dispatches from TJICistan

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con…

There she is — no, not Miss America, but the Angela-Davis-Afro-wearing, machine-gun-toting, angry, unpatriotic Michelle Obama, greeting her husband with a fist bump instead of a kiss on the cheek.

It was supposed to be satire, but the caricature of Barack Obama and his wife that appeared on the cover of the New Yorker last week rightly caused a major flap. And among black professional women like me and many of my sisters in the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, who happened to be gathered last week in Washington for our 100th anniversary celebration, the mischaracterization of Michelle hit the rawest of nerves.

Welcome to our world.

Oh, poor poor babies!

Are you telling me that sometimes people assume things about you that aren’t true?

Wow.

That (a) makes black women unique in the history of mankind; (b) pales in comparison to things like “having the Taliban take over your country and execute family members”, or “having the Chinese communist party seize your wife and abort your unborn child to enforce birthrate goals”.

Wow.

We’ve watched with a mixture of pride and trepidation as the wife of the first serious African American presidential contender has weathered recent campaign travails — being called unpatriotic for a single offhand remark

That “single remark” was her saying how she had never been proud of her country, right?

What sort of racist would use a remark like that to leap to a purely race-based conclusion like “the speaker is not patriotic”?

Clearly Klan members all!

And then being forced to undergo a politically mandated “makeover” to soften her image

Oh no!

That has never happened to the wife of any other politician.

EVer!

… what Obama has undergone …is nothing new to professional African American women.

Yes, clearly, this is a unique racist punishment – being called “unpatriotic” for saying that you are never proud of your country, etc. – that is only ever inflicted on black women … and on all black women, too.

We endure this type of labeling all the time.

It’s a war crime, really, when you think about it.

We’re endlessly familiar with the problem Michelle Obama is confronting — being looked at, as black women, through a different lens from our white counterparts

As a white male, I’m happy to say that I am never looked at differently for being, say, white, male, fat, nerdy, or anything else.

This whole “being looked at differently” thing is a unique punishment that only black women ever receive.

…and it’s the worst punishment ever. Far worse than, say, being raped by the Muslim Janjaweed militia in northern Africa, or being beaten to death by police in China, etc.

who are portrayed as kinder, gentler souls who somehow deserve to be loved and valued more than we do.

Yes, that is exactly what mainstream society says. When I was issued my “White Privilege Card” at the age of 16, I had to pass a 30 question written test, and six of the questions were about whether white women deserve to be loved more than black women (the correct answer is “yes” – if you don’t answer the quiz that way, you only get a blue-striped “probationary” privilege card.

So many of us are hoping that Michelle — as an elegant and elusive combination of successful career woman, supportive wife and loving mother — can change that.

Michelle Obama is a successful career woman – we have to give her that.

First, her husband was chairman of the Illinois State Senate Health Committee, and she got hired by a hospital (which is regulated by the Illinois State Senate Health Committee) at a salary of $122k.

Second, her husband steered a $1,000,000 earmark to her employer, and she received a 259% raise, to $317k/year.

That’s quite successful!

So, on the upside, she earns a third of a million dollars per year, because her husband pulled strings…but on the downside, it’s documented fact that the ruling cabal teaches Americans that black women don’t deserve to be loved.

So, you know, six of one, half dozen of the other…

“Thanks to the hip-hop industry,” one prominent black female journalist recently said to me, all black women are “deemed ‘sexually promiscuous video vixens’ not worthy of consideration.

As a white male, and as best friends with Dr. Dre, and as soul stockholder of Interscope records, I have to take the blame for this personally.

Sorry.

Black women have been mischaracterized and stereotyped since the days of slavery and minstrel shows.

That was me, too.

Sorry.

Even in the 21st century, black women are still bombarded with media and Internet images that portray us as loud, aggressive, violent and often grossly obese and unattractive. Think of the movies “Norbit” or “Big Momma’s House,”

Clearly writers Eddie Murphy ( notorious White Man ) and Darryl Quarles ( notorious White Man ) are to blame.

[ stereotypes of ] overweight, aggressive [ black women ]

This is a stereotype without any examples what-so-ever. All of the black female bus drivers, RMV clerks, and Massachusetts statehouse phone clerks that I’ve ever spoken to have been unfailingly polite and mild-mannered.

Just because 78% of all black women are overweight is no reason to conclude that “most” or “many” black women are overweight.

On the other hand, when was the last time you saw a smart, accomplished black professional woman portrayed on mainstream television or in the movies?

From my TV watching of the last week, I confess I can only come up with

The Unit, Battlestar Galactica, The Shield, The Matrix, and The Wire.

If Claire Huxtable on “The Cosby Show” comes to mind, remember that she left the scene 16 years ago.

Yes, I stand corrected. All the examples of accomplished black women are 16 years old.

And yet my generation of African American women — we’re called, in fact, the Claire Huxtable generation — hasn’t managed to become successfully integrated into American popular culture. We’re still looking for respect in the workplace, where, more than anything else, black women feel invisible.

I’m not looking for respect in the workplace. I do my job and folks respect me, or they don’t.

It’s a term that comes up again and again. “In my profession, white men mentor young whites on how to succeed,” a financial executive told me

Yes, I’d like to thank the long list of White Men who have taken me under their wings and taught me the secret handshakes that have allowed me to climb to corporate ladder so quickly.

As someone who recently left a large law firm to work in the corporate sector

But presumably it was an oppressive, poor-paying law firm, because if a black woman worked in the job, then Amerikkka wouldn’t let it be a good job…

I have to agree. I liked my firm, but I always felt that I had to sink or swim on my own.

It’s different for white men.

There are a strictly limited number of partner slots, and yet all the older white men help out all of the young white men. That way everyone is equally well liked, and everyone gets promoted, and no one feels friendless or left-out, or sad.

And, also, every Tuesday, there are unicorn rides.

But they’re white unicorns, so only the white men are allowed to ride them.

A 2007 American Bar Association report titled “Visible Invisibility” describes how black women in the legal profession face the “double burden” of being both black and female, meaning that they enjoy none of the advantages that black men gain from being male, or that white women gain from being white.

Even a white male plumber in Poland, with out US citizenship, or a law degree, or permission to work here, has it better…because he could be mentored and become a partner overnight, if he wanted to.

And a while male in Bulgaria – same thing.

Even a black male in, say, Zimbabwe has things better than a poor black American woman with a law degree and big-company experience on her resume.

Invisibility isn’t the only problem.

Certainly not!

At a recent such workshop, I asked the participants to list some words that would describe how they believe they’re viewed in the workplace and the culture at large. These are the kinds of words that came back: “loud,” “angry,” “intimidating,” “mean,” “opinionated,” “aggressive,” “hard.”

I recently did a 360 degree review with my employees, and these were basically the same ratings I got.

Clearly I am a black woman, because only black women are oppressed by other people having negative opinions about them!

All painful words.

Yes.

As a fellow victim of racist, sexist oppression and hate speech, I can’t count the number of nights that I cried myself to sleep, because someone else thought that I was “intimidating” and “aggressive”.

Yet asked to describe themselves, the same women offered gentler terms: “strong,” “loving,” “dependable,” “compassionate.”

Black women have a different opinion of themselves than other people have of them?!?!?!

This is the first time in the history of the world that this has happened!

Where does the disconnect come from? Possibly from the way black women have been forced into roles of strength for decades.

Horses sweat; men perspire; women glow.

White men are assholes; white women are bitches; black women have ” been forced into roles of strength”.

For all our success in the professional world, we have paid a significant price in our private and emotional lives. A life of preordained singleness (by chance, not by choice) is fast becoming the plight of alarming numbers of professional black women in America.

Oh, poor babies.

It must be so hard to be single.

No one else on the planet has ever experienced that.

The fact is that the more money and education a black woman has, the less likely she is to marry and have a family.

White women know nothing at all about this.

Newsweek reported that there are more black women than black men (24 percent to 17 percent) in the professional-managerial class.

White men certainly don’t have any comparable issues – a white male manager has never married a secretary. A white male engineer has never married a school teacher.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 21st, 2008 at 10:15 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.