White Americans Have Been Brainwashed About Race: Lies We Tell Ourselves About Black Women [View all]

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http://www.alternet.org/white-americans-have-been-brainwashed-about-race-lies-we-tell-ourselves-about-black-women



Less discussed, however, but just as important, is the way in which black women too are being pathologized and demeaned, dissed by the same sources as those who have so continually sought to demonize their male counterparts.It isn't new of course: white critiques of the black community have always been nothing if not gender-inclusive. From the days of enslavement, during which black women were de-sexualized as masculine workhorses in the white imagination (even as they were often the object of white male sexual abuse), to the sexist condemnations of so-called matriarchal "ghetto culture" by the Moynihan Report in 1965, black women have hardly been immune to racist caricatures drawn by white folks. For that matter, neither have they escaped criminalization at the hands of law enforcement. Though we don't speak of it as often, it is not solely black men and men of color being targeted by the cops. While their names may be less well known than those of Amadou Diallo, Sean Bell, Oscar Grant, or the recently added names of Crawford, Brown, Garner, Rice, and Akai Gurley, let there be no mistake, Tyisha Miller, Aiyana Jones, Yvette Smith, Rekia Boyd and Kathryn Johnston (among many others) are every bit as dead as they.

But while the knock on black men centers mostly around their presumed propensity for chaotic and nihilistic violence, the attack on black women focuses principally on their unique contribution to the production of such men (and more women like themselves) as breeders of "illegitimate" children---literal incubators of social decay. The trope of black women, especially teenagers, popping out babies they can't afford and with no regard for the presence of men in the home --- and the peddling of this image as normative in the black cultural experience --- is by now so widely-believed as to be a virtual article of faith. And as with the stereotypes of black men that give rise to the vituperative narratives about them, so too does this stereotype of black women rest upon outright falsehood.

The attack on African American women as sexually irresponsible baby mamas has two popular iterations. The first --- and it's one I've addressed before in previous essays --- concerns the commonly-held belief that out-of-wedlock childbearing is out of control in the black community; and the second focuses specifically on the phenomenon of teenage childbearing. Although the latter group of black females are typically part of the first (since most pregnant teenagers are unmarried, regardless of race), the larger group of unmarried black women with children (and the critique of such women) includes those who are older as well.

Looking first at the broader issue of so-called "illegitimate children" in the black community, those who forward this argument simply do not understand how to read or interpret basic statistical information. They claim, for instance that the "out-of-wedlock birth rate" for black females has skyrocketed; but in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, actual birth rates for unmarried black women (which means the number of live births per 1000 such women) has dropped dramatically. From 1970-2010, the birth rate for unmarried black women fell by nearly a third, from 95.5 births per 1000 unmarried black women to only 65.3 births per 1000 such women. In other words, unmarried black women are already doing exactly what conservatives would have them do: namely, having fewer children. This means that even if we were to accept the absurd argument that out-of-wedlock childbearing is evidence of cultural pathology, black culture must then be steadily getting healthier and less pathological, rather than more so. In a given year, for every 100 single black females, between ninety-three and ninety four of them will not have a baby---hardly evidence that out-of-wedlock childbearing is a normative experience for black women.