ABSTRACT
In the first book I wrote and published more than twenty years ago, Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, I included a chapter entitled “Continued Devaluation of Black Womanhood,” in which I declared that “a devaluation of black womanhood occurred as a result of the sexual exploitation of black women during slavery that has not altered in the course of hundreds of years.” Emphasizing the reality that unenlightened black females often embrace stereotypes that depict us as strong matriarchs I contended: “Once black women are deluded and imagine that we have power we don't really possess, the possibility that we might organize collectively to fight against sexist-racist oppression is reduced.” At the time of this early feminist writing, I interviewed a black woman usually employed as a clerk who was living in near poverty, yet she continually emphasized the fact that the black woman was “matriarchal, powerful, in control of her life.” Actually, she was on the edge of a nervous breakdown, daily struggling 82just to make ends meet. I wrote then: “Without a doubt, the false sense of power Black women are encouraged to feel allows us to think that we are not in need of social movements that would liberate us from sexist oppression.” Since I first wrote these words individual and collective groups of black women have struggled to be self-defining, to invent identities for ourselves that are acts of resistance challenging negative stereotypes—those racialized sexist projections imposed upon us—while simultaneously working to create foundations for self-actualization and self-determination.
