LITR 4332 American Minority Literature Model Assignments Research Project Submissions 2013

Heather Minette Schutmaat

The Double-Minority Concept and African American Women

I was first familiarized the double-minority concept while taking a course in the History of Feminism with Dr. Angela Howard. A required reading for this course was “Ain’t I a Woman?” – a speech delivered by Sojourner Truth at the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio on May 29, 1851. Sojourner Truth was an African American woman from New York who was born into slavery and later became a renowned anti-slavery speaker. In her emotionally impactful speech, Sojourner Truth illustrated both the gender and race inequalities African American women faced in a racist and sexist society. She demonstrated these inequalities by drawing on her personal experiences with discrimination, and established African American women’s inherent right to equality by referencing the bible, and continually asking the rhetorical question, “ain’t I woman?” While reading Sojourner Truth’s speech, I certainly felt the power of her words, acknowledged the absolute importance of her statements, respected her bravery and righteousness, and sympathized with the victimization of African American women. However, it was my experience reading Harriet Jacobs’ narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, that provided me with a painful and horrifying, yet profound and illustrated understanding of the ghastliness of the female slave experience and instilled within me not just an inclination, but an obligation to research the double-minority concept and to become more aware of how African American women suffered under the oppression and cruelty of both racism and sexism.

Like Sojourner Truth, Harriet Jacobs was born into slavery and later became an anti-slavery speaker. In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs delivers an intimate and painful chronicle of her life as a female living under the oppression of slavery and patriarchy. Throughout her narrative, she recounts the physical, psychological, and sexual abuse she suffered under the control of an inhumane and cruel master. The double-minority concept arises most powerfully in the passage in which Linda Brent (Harriet Jacobs’ pseudonym) speaks of her overwhelming sadness in hearing that her newborn child was a girl. She states, “When they told me my new-born babe was a girl, my heart was heavier than it had ever been before. Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women. Superadded to the burden common to all, they have wrongs, and sufferings, and mortifications peculiarly their own” (86). These wrongs, sufferings, and mortifications that embody the double-minority experience are discussed extensively in the book Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, titled after Sojourner Truth’s speech and written by the social activist and feminist Bell Hooks.

In the first chapter of Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, entitled “Sexism and the Black Female Slave Experience,” Hooks begins with the line, “In retrospective examination of the black female slave experience, sexism looms as large as racism as an oppressive force in the lives of black women” (15). Throughout this chapter, Hooks demonstrates the oppressive force of sexism in the lives of female slaves. Hooks explains that while male slaves suffered the oppression of slavery, they were not as dehumanized as female slaves, like Harriet Jacobs, who were sexually exploited, and who lived in the constant fear of being assaulted and victimized by males.

Responding directly to the passage of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl I quoted above, Hooks states, “These sufferings peculiar to black women were directly related to their sexuality and involved of rape and other forms of sexual assault. Black female slaves were usually sexually assaulted when they were between the ages of thirteen and sixteen” (24). In Jacobs’ narrative, she explains that her cruel master, Dr. Flint, tries to establish his ownership and power by attempting to break her will, get her to submit to his mastery and willingly sleep with him, rather than raping her. Hooks also addresses this issue and explains that Dr. Flint’s behavior was not uncommon. Hooks states, “White male slave-owners usually tried to bribe black women as preparation for sexual overture so as to place them in the role of prostitute” and “those women who did not willingly respond to the sexual overture of masters and overseers were brutalized and punished” (25-26).

By reading Hooks’ text, I understood that Jacobs’ narrative is not only a representation of just her experience as a female slave, but also a representation of the lives of the majority of female slaves. Furthermore, Hooks’ body of work also informed me of elements of slavery and the female slave experience that I was unaware of, and that were not represented in Jacobs’ narrative. For example, Hooks demonstrates that within the subculture of slavery, patriarchy and sexism also existed. She asserts, “Sex roles in the black slave sub-culture mirrored those of patriarchal white America” (44) and “enslaved black people accepted patriarchal definitions of male-female sex roles. They believed, as did their white owners, that woman’s role entailed remaining in the domestic household, rearing children and obeying the will of husbands” (47). In other words, not only did black female slaves suffer the oppression of the institution of slavery, sexual exploitation and abuse by their masters, they were also considered the subordinates of male slaves and suffered the oppression of sexism within slavery.

Before moving on and further discussing the double-minority concept and black female slave experience, it is important to note that in demonstrating how slavery was worse for female slaves than it was for male slaves is by no means an attempt to overlook or minimize the suffering of male slaves. Undoubtedly, male slaves suffered the horror of slavery as we clearly see in other narratives such as Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, in which Douglass demonstrates slaves being regarded as property, treated like animals, and brutally beaten. A view into such brutality is illustrated in the passage wherein Douglass states, “The blood was yet oozing from the wound on my head. For a time I thought I should bleed to death; and think now that I should have done so. From the crown of my head to my feet, I was covered in blood” (392). As Douglass illustrates, male slaves were dehumanized, brutality beaten, robbed of a voice and choice, and suffered immensely under the cruelty of slavery. However, the verity still remains that women were also brutalized by beatings, such as those illustrated by Douglass, as well as brutalized by sexual assault and exploitation that continued to exist after slavery ended.

As Hooks explains “As far back as slavery, white people established a social hierarchy based on race and sex that ranked white men first, white women second, though sometimes equal to black men, who are ranked third, and black women last” (53). Moreover, the oppression and the devaluation of black womanhood continued long after slavery ended and “was a conscious, deliberate effort on the part of whites to sabotage mounting black female self-confidence and self-respect” (Hooks 59). Hooks declares that “Black women are one of the most devalued female groups in American society, and thus they have been the recipients of a male abuse and cruelty that has known no bounds or limits” (108). Such abuse and cruelty that Hooks discusses in her text is illuminated by Toni Morrison in her novel, The Bluest Eye.

            The Bluest Eye was written in the 1960s during the Black is Beautiful Movement and the novel takes place in the year 1941. The protagonist of The Bluest Eye is the heartbreaking character Pecola who suffers violence and self-hatred. At the beginning of the novel, we come to understand almost immediately that Pecola lives in an environment of perpetual violence and is constantly witness to her parents fighting. In only the third chapter, Pecola’s mother, Mrs. Breedlove, pours cold water on Pecola’s father, Cholly, and he begins beating Mrs. Breedlove. Mrs. Breedlove fights back by hitting him with a cooking pan, and Pecola is there to witness all of it. Pecola’s method of dealing with the constant violence is to imagine that she is disappearing. In the following chapters we become aware of Mrs. Breedlove’s cruel behavior towards Pecola, and more horrifically, Cholly’s Breedlove’s behavior towards her. Toward the end of the novel, Cholly rapes and impregnates is own daughter, Pecola, and causes her tremendous suffering.

At the center of the novel is also the theme of self-hatred, portrayed chiefly by the sentiments and behavior of Pecola. The notion of white superiority is continually depicted, and because of this notion and the white beauty standard, or the devaluation of black womanhood as referred to by Hooks, Pecola develops profound self-hatred and the belief that if she has blue eyes (which symbolize whiteness and therefore beauty), she will be loved. This belief ultimately results in Pecola’s psychosis.

Although we develop negative feelings about Mrs. Breedlove due to her cruel behavior toward Pecola, it is important to also acknowledge the story of Mrs. Breedlove who suffers isolation, ridicule, poverty, racism, ill-treatment by her husband and society, and endures a life of inequalities as an African American woman. In the chapter that focuses on Mrs. Breedlove, Mrs. Breedlove goes to the hospital to deliver Pecola and the doctor that treats her says to the medical students in the room, “Now these here women you don’t have any trouble with. They deliver right away with no pain. Just like horses” (Morrison 125) and illustrates how African American women were regarded differently than white women, or as Hooks puts it, “the white male perception of black women as ‘beasts’” (65). It is these glimpses into the lives of African American women provided by American Minority Literature that deepens our understanding of their experiences. Passages such as these demonstrate how they suffered the oppression of both racism and sexism because of their status as a double-minority, and how “a devaluation of womanhood occurred as a result of the sexual exploitation of black women during slavery that has not altered in the course of hundreds of years” (Hooks 53).  

As another student stated in her paper “As women of all races we indulge in a sense of sisterhood claiming to understand what a fellow woman has been through because we are all of the same sex.” She believes, however, that “this cannot always be done when considering women of different races. Though we may realize the injustices endured by being a woman, we will never fully know what it means to be African American” (Taylor). While I understand and respect this statement, and agree that we will never experience it firsthand, I believe that because American Minority Literature, such as Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, The Bluest Eye, and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, provides us with such an intimate view into their lives as American Minorities, reading their literature does in fact allow us to fully know what it means to be African American, to be voiceless and deprived of autonomy, and furthermore, how African American women have suffered from the oppression of both racism and sexism.

As I stated in my midterm paper, as we engage wholeheartedly in readings such as the narratives, novels, and poetry of American minorities, we create a relationship with these characters – a relationship that calls for compassion and sympathy. By doing so, we are not merely becoming acquainted with terms and concepts, but as readers opening our hearts to a work of art, we are somehow living the American minority experience with them.

In other words, while reading American Minority Literature and creating a compassionate relationship with characters such as Harriet Jacobs who suffered the cruelty of slavery and sexual exploitation, Pecola Breedlove who suffered violence and self-hatred, and Mrs. Breedlove who suffered racism and the devaluation of black womanhood, I believe I not only recognized what they endured as African American women, but through their narratives, I lived their experiences with them. Furthermore, my relationship to these characters and my engagement in their literature inspired me to further research their history.

Because of the literature of African American women and because of the work of Bell Hooks who provided me with an extensive demonstration of the oppressive forces of slavery and sexism, I believe I have obtained an illustrated, in-depth, and extremely important understanding of the double-minority concept, as well as an absolute admiration for women such as Harriet Jacobs that not only experienced the oppressive forces of slavery and sexism, but overcame the oppression, and found their voices as activists and writers.  

Works Cited

Brent, Linda. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Los Angeles: Indo-European Publishing, 2010. eBook.

Douglass, Fredrick. Narratives of the Life of Frederick Douglass. 1845. The Classic Slave Narratives. Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. et al. New York: Penguin, 2002.

Hooks, Bell. Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism. Cambridge: South End Press, 1981. Print.

Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. 1st Vintage International. New York : Vintage Books,       1970. Print.

Taylor, Heather. Black Women Amongst Women. 2004. Web.

http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/hsh/whitec/litr/4332/models/2004/projects/rp04taylor.htm