Assimilation

There is a very simple reality, that when we integrated into “popular” culture, we forget a very key component…we forget to put ourselves first. When our leaders were busy sitting in at the white lunch counters to make a point of how unfair it was that we couldn’t eat with them, we forgot to invite them to eat with us. We didn’t bring their business to our community to help keep our people fed. We were so hell bent on getting them to take our money that we gave them our children’s futures. Who was eating at the black restaurant that had fed our community for years and employed many of our neighbors? When we joyously shopped at Strawbridge’s, who kept the black tailor making suits for us? We successfully eliminated jobs within our community, and therefore ensured a greater population of our people to be unemployed. We eliminated businesses which put the entrepreneurs in the unemployment line along with their employees, not to mention the generations of people that would come and still need those jobs.

Now, I know many of the World Family whom no longer believe in race will be mad at me for saying this but it is true, at least in my opinion. If a white corporation has a choice between hiring a black person or a white person with the same credentials, who is going to get the job? If we aren’t going to hire our own, who is?

The repercussions can be seen throughout the community. More and more the men are becoming disenfranchised with their place in life, therefore leaving more and more black women to raise children alone, leading to a cycle that shows no signs of slowing. As a black woman it is hard to know that I am more than likely going to end up raising a child alone, only to probably have him or her locked into a hell of angst and pain that we can only fantasize about becoming better.

I think that people don’t see that there is a very real difference in being born a female of color as opposed to being born a female of the dominant culture. White women, regardless of socio-economic factors, are born and they are immediately taught to have a sense of entitlement. A black girl is born and she is taught from the beginning that she has to work twice as hard as everyone for everything. This carries over even to those who, like myself, have a mixed heritage and come from a higher economic bracket. It was always clear to me that my mother had to work even harder to give me the best than her white female counterparts.

So, I expect for a serious wave of proverbial pestilence to reign on my proverbial head for saying what I have said. People are sure to accuse me of racism and scream for the “honor” of white women, because some things still haven’t changed. I am a black woman and you can only imagine how I feel.

I promised to give it to you as gritty as I can, so I leave you with these statistics for the time being. Tell me that you can not see the pain. Review what I have said and please feel free to express your thoughts to haile@geoclan.com or on the message boards.

The 411:

-Today the number of children born into a black marriage averages less than 0.9 children per marriage. "The birthrates of black married women have fallen so sharply that absent out-of-wedlock childbearing; the African American population would not only fail to reproduce itself, but would rapidly die off."
The Abolition of Marriage, by Maggie Gallagher p. 120, citing Reynolds Forley, "After the Starting Line: Blacks and Women in an Uphill Pace," Demography 25, no. 4 (November 1988): 487, Figure 6.

-"Black children are only half as likely as white children to be living in a two-parent household, and are eight times more likely than white children to live with an unwed mother. For black children under six, 'the most common arrangement -- applying to 42 percent of them -- was to live with a never-married mother.'"
The Abolition of Marriage, by Maggie Gallagher p. 117, citing Andrew J. Cherlin, Marriage, Divorce, Remarriage, rev. and enl. ed., (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), 98-99.

-"'Exposure to single motherhood at some point during adolescence increases the risk [of a daughter's later becoming a single mother] by nearly [150 percent] for whites and.....by about 100 percent for blacks.'"
Sara S. McLanahan, "Family Structure and Dependency: Reality Transitions to Female Household Headship," Demography 25, Feb., 1988, 1-16.

- "Black females experienced domestic violence at a rate 35% higher than that of white females, and about 22 times the rate of women of other races. Rennison, M. and W. Welchans. Intimate Partner Violence. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics. May 2000, NCJ 178247, Revised 7/14/00

-African-American women have the highest death rate from breast cancer and are more likely to be diagnosed with a later stage of breast cancer than White women. http://imaginis.com/breasthealth/statistics.asp#4

- 63% of abortion patients are white, however, black women are more than 3 times as likely to have an abortion, and Hispanic women are 2.5 times as likely.

-Of new (HIV) infections among women in the United States, CDC estimates that approximately 75 percent of women were infected through heterosexual sex and 25 percent through injection drug use. Of newly infected women, approximately 64 percent are black, 18 percent are white, 18 percent are Hispanic, and a small percentage are members of other racial/ethnic groups.

http://www.niaid.nih.gov.

-One in four black women are raped after the age of 18. (Wyatt 1990)

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