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A Response to Aduku's
"Feminism"
By Connie
Adukku:
Your comments about the way Black men have
been criminalized because of "zealots" in the DAs
offices is right on. I agree with you that there is no
hint of (even bourgeois) equitability when men are made to pay
for a child that they did not want. The bourgeois ideology
of the "family" leaves childcare and child rearing to
the warped system of private property.
Under a system whereby the working class is
exploited for a wage that is often less than subsistence,
children will never be sufficiently and financially provided
for, no matter how many men are imprisoned or made to pay from
their meager (and even non-existent) wages for the financial
support of a child. (As related to subsistence wages, the
statistics indicate that in America, the average worker has
1-1/2 to 2 jobs.)
I would support the abolition of the
[bourgeois] family, and that children be financially and
socially provided for by a "community." For
children to be provided for in a system such as the [bourgeois]
"nuclear" family is to continue to support mental and
physical child abuse, and that working class children will
continue to live in relative poverty.
The problem is bourgeois private property and
exploitation of wage labor by capital. As long as this
economic system continues, even a [working class]
"community" would be hard pressed to adequately
provide for the emotional and financial needs of children.
I agree that men must be seen as part and
parcel of the process of reproduction of the species. Men
should not be excluded from decision-making as it relates to
that process. On the other hand, your article blames the
victim—blames the women who take advantage of the social
safety net that is called "welfare." I see the
"welfare" system as part and parcel of the
"gains" that have been won by way of working class
struggle in America.
I guess technically the "welfare"
system was a decree by a sitting American president, and has
developed from there. But that decree was a result of
class struggle in the streets.
Another note, the term "Jezebel" is
derogatory to women. Maybe that was your intent, but the
use of the word "Jezebel" in your article is another
example of blaming the victim. Working class women in
America, and elsewhere, should not be denigrated for taking
advantage of what capitalism allows as income to its surplus
population.
Capitalism creates and needs the surplus
population, and that surplus population should be allowed to
take advantage of it—no matter the reason why an individual
has decided to do so. The fact of the matter is that
technological advances allow that the working class need not
work 8-14 (or more) hours several times a week. If the working
day were reduced, the surplus population could be employed.
But capitalism could not continue without the
benefits of a surplus population. As mentioned above, the
reason why this is the case is bourgeois private property and
exploitation of wage labor by capital.
I think that at some instances in your
analysis, you mix class analysis. You start off with what
appears to be an analysis of what is called the "lumpen
proletariat" in that you analyze "welfare"
mothers/recipients, and specifically those women who you say
"hustle" that system. The "lumpen
proletariat" does not consistently have the same interests
as the working class, although very similar.
On the other hand, your analysis does not
deal with the fact that there is more than one
"feminist" movement. There are feminists who
blame men for the problems of women, and see men as the enemy.
There are also feminists that give a class analysis to the
feminist movement, and are critical of the "men are the
problem" escapism of some feminists. (You might be
interested in bell hooks' book, "Feminist Theory: From
Margin to Center."
I don't suggest that you might want to embark
on a study of "feminism," but just mentioning what I
think is a critical analysis, from a fairly consistent working
class perspective, in the "feminist" movement from
someone who was/is an integral part of it. Let me add that
this is the only book by Bell Hooks that I have ever read.
Although I have "heard" her name a time or two, I am
not familiar with her or her "feminist" analysis other
than what I get in the book I have mentioned here.)
I think that the most striking thing about
patriarchy is that it drastically neglects the needs of children
for the sake of control and indoctrination of a social class.
Child rearing is not central in the monogamous family, but
bourgeois socialization is. The raising of the child is
relegated to a monogamous family structure that is inherently
brutal to the psyche of the child, and to the parents.
By brutal, I refer to the way that the child
is treated/seen as property of the patriarch. Control of
the child seems to be the ultimate objective of
"parenting," not the development of a
critical-thinking individual. "Do as you are
told" is considered a standard in "parenting."
This lends itself to a society wherein workers are expected to
participate in production/society without questioning
exploitation or oppression. A complacent/obedient work
force lends itself to structural capitalism.
Your article highlights just how damaging
patriarchal monogamy is to raising children -- the issue of
reproductive legislation is presented by you as one of them
(women) against us (men). This "them/us"
presentation is most blatantly expressed in your depiction of
mothers who scapegoat fathers as "Jezebels."
Now, I know that the "technical" meaning of
"jezebel" is "a woman who is evil and
scheming," but the societal connotations of a
"jezebel" come from the Bible, that claimed that
"Jezebel" was promiscuous—idolotrous—and
unfaithful. I believe that as scientists, we should try
hard to stay away from name-calling.
Your comments about the "economy"
of women using the/a welfare system instead of seeking work
lacks statistical information. Are you saying that your
research indicates that women who receive welfare are largely
unskilled? If so, what does that have to do with the
economy of staying on welfare as opposed to seeking employment?
I have not taken a survey, but my observations are that a large
percentage of welfare recipients work, as well as receive
welfare.
Statistically, the welfare check has never
been seen as adequate for existence in the U.S. economy.
Subsidized housing is much more sought after by poor and working
class women than is the welfare check. (As an aside,
subsidized housing is not the purview of welfare recipients.)
In other industrialized countries, the "welfare"
system is seen as the product of the working class struggle, as
a "safety net," if you will, for workers that are
unemployed. These countries – like France, Germany,
Sweden – present the "welfare" system as part and
parcel of the gains of the working class struggle.
Only in America do we view the
"welfare" system as something derogatory to the
working class mother or father who is taking advantage of it.
The "welfare" system in this country is as much a part
of the gains of the American working class as is the 8-hour
day!! The system was formerly named "AFDC" –
Aid To Families With Dependent Children – and was seen as part
of what working class taxes paid for as a "safety net"
for the unemployed and underemployed.
When you get the chance, if at all, I would
welcome any comments you could make to mine above.
la luta continua,
connie
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African Revolutions
By
Mukoma wa Ngugi
Her womb pressed against the desert to
bear the parasite
that eats her insides like termites
drill into dry wood.
He is born into an empty bowl, fist
choking umbilical cord.
She dies sighing, child son at last. He
couldn't have known,
instinct told him - always raise your
arm in defense of your
own -Strike! Strike until they are all
dead! Egg shells
in your hands milk bottle held between
your toes,
you have been anointed twice, you strong
enough to kill
at birth and survive. You will want to
name the world
after yourself but you will have no
name- a collage of dead
roots, tongues and other things. You
will point your sword
to the center of the earth, duel the
world to split into perfect
mirrors after your imperfect mutations
but you will be
too weak having latched your self onto
too many streams
straddling too many continents, pulling
patches of a self
as one does fruits from an from an
orchard, building a home
of planks with many faces. How does one
look into a mirror
with a face that washes clean every
rainy season?
He has an identity for every occasion -
here he is Lenin
there Jesus and yesterday Marx -
inflexible truths inherited
without roots. To be nothing to remain
nothing, to kill
at birth - such love can only drink from
our wrists. We
storming from our past to Jo'Burg eating
wisdom of others
building homes made of our grandparent's
bones. We
gathering momentum that eats out of our
earth, We standing
pens and bullets hurled at you, your
enemies. Comrade, there
are many ways to die. A dog dies never
having known
why it lived but a free death belongs to
a life lived in roots,
roots not afraid of growing where they
stand, roots tapped all over
the earth. Comrade,
for a tree to grow, it must first own
its earth.
Source:
Zeleza |
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The Slave Ship
By Marcus Rediker
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Wild Women Don’t Have the
Blues
By Ida Cox
I hear these women raving 'bout their
monkey men
About their fighting husbands and their
no good friends
These poor women sit around all day and
moan
Wondering why their wandering papas
don't come home
But wild women don't worry, wild women
don't have the blues.
Now when you've got a man, don't ever be
on the square
'Cause if you do he'll have a woman
everywhere
I never was known to treat no one man
right
I keep 'em working hard both day and
night
because wild women don't worry, wild
women don't have no blues.
I've got a disposition and a way of my
own
When my man starts kicking I let him
find another home
I get full of good liquor, walk the
streets all night
Go home and put my man out if he don't
act right
Wild women don't worry, wild women don't
have no blues
You never get nothing by being an angel
child
You better change your ways and get real
wild
I wanna tell you something, I wouldn't
tell you no lie
Wild women are the only kind that ever
get by
Wild women don't worry, wild women don't
have no blues.
Born
Ida
Prather,25 February 1896 in Toccoa,
Habersham County, Georgia, United
States. Died 10 November 1967 (aged 71)
Genres Jazz, Blues Instruments Vocalist. |
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Hunger for a Black President /
Introduction I Write What I Like Biko
Biosketch Biko
Speaks on Africans
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The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly |
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Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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If you like this page consider making a donation
* * * * *
Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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ChickenBones Store
(Books, DVDs, Music, and more)
update
8 January 2012
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