Still the WOMAN

Still the WOMAN....

“Two things everybody's got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin' fuh theyselves.”
                                              ― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

I grew up Catholic, and I never thought very much about the very distinct ways that gender roles were ‘acted’ out until I was about seven years old.  Every Saturday I attended Catechism classes, and every teacher I had was a woman, if not a nun. I questioned why the only time I saw the sisters was on Saturdays, but other than that they were virtually invisible.  The only time we ever saw our parish priest was if we were required to go to confession, but I noticed just like many traditional households, the women seemed to do all the work, but the men got the ‘special’ treatment.  They (the priests) received substantial monetary gifts from the more affluent parish members during the holidays, people cooked meals for them, and there often invited into the homes of those in our church community, but our sisters, the nuns, never received such treatment.  I can remember Sundays where collections were taken up for the abbesses three times because people would not give.  Such occurrences were commonplace back then; as a child, I was unable to deduce what these things meant.  Surely, these things could not be a reflection of the character of the nuns I knew.  For the most part, they were kind gracious women who worked very hard to make sure that the over 100 plus children in our parish had what we needed week in and week out.  I didn’t get my first male teacher for catechism until I was about to make my confirmation.

Much like  my church community’s implied gender roles, my grandmother was the one who kept our house running smoothly; she worked all day as a domestic and came home and cooked, cleaned and took care of her family. No matter how late my grandfather came home, she would get out of bed, heat his food, fix his plate, and place it before him, yet I had never seen my grandmother given the same treatment ever.  More importantly, even as a child, I knew there was something that did not seem right about the expectation that my grandmother should have to get up no matter what time it was to fix dinner when her husband missed dinner with the family because he did not come home after work.  Perhaps this was part of what Daniel Moynihan  would justify as “ just making Black men the Lords of their castles, so everything would be all right.”[1]

The last few weeks of class have dealt specifically with the issues that have persisted in the African American community for over one hundred years, if not more, but there are two things that people never seem to talk about without placing blame or listening objectively, and that is matters dealing with gender-oppression in the African American church and the break down in relationships between Black men and women.  Gender-oppression in African American churches is so prevalent and such a customary practice that no one seems to notice it or see it as problematic at all in fact, in many instances the Bible has been used in order to justify the woman’s role or lack thereof in the church.  What is imperative for us to realize is that gender oppression is no different than the racial oppression or “othering” that bell hooks talks about in her essays.  Oppression-whether it be racially motivated or dictated by gender, is a threat to one’s humanity. Gender and racial oppression are birthed of the same system of white patriarchal domination.

When I moved away from home for my undergraduate studies, I visited several Black churches in the city. I can recall having many talks with my roommate about the importance of aesthetics as part of the ritual for the Black church on Sundays, particularly on holidays such as Easter, Christmas, and Mother’s Day.  I understood that for many Black folks, Sundays were a transformative time where African Americans were actually seen; the imago dei was recognized within them and in that sacred space they became people who mattered and were not judged based on skin color or their profession.  It was also a place where African American men were able to secure patriarchal privilege denied to them elsewhere.[2]

But, the church also became a place where they were given dominance over women that some felt they had been denied in society and in their own homes.[3] It was amazing to me how sermons were preached that stated that the man was emphatically the “head of the household” and many pastors suggested that the reason many of the women in the congregation were not married was because they would not let men be men.  Such attitudes feed into the notion that all women are cookie cutter carbon copies of one another who share all the same ideals and values because all women value the same things.  The women who do not fall into this ‘norm’ are labeled antimen and antifamily if they choose lifestyles that do not include marriage and children.[4]  Are such views and beliefs fair and do they foster spiritual growth of women and men in faith communities when such attitudes are perpetuated? In many of these same communities, “the call” is something that is considered off limits to women;  “the call” is seen as something reserved strictly for men, black women preachers are sharply and persistently questioned.  Sometimes it is implied that a sincere “call” has by definition, a detrimental effect on the black woman preacher’s sexuality. [5]  Essentially what is viewed as a gift or blessing from God when received by a man, is questioned as being authentic in regards to women.  Are we not all made in the image of God?  So, as an extension of His personhood, why wouldn’t women be called to preach?  Essentially such beliefs that women have no place in the pulpit, in essence says that God only delivers His word through men and only calls men to be His vessels.

Interestingly enough, I attended a church where a young man said that he was called to preach and the pastor and community were very supportive during the time that this man was to be ordained.  Never once was it mentioned that this man had been living with his girlfriend for three or more years; however, when one of the women in our congregation who was a part of the leadership team and board of elders was questioned about whether see was practicing abstinence in her relationship with another church member she was dating and she confessed that they had not been, the pastor condemned her in a sermon. While he never uttered her name, the congregants knew whom he was referring to.  What does this say about the moral fiber of the church and how it reflects our everyday lives and beliefs in regards to the sexes?   My intent is not to bastardize the church or condemn it as if it does no good, but until we can look at gender inequality as a problem in the church, particularly, the Black church, there will continue to be a gap in the camaraderie of the men and women and we will all continue to be victims of a system that was designed to divide us.

Part of the healing that needs to take place in the African American community is that men and women need to see that we are victims of the same system of oppression and that if one of is oppressed, it impacts us all.  I think this is what bell hooks communicated very well in her essays.  Othering is not just about gender and race; it is about control.  It is a way of ensuring that those who are in control, stay in control even if that means pitting African American men and women against each other through the patriarchal system constructed by whites for whites; in the, Black men still are not seen as men and Black women are not acknowledged at all.

  As I read about hooks’ encounter with the young white jocks who walked down the sidewalk talking about their plans to fuck as many girls from other racial/ethnic group as they could “catch’ before graduation… with Black girls were high on the list[6] , I realized it was no different than the preacher in the scenario in Dr. Riggs’ book where the pastor who has just asked for deliverance for sexual immorality has a conversation with another man of the cloth who asks, “Who was that woman with those big breast who was sitting on the third aisle to my left?...Damn, she kept shouting and jiggling so much I almost lost my concentration.”[7] In this case, the pastor agrees to try to hook the “Revrun” up with this woman.  Both of these scenarios seek to exploit women, just in different manners, but for virtually the same reasons.  It is this type of patriarchal privilege that has “control of women” as its core value, and this value cannot exist in the same context in which justice is a core value without creating a context that breeds moral corruption.[8]

As a community, we must evaluate the lenses through which we view each other and ask if we see that person first and foremost in the image of God, and acknowledge that each person is unique because they are a creation of God regardless of their sex or race.  Lastly, I would like to pose a scenario that I have talked about with our professor, Dr. Floyd-Thomas.   What would happen if women stopped going to church?  What would happen if they decided not to tithe or requested their husbands not tithe, if they didn’t sing in the choir, conduct Sunday school, preside over the nursery during service, not help with the Lord’s Supper on 1^st Sunday, and refused to spearhead any of the bereavement committees or cook meals for the church?  Imagine…perhaps women should stand in solidarity all over the country one Sunday and boycott their church service.  I think perhaps then gender roles would be viewed a little differently. 

I would like to do much research of the prevalence of existing gender-oppressive attitudes in today’s society within the Divinity School.  I don’t think such attitudes will change until people are willing to see and admit that there is a problem.  More importantly, I would like to see how many women support the gender restrictive roles in the church because many of the women in the scenarios we read about were complicit in the behavior of the men in their respective churches or were accepting of the status quo.   I think the attitudes of women and men need to be transformed in order for any true changes to take place.

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[1] Marcia Y. Riggs, Plenty Good Room, (Eugene:  Wipf &Stock, 2003), 41.

[2] Marcia Y. Riggs, Plenty Good Room, (Eugene:  Wipf &Stock, 2003), 80.

[3] Marcia Y. Riggs, Plenty Good Room, (Eugene:  Wipf &Stock, 2003), 80.

[4] Marcia Y. Riggs, Plenty Good Room, (Eugene:  Wipf &Stock, 2003), 53.

[5] Marcia Y. Riggs, Plenty Good Room, (Eugene:  Wipf &Stock, 2003), 82.

[6] Bell hooks, Eating the Other, 23.

[7] Marcia Y. Riggs, Plenty Good Room, (Eugene:  Wipf &Stock, 2003), 74.

[8] Marcia Y. Riggs, Plenty Good Room, (Eugene:  Wipf &Stock, 2003), 86.

Allen West Attacks NAACP and Media After George Zimmerman Not Guilty Ver...

James Baldwin on Malcolm X (1 of 3)

The Politics Behind the Politics of Being a Black Man

            The Politics Behind the Politics of Being a Black Man

“The country shouldn’t be worried about the Muslim movement-that’s not the problem. The problem is the conditions that breed the Muslim movement”-James Baldwin

I became familiar with former Lt. Colonel Allen West during the 2012 Presidential campaign between President Obama and Mitt Romney after reading some of his garrulous comments predicting that President Obama would lose to any “GOP presidential candidate” and hailed Newt Gingrich as “the smartest person out there” in terms of the GOP presidential hopefuls.[1]   More perplexing for me was West’s assertion that Mitt Romney had some serious “work to do” before he could be considered a “true conservative”.[2]  I must admit that I am always perplexed by some of the beliefs expressed by African American Republicans given the party’s history of vilifying people of color as lazy, welfare recipients who live off social support.

Perhaps, Allen West considers himself an exception to the rule. West for example addressed the United States Congress for Black History month to celebrate the history of Blacks in the Republican Party and praised the party for their long devotion to equality and freedom of all Americans. Interestingly enough, West glosses over the changing ideologies of not only the Republican Party, but also the Democratic Party as well and the racial makeup.  After all, the African American Republican Congressman Josiah Walls (who served in Florida) that West regards as his inspiration served in 1876; it only took the Republicans 134 years to elect another Black man-Allen West to that position-a minor detail Colonel West seemed oblivious to. Before I go any further, let me be clear, this is not about politics, but for me it is an analysis of the roles of Black men in America, and the fact that West fails to see him as good nigger that is merely stomachable in the eyes of white America.I will address Allen West again later. 

As I finished reading Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son, I thought about the relevancy of the collection of essays as they were written in almost sixty years ago, and I concluded that the state of the African American, particularly the African American male has in fact not changed and James Baldwin’s writing are just as telling and important today as they were in 1955.  Life for the Black man has not changed very much at all.  They are still bound, first without, then within, by the nature of their categorization.  And escape is not effected through a bitter railing against this trap; it is as though this very striving were the only motion needed to spring the trap upon them (us).[3] In other words, regardless of how African American man strives to be seen as human and American, in essence he will only be seen pejoratively and within the box that society has placed him which labels him as nothing more than inferior and a nigger, which are labels that have been constructed by America.  After all, the nigger is an American creation, and sooner than later, every black person is slapped with the bitter reality that “black is a terrible color with which to be born into the world.[4]

When I entered the sixth grade, I was sent to a middle school outside my neighborhood.  My mother wanted me to attend a magnet school, and since there were none in our area, I was bused in.  The junior high school I attended was located in Bellaire, which is a very affluent, white neighborhood. The resources available in this school compared to the school in my neighborhood were worlds apart. During this time, I learned very quickly that the cliché “boys will boys”, was a double entendre; it meant something totally different for white boys than it did for black boys in our school. There was a different set of rules that governed the white boys than the African American boys.  When the white students engaged in obnoxious pranks such as hiding people’s clothes in the locker room, hiding the teacher’s chalk, rigging the water fountains to spray people or purposely colliding into people in the, it was all seen as good natured fun.  For the young men who were Black, there was a different set of rules.  For the smallest infractions they were written up and sent to the office or given detention. Even the intellectual capacity of the African American males is discredited, as they are only judge punitively. These young men the difference in the way they are treated.  The Black boy was never given the status of being a boy but rather was treated a man who was a menace that the school system sought to vilify.   It is this type unfair treatment and sense of inferiority that causes “the black man in our midst to carry murder in their heart, to want vengeance.[5]                        

Ironically, I saw the same thing when I taught high school.  The inequality in the distribution of misdemeanor tickets to African American young for things such as swearing, fighting, and insubordination compared to other ethnic groups was startling. In addition, African American males were disproportionately placed in alternative schools, which were run much like a correctional facility that never sought to rehabilitate the students, but sought to institutionalize them and prepare them for the penal system- a penal system that in many ways parallels slavery as it is still a way to strip African American males of their identity and their freedom.

So, this brings me back to Allen West.  Allen West is a former military Lieutenant Colonel who believes in the idea of each man working hard to pull himself up by his bootstraps to be successful in what he considers a very leveled playing field.  West asserts and believes we live in a post racial America and that the issue of racism being a problem in America are ploys of the Democratic Party and our first ever African American President Barack Obama.  West has gone through great pains to show his disdain and disapproval of President Obama with such fervor, when I was watching some of his speeches from Fox News, it was hard to believe he was African American, but as I watched the videos, I felt pity for him because I was reminded of Baldwin’s words about the education of the Black man to survive in our society that which is a great part of the of the American Negro’s education that he must make people “like” him.[6] Surely, West takes this sentiment to heart as he seeks to create a space for his "white" privilege at any cost, even the cost of other Black folks.

West would refute Baldwin’s assertion that “there isn’t a Negro alive that has not felt, briefly or for long periods of time with anguish sharp or dull, in varying degrees and to varying effect, simple naked and unanswerable hatred; who has not wanted to smash any white face he may encounter in a day…”[7]  But how can any Black person in America deny a certain cognitive dissonance they experienced under the sheer burden and weight that comes with being a person of color in America?  As a descendant of slaves in America, perhaps he has not realized that “no American can escape having an attitude toward Negroes.”[8] More disturbing for me was the posture he took after the controversial verdict in the Trayvon Martin case.  West stated the following:

“I don’t recall being followed in malls or shopping centers. I don’t recall car doors clicking locked when I walked across the street, And I definitely have not had women clutching their handbags and purses when I got on the elevator. I believe it comes back to being a respectful young man and maybe that’s something that was missing out of President Obama and Trayvon Martin’s life. But to try to play this and u try to make it a personal experience, this was just absolutely horrific.”[9]

Ultimately, Allen West blames Trayvon’s manner of dress and his lack of respect-things that are inferred to be characteristics of Black male-for his demise.  Therefore, Martin's crime was his failure to make himself a mirror image of the "normative gaze" that makes him palatable.Tragic indeed. While West takes a defensive posture in his assessment of President Obama attempting as an African American man to give a voice to the millions of Black men and boys everywhere who profiled, imprisoned, and murder for the color of their skin, it is cause for great concern that Allen West would refute the authenticity of the Black male experience by attributing the murder of a young man to a matter of being “respectful” and dress.  In that moment, I realized that West has separated himself from being Black and only considers himself an American, but this too is a falsehood.  True enough he is an American, but he is an American who was first a slave whose “past with taken from him with one stroke of the auctioneer’s pen on the bill of sale.”[10]  Regardless of how conservative or ‘white’ winged West is,  by and large he is still viewed as a second class American citizen by America, and to me people with the type of beliefs that Allen West espouses are dangerous because he professes white supremacist beliefs, but he is not white.

More importantly, what West fails to realize is that he may be American, and hold conservative American values, but “the idea of white supremacy rests simply on the fact that white men are creators of civilization...and that it is impossible for Americans to accept the Black man as one of themselves, for to do so would jeopardize the status of white men.”[11] Sadly, this is the lesson that Lt. Colonel West seems to have missed.  Since the beginning of African’s time on this continent there have been those who considered themselves one and the same as “massa”, and massa sees this and does not correct it as long as it is to his benefit because he know this slave will be more loyal to him, than his own.  While it may seem that I am being extreme, I have gone out and watched several clips of West where white conservative sing his praises for being well spoken, clean cut, a good American and educated-for a nigger (which is the part they leave off).  All the comments I read on West’s clips were most written by white conservative who sung his praise and lamented that he had not run for president in lieu of Barack Obama.  I guess the pain of having an African American president would not be so unbearable if the person this the way you do.  Sadly, even the white people who sing his praises, refer to him as a “good nigger” in their you tube post. 

So, I wonder what it is like for African American men like West who do not think with the “double consciousness” that most of us have been programmed to think with.  Is he more of a danger to other Black people because he is using his voice in a manner that does not relief the ideologies of his people or will he do more damage to himself when he realizes he will never just be seen as an American? Maybe Black Americans will see him as a white man in Black face.

I would like to interview West, Clarence Thomas, and Herman Cain to get their definition of what it mean to be a Black man in America and if they think their experience is any different that than of white males. It would be interesting to see how forth coming they would be.

In the meantime, I hope and pray that the veil will be lifted from the eyes of Allen Wests of the world because we don’t live in a post racial America, things are not equitable, and skin color does matter.  These are all problems that existed before we had an African American President, but they seem to be more prevalent now than ever.  And so I wonder what Baldwin would say about the state of affairs in America and our “Negro” leaders.  Would he be surprised that his prophetic words as just as relevant today as they were when he wrote.  I am guessing he wouldn’t be surprised at all, only saddened.

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[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/10/allen-west-obama-will-los_n_1197168.html

[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/10/allen-west-obama-will-los_n_1197168.html

[3] James Baldwin Notes of a Native Son (Boston:  Beacon Press, 1955), 20. 

[4] James Baldwin Notes of a Native Son (Boston:  Beacon Press, 1955), 30.

[5] James Baldwin Notes of a Native Son (Boston:  Beacon Press, 1955), 28.

[6] James Baldwin Notes of a Native Son (Boston:  Beacon Press, 1955), 161. 

[7] James Baldwin Notes of a Native Son (Boston:  Beacon Press, 1955), 38. 

[8] James Baldwin Notes of a Native Son (Boston:  Beacon Press, 1955), 170.

[9] http://www.blackyouthproject.com/2013/07/allen-west-attacks-obamas-speech-says-hes-never-been-racially-profiled/

[10] James Baldwin Notes of a Native Son (Boston:  Beacon Press, 1955), 169. 

[11] James Baldwin Notes of a Native Son (Boston:  Beacon Press, 1955), 172.

TV One Unsung: Minnie Riperton and Breast Cancer

I wanted to write about Minnie Riperton's story as it pertains to Black women and their bodies.  Please view the clip to see how her record company commodified her when was diagnosed with cancer.

The African American Woman's Burden

The African American Woman’s Burden

 Old Mr._______ talkin’ trash ‘bout Shug…folks don’t like people being too free.-Celie, from “The Color Purple”

Being in the Divinity School has made me think about my gender more than I have in a very long time because it is mentioned so frequently. We are reminded of gender inclusion and gender neutrality rather consistently but as a Black woman, gender has a different connotation.   Growing up, gender was a constant issue for me because it seemed to be an albatross around my neck.  Everything I wanted to do like climb trees, ride around the neighborhood on my bike, shoot cap guns, and jump off the roof of my grandmother’s house was always prohibited because I was a girl.  Don’t get me wrong, I loved playing with dolls and dressing up in my mother’s and grandmother’s clothes and shoes, sneaking in their makeup collections, and playing with nail polishes as well, but I always felt that the things I did want to do should be dictated by what I felt like doing, that which I felt would be liberating, not my gender.  I just wanted to BE and DO without any restrictions, much like my boy cousins, but my adventures were usually relegated to the porch and front yard because it was not considered proper for a young lady to be running around with a lot of boys.

  One of the first lessons I learned when I reached puberty was that there was a separate set of rules for Black women than there was for white women. White women seemed to fight for the desire to have an individualized identity outside that of being wife or mother, but Black women fought to be acknowledged at all.  I distinctly remember being told, “Black women don’t have the luxury to do what they want to do, they do what they have to do”, many times just to stay alive.  From close observation of my mother and grandmother, I learned that being an African American woman came with an unspoken amount of responsibility to their families, employers, society and the community in which they live. Much like the African American women Canon addressed in Black Womanist Ethics, this often resulted in them putting themselves last, void of affirmation, self-care and self- love.  Because of hundreds of years of exploitation, abuse, and the silencing of Black women’s voices, it is important that African American women love and affirm themselves uncompromisingly as a manner of justice for themselves that they have been denied far too long.

For as long as I can remember, storytelling has been a part of my heritage.  My grandmother told me stories about growing up in the south, being Black in the south, a woman in the south, and about losing her mother at a very young age-an event that would change the course of her life forever.  When her mother died, she was forced to quit school to take car of her father and her siblings.  Although her mother’s dying wish has been that her children, specifically her girls get an education, my great grandfather did not honor this request because educating women was not valued.  I believe one of the greatest misfortunes in life is for a Black woman to grow up without a mother because when there is no one else in the world or even in one’s household to valid them and love them, a mother will be there to do it, passing on what ever knowledge and lessons she learned in life that will help being a woman of color just a little easier. So those stories that were passed seemed to be the canons that governed generations of my family because there was no formal education, but those stories were full of wisdom and love.

One of the first stories my grandmother told me was the story about the death of her mother.  It was something that always had a profound affect on her.   In 1936, her mother died because of the negligence of her white physician who gave her the wrong shot.  My grandmother remember rather vividly the agony her mother went through as her arm began to swell and turn blue as they waited for her to die.  Even more heartbreaking was the fact that nothing happened to the doctor because my great grandmother was Black. Years, later my mother and I found the death certificate online and it clearly indicates that the doctor was at fault, but I guess it goes back to the sentiment that America has had about African American women since slavery, black women were not counted and consider as human beings at all.[1]

The notion that the lives of Black women are the most unloved and devalued human being in society has been a hard pill to swallow.  As I read Dr. Cannon’s book, I realized not much has changed in the way in which society views us.  Even in 2013 we are viewed as overly sexual beings that crave sex inordinately.[2] This is seen in the portrayal of us in TV shows, music videos, and in various forms of media. If we are not overly sexualized we are ridiculed and made fun of in the forms of stereotypes like Madea, Big Momma, and Rasputia, who are portrayed by men, which also plays into the idea that we are either overtly sexualize or genderless.  We are constantly reduced to being defined by our bodies, and nothing else.  Even my great grandmother was reduced to just being a black body, nothing more than a body to be experimented and operated upon, for the purposes of ‘medical education’ and the interest of medical science.[3]

More heartbreaking is that when Black women do rise above the self-hatred they have been indoctrinated with in the form of systematic rape, being seen only as domestics or field hands,[4] and have the moxie to love themselves and understand unapologetically that every life is a reflection of the divinity, the world both Black and white seek to destroy her.

I really thought about this a lot after reading about Zora Neale Hurston and watching The Color Purple.  It wasn’t just white men and women who felt threatened by Hurston’s “free spirit” and self possession, it was Black men as well.  They sought to destroy what was the very essence of who she was:  her ability to tell her story and the story of other women just like her.  The same held true for Sofia in The Color Purple.  Sofia was bold, self-possessed, audacious, and above all she loved herself unapologetically, and because of this her husband sought to “knock” her into what he felt was a woman’s place, which was any position that was not equivalent to his, and because she dared to yield to the role of maid for the mayor’s wife Mrs. Millie, she consumed by a system much akin to slavery.  I also thought about this in terms of Shug Avery, whose behavior was seen so unbecoming to that of a woman’s, she was seen as being somewhat manly.

As I reflect on all that we’ve read, I keep coming back to the question:  who gets to determine how I get to define myself as a Black woman in this day and age and why?  Why must I be defined by others perceptions of who I am?  Even in the academy, I am a ghost who wanders down the halls who is as virtually invisible to my white counterparts as I am to some of my Black male counterparts who feel that ministry (although I don’t want to go into ministry) is “man business”. Or constantly trying to get those who have “othered” me to understand where I am coming from as an African American woman, so I won’t be labeled as an ABW-Angry Black Woman when I am reduced to being nothing more than my wild hair or tattoos as if those are the things that allowed me to be admitted to Vanderbilt.  Or the numerous times when I have been subjected to a bad joke about twerking or asked about twerking because I am assumed to be an expert.   What has been painfully clear is that there are millions of women, some in the Divinity School who go through the same thing I go through or worse, so why are we silent about it?  Why do we not look to seek refuge in each other more than we do, instead of bearing this burden invisibly through a myriad of emotional pain?  

I think that I too have bought into the myth of the strong Black woman and what that entails, but what I have learned is that in a sense it takes away our humanness, which is something we can’t afford to give away because we have so little left.  I have often thought about my role as an educator in an urban high school in Houston, TX where there weren’t many Black women in the classroom and there were so many faces that looked like mine who needed someone to restore, if not give them the dignity they never possessed and I fully understood that my role was not just to teach or get a check, my job was to uplift the black community.[5] 

Now that I am in the academy, I see that I too am looking to those who look like me to help me navigate my way through this process, which operates in the same manner that the world operates towards Black women. I think about people like Dr. Cannon who did not have a support system while she pursued her Masters and PhD.  It is a tedious process, and at times, I wonder if I will make it out sane.  I would like to do a study on Black women and the academy and the how it impacts their physical and mental health, and how they deal with other African American women who come behind them.

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[1] Katie G. Cannon, Black Womanist Ethics  (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 1988),31.

[2] Katie G. Cannon, Black Womanist Ethics  (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 1988),37.

[3] Hortense Spillers, Black, White, and in Color: Essays on American Literature and Culture  (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 208.

[4] Katie G. Cannon, Black Womanist Ethics  (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 1988),46.

[5] Katie G. Cannon, Black Womanist Ethics  (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 1988),48.

Bob Marley - Get Up Stand Up Live In Dortmund, Germany