2. bell hooks
Her real name is Gloria Jean
Watkins, but she is better known by
her pen name bell hooks
(intentionally uncapitalized). She is
an American leftist
author, feminist, postmodern
political thinker and cultural critic.
Her writing has focused on;
• interconnectivity of race
• capitalism
• gender
• systems of oppression and
• class domination
hooks has addressed race, class, and gender in
education, art, history, sexuality, mass media and feminism, primarily
through a postmodern perspective.
3. Contents
One
Sexism and the Black Female Slave Experience
Two
Continued Devaluation of Black Womanhood
Three
The Imperialism of Patriarchy
Four
Racism and Feminism: The Issue of Accountability
Five
Black Women and Feminism
4. Ain’t I a Woman Black Women and Feminism examines;
• the impact of sexism on black woman during slavery,
• the historic devaluation of black womanhood,
• black male sexism,
• the marginalization of black women,
• racism within the recent women‟s movement and,
• black women‟s involvement with feminism
It is widely considered as a response to the literature, which
spoke to and about white middle-class women and largely
ignored black and minority women of lower socioeconomic
backgrounds.
5. • sexism seems as important as racism as an
oppressive force
• sexism and racism together caused black
women having the lowest status and worst
conditions of any group in American society
• black women are all but ignored
• feminism is (should be) a movement to end
sexism, sexist exploitation and oppression
• scholars deliberately minimize the black female
slave experience
6. The source of sexism;
• white colonizers from Europe brought sexism
from their homelands to colonized lands
• a black woman slave was usually cheaper
than a black man slave on the slave market
• planters recognized an economic profit in
having black women slaves on purpose of
slave breeding
• black women‟s perfect obedience made
them an ideal subject for slavery
7. tortures were the initial stages of an introduction
process that would transform the African free
human being into a slave. An important part of
the slavers‟ mission was transform African people
into passive, quiet workers. According to white
slave owners and traders point of view in order to
show proper slave behaviors Africans should be
tortured. Slavers define these tortures as taming.
Here taming means turning African people into
domestic animals
8. • to prepare Africans for the slave market, traders
first remove their names and status and then
slaves from different parts of Africa were put in
same groups so they couldn‟t communicate
with the others without a common language.
• when they landed, they were ready to do
whatever their white masters ordered because
they want to survive.
9. Black men were dehumanized solely as a result of
not being able to be patriarchs implies that the
subjugation of black women was essential to the
black male‟s development of a positive self-
concept. This idea only served to support a sexist
social order. (p.20)
10. • white slave traders didn‟t give any harm to the
masculinity of black men
• they could have physically castrated all black
men aboard slave ships, but they didn‟t (p.21)
• but black women were forced to assume a
“masculine” role
• Institutionalized sexism was a social system that
protected male sexuality and it socially legitimized
sexual exploitation of black females
11. • the political aim of categorical rape of black
women by white males was to obtain absolute
obedience to the white imperialistic order
• The brutal treatment of enslaved black women
by white men a direct consequence of
misogynist attitudes toward women that
prevailed in American society
• the Salem Witchcraft trials were a message to all
women that unless they remained within
passive, subordinate roles they would be
punished, even put to death
12. • colonial white men expressed their fear and
hatred of women-hood by institutionalizing sexist
discrimination and sexist oppression
• after the 19th century the shift away from the
image of white women as sinful and sexual to that
of white women as virtuous lady (mother and
helpmeet) occurred at the same time as mass
sexual exploitation of enslaved black women
• they were naturally seen as the embodiment of
female evil and sexual lust
13. • contemporary sexist scholars minimize the impact
of sexual exploitation of black women on the black
female psyche and argue that white men used the
rape of black women to further emasculate black
men
• breeding was oppressive to all fertile black slave
women
• sex roles in black slave subculture mirrored those of
white America.
Cooking, cleaning, nursing, washing up, mending
the clothes and even minor farm work were seen
as women work.
14. • in the second chapter the writer discusses the
social and political impact of sexual exploitation of
black women during the slavery period
• sexual exploitation and sexism against black
women is still valid
• predominant image of black women is that of the
“fallen” woman, the slut, the whore, the prostitute
• white men continued to sexually assault black
women long after slavery ended
15. According to hooks, in terms of power, it goes something like
this:
1. White men: can oppress all of the following.
2 – 3 White women - Black men: Black men are oppressed
by white men, but can in turn oppress black women. They
can also oppress white women through gender, though it
might be tricky. Rather, this is the most accepted form of
interracial marriage. White women can be oppressed by
white men, but they can also oppress black women, and
may be even more ruthless doing so, to enact a power they
would not be able to yield otherwise.
4. Black women: Can be oppressed by all the above.
Their experiences are largely ignored by both the feminist
and the racial equality movements, erasing their history and
negating their existence.
16. Most Americans, including black
people, acknowledge and accept this hierarchy;
they have internalized it either consciously or
unconsciously. And for this reason, all through
American history, black male rape of white
women has attracted much more attention and
is seen as much more significant than rape of
black women by either white or black men (p.53)
17. • many black women attempted to shift the focus of
attention away from sexuality by emphasizing their
commitment to motherhood
• white male slave-owners created a body of myths to
discredit the contributions of black females
• even black women see themselves through these
negative myths and stereotypes
• the term „matriarchs‟ is no way accurately described the
social status of black women in America. No matriarchy
has ever existed in the United States
• as a consequence of all these facts mass sexual
exploitation of enslaved black women was a direct
consequence of the anti-women sexual politics of colonial
patriarchal America
