"Black Women and the Struggle for Liberation" Page: 4 of 6
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feelings and desires, especially when it comes to the right to having control of
her own body.
When the birth control pill was first put into use, it was experimentally
tested on Puerto Rican women. It is therefore not surprising that Third World
people look at this example and declare that both birth control and abortion is
a form of genocide - a device to eliminate Third World people.
However, what is at issue is the right of women to control their own bodies.
Enforced motherhood is a form of male supremacy. During slavery, the plantation
masters forced motherhood on Black women in order to enrich their plantations
with more human labor.
It is the women who must decide whether they wish to have children or not.
Women must have the right to control their own bodies. And this means that we
must also speak out against forced sterilization and against contraceptive
methods against their will.
There is now a women's liberation movement growing in the United States.
By and large, Black women have not played a prominent role in this movement.
This is due to the fact that many Black women have not yet developed a feminist
consciousness. Black women see their problem mainly as one of national oppression.
The middle-class mentality of some white women in the movement has also
helped to make the issue of women's liberation seem to be irrelevant to Black
woman's needs.
The movement must take a clearer stand against the horrendous conditions in
which poor women are forced to work in. Some women in the movement are in favor
of eliminating the state protective laws for women. However, poor women who are
forced to work in sweatshops, factories and laundries need those laws on the
books, but we must see that they are enforce dnd made even stronger.
Women in the women's liberation movement assert that they are tired of being
slaves to their husbands, confined to the household performing menial tasks.
While the Black woman can sympathize with this view, she does not feel that
breaking her nect every day from nine to five is any form of liberation.
She has always had to work. Before the Emancipation Proclamation she worked
in the fields of the plantation, as Malcolm X would say, "from can't see in the
morning until can't see at night."
And what is liberation under this system? Never owning what you produce, you
are forced to become a mere commodity on the labor market. Workers are never
secure, and their length of employment is subject to the ups and downs in the
economy. Women's liberation must relate to these problems. What is hampering
it now is not the fact that it is still composed of mainly white, "middle-class"
women. Rather it is the failure to engage in enough of the type of actions that
would draw in and link up with the masses of women not yet in the movement, including
working and Third World women. Issues such as day-care, support for the striking
telephone workers, support for the laws which improve working conditions for women,
are a step in the right direction.
I don't feel, however, that white women sitting around in a room, browbeating
one another for their "racism", saying, "I'mh a racist, I'm a racist," as some
women have done, is doing anything for the Black woman. What is needed is action.
Women's liberation must not isolate itself from the masses of women or the
'Third World community. At the same time, white women cannot speak for Black
women. Black women must speak for. themselves.
The Black Women's Alliance has been formed in New York to begin to do this.
We felt there wasa need for a revolutionary Black women's movement that spoke
to the -oppression of Black women as Blacks, as workers, as women.
We feel that Black women will have a difficult time relating to the more
bitter anit-male sentiment in the women's liberation movement, fearing that it
will be a device to keep Black men and women fighting among themselves and
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Alexander, Karen B. "Black Women and the Struggle for Liberation", text, 197X; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1940452/m1/4/: accessed June 2, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.