We told you so! Nothing will change. We’ve been here already. It’s hopeless.’”

"Why should [blacks] ally with whites who are just now experiencing the hardships that blacks have known for generations? Perhaps white Americans are now paying the psychic price for not answering the basic questions that blacks have long raised about income inequality."

But the following statements imply that African Americans simply lack the courage to protest the corporate oligarchy.

"We can’t expect our civil rights organizations and political leaders to help blacks rage against the corporate machine when they are part of it."

"[Blacks] are not willing to risk what little they have for change. Those who are wealthier are not willing to risk and lose.”

Perhaps Patton means to suggest that some blacks are sneering at the protests and others are protecting their turf. However, she leaves out another group of blacks like me who are, in fact, firm supporters of OWS. This article, in effect dismisses us, but we are African Americans too.

What magic number of blacks needs to support OWS in order for African Americans to be seen as “embracing” the movement?

The OWS movement is not yet six months old; why are we already declaring that blacks aren’t supporting it?

Or, is this article, like so much that picks at our racial wound, meant to support the 1% by stirring controversy and promoting divisiveness?

Abandoning Prejudgment

We may yet find miracles…a metaphor for the insight that comes with …the abandon of prejudgment, the willingness to see another viewpoint, and be converted, if only for a moment. Patricia Williams

Someone posted an observation in a Face Book discussion, that white privilege was evident in the gentle treatment of the rioters at Pennsylvania State University by the police. The point was that police are never that polite with black demonstrators. Someone else wrote that there were lots of white people in the nonviolent group at Occupy Oakland, yet the police there were quite vicious.

Both of these posts are accurate and may portend a looming miracle.

People of African descent are the traditional, tried and true outcasts of America, and have been for four hundred years. What has changed, in response to persistent pushback, are the artillery used to enforce racism. These weapons have evolved from whips and dogs, to restrictive laws and policies, to this current awkward period where the laws have changed, but the traditional feelings of superiority remain intact for many. Being avowedly racist, sexist and homophobic is no longer publically acceptable, so such outbursts these days are served with an apology. Although some whites are openly hysterical that “white America is an endangered species,” racism meant to maintain white privilege is now a bootleg operation, which means nobody admits to it.

The reason I think a miracle may be looming is that it is the nature of oppressive power to beat back anybody who dares defy the status quo. The students at Penn State were decidedly not questioning the status quo; they were angry that it had changed. Their desire was to maintain the system as it had been and Joe Paterno’s place in it. The protestors in the national Occupy movement are peacefully demanding that business as usual come to a halt, consequently, they are subject to (almost) the same treatment that blacks routinely receive. It was this way in the Sixties as well when white demonstrators against the Vietnam War were beaten and killed as if they were blacks in the civil rights movement. Far fewer whites than blacks, mind you; I did say almost the same. All of us protesting the status quo—black, white, brown, yellow and red—at some point will join forces. That is the looming miracle.

THE HELP, or Comforting Whites

I wasn’t interested in writing about The Help by Kathryn Stockett until the book became all the rage and was made into a movie. I rarely read fiction, but a friend’s book club read it and she loaned me her copy to get my opinion. I enjoyed the quick read, largely because it captured that mixture of devotion and disgust that people have when they clean up after their “betters.” I know this because I’ve been a maid—your devotion is to doing a good job, your disgust is that they actually believe they are better than you.

I assume the book is largely autobiographical, set in the past so Stockett’s Mississippi family and friends wouldn’t be offended. Besides, how could anybody actually write a book about blacks in Mississippi in the 1960s and virtually ignore the civil rights upheavals? Obviously, it was not part of her consciousness. Her brother's black maid sued her so the author has to insist it’s a work of fiction. White families usually don’t have a clue how their black maids feel about them, so it’s clear to me that Stockett listened to some maids, or a maid.

My issue is not with Kathryn Stockett. I am just tired of the same old shit. At age 74 I’ve been watching this black-people-don’t-exist-until-white-people-notice-us for a very long time. When a white person writes about black life, major media and the movie studios suddenly see us. It's Black Like Me all over again. I wrote about actually being a maid in my memoir, The Time and Place That Gave Me Life; nobody cared.

I know why The Help struck a huge responsive chord in America. The popularity of the book and its being so quickly made into a movie is a comforting reminder to Americans of the place black folk should occupy. This reminder is necessary because there's an African American family in the White House and black folks could get the big head and start thinking they are equal to whites. (After President Obama’s election, the first movie about blacks that was wildly popular was Precious. What a hit that was! SIX Academy Award nominations.)

A group of whites didn’t have to get together to decide that The Help is important because the image of faithful black servants is as American as mom, apple pie and the flag. Black folk were kept as slaves four times longer than we’ve been “free.” And for the first hundred years after slavery, most blacks had jobs serving whites; this is the most familiar and therefore most comforting image white Americans have of blacks. As blacks move forward in a quest for full citizenship, this vision of the “good old days” is periodically resurrected to soothe whites. There have been many incarnations of this comforting trope of blacks as servants including Corinna, Corinna, 1994; Driving Miss Daisy, 1989; Imitation of Life, 1959, a remake of the "immortal" 1934 version; the Beulah Show television series, 1950-53; Song of the South, 1946, and the most beloved of all, Gone With the Wind, 1939. As I said, this has been going on for a very long time.

Other than the reassurance it provides, I see no reason to rave about this book/movie once again showing blacks serving whites. Two years after The Help was published, it’s on film. As the presidential campaign revs up next year, it will be up for Academy Awards and the dominant media image will be black servants being used and abused by whites. Ah, so satisfying it almost makes up for having a black man in the White House.