(2 of 2)
That necessity has actually brought black women some of the things for which white feminists are still fighting. Blacks, for instance, have never believed that woman's place is in the home. "I was not raised to be somebody's wife," says the chairman of New York City's Commission on Human Rights, Eleanor Holmes Norton. "I was raised to do something with my life." Since black men are already accustomed to assertive women, she says, blacks have "very much of a head start on egalitarian family life."
An even more important cause of black alienation from Women's Lib may be the distrust, if not outright dislike, of many black women for white females. For one thing, black women are furious with whites for "stealing" their men, as evidenced by the rising total of marriages between black men and white women. Besides, black women see no reason to believe that a society in which white females held positions of power would be any fairer to blacks than a system dominated by white males.
Some blacks charge that white feminists have already shown evidence of unconscious racism. Althea Scott, a Los Angeles radiology technician who tries to work with feminists to "keep a dialogue going," nevertheless demands to know "how a liberated woman can rush to a meeting leaving her black maid at home to look after the children, get there and look around and ask, 'But where are all our black sisters?' " Editor Lewis sees the Women's Lib movement as nothing more than "a family quarrel between white women and white men." She cautions that outsiders who interfere in family disputes "always get shafted when the dust settles."
Not all blacks are hostile to Women's Lib. Some black members of NOW generally agree with Florynce Kennedy's argument that "it's the same gig wherever you are. Whether you're fighting for Women's Liberation or just black liberation, you're fighting the same enemies." The editors of Essence are even more feminist in outlook. "There will be no positive change for any of us," they declared not long ago, "until certain basic institutions of our society are changed. Which is all the more reason why the black woman can ill afford to become the silent woman, content with cooking soul food and making incoherent baby talk at the dinner table in the name of black manhood." Most black women do not take issue with that view. But, like Chicago Poet Gwendolyn Brooks, they do not believe that ardent feminism is the logical alternative. Says Brooks: "Today's black men, at last flamingly assertive and proud, need their black women beside them, not organizing against them."