What's love got to do? (& other stories of black women's sexualities)*.

While walking with friends in downtown Brooklyn in July 2003, our small group passed an assemblage of black men from the Israelite Church of God and Jesus Christ who were proclaiming from soapboxes. They were dressed in costumes reminiscent of a 1940s movie about the French Foreign Legion, pointed black helmets with black velvet uniforms. They spoke over microphones to the mostly black audience, conveying messages about their religion, actively proselytizing the passing crowds. One of their loudest, most virulent pronouncements was about the errors of black women who did not know how to be women, women who were ordained by God to remain silent in society. In fact, the speakers claimed, the Bible clearly delineates the roles of all women as submissive to men. African American women, in error, have totally separated themselves from God with their improper disrespect of black men. One of the members of our small group turned to the rest of us and said, "I never thought I'd hear misogyny preached on a street corner." But I was not surprised by this event. Rather, I was upset because of the ease with which I expected to hear such ravings against black women: African American women's beings, particularly our sexualities, are fodder for anybody's mill.

This essay had its beginnings during that time in Brooklyn. I was with members of the CrossCurrents' Coolidge Colloquium during a break time from writing. My writing task that summer was to develop a book's chapter on black women's love relationships. During the writing process, I found that information about love relationships and black women (or maybe any women) tended toward magazine advice columns or self help books--not my writing aim. So I began to consider my own life experiences.

Years ago, an elderly aunt practically vibrated with rage when I showed up at her house one day. We were to leave for church and she informed me as coldly as possible, "Ladies wear gloves to church." This incident could have happened to any adolescent girl in the United States in the early 1960s, but for me, a black girl-child, the implications were tied to my family's history of leaving Southern lands, separating from "lower" classes, and demonstrating that we were now part of the "better Negroes." In those days before the Detroit rebellion, before many social changes, it seemed that racial pride rose and fell on the successful maintenance of well-defined gender roles, especially that of black women. After the rebellion of 1967, social issues changed the face of Detroit and my own family from whom I, the radical, became estranged. Black power did not end women's constrictions: black women, with Afros neatly combed, were held to standards of black nationalistic gender submission, a new version of the old bea-lady. As some white women were burning bras and beginning other discussions of sexualities in earnest, many black men and women were sneering at such women's uprisings as evidence of white depravity. Of course, there were a few black women who participated in such goings on, but they were often the exceptions--Shirley Chisholm, Nina Simone, Barbara Jordan, or Angela Davis--whose lives hinted at new possibilities.

From the 1960s to now, black women's lives have seemed to improve as evidenced by the numbers of American-type success stories dependent on increasing income. Yet the majority of African American women have not been able to pretend assimilation with their dollars. A few statistics tell the story well. African American female householders have a median income that is $9,000 less than white women in the same category. (1) Additionally, the longer life expectancy of white women (2) and the greater earnings of their families over time indicate greater lifetime resources and earnings that could be passed to succeeding generations, thereby maintaining and strengthening their social positions. In other words, African American families--women, children, and men--work harder, live shorter lives, and receive fewer benefits. The escape route that marriage can offer white women is also closed to black women. Students in my classes have often analyzed the symbolic meanings of wealthy-by-marriage Ivana Trump: someone whom white girls should not want to emulate; someone whom black girls should never think about emulating because society eliminates them from consideration.

It may seem incongruous that discussions of black women's sexualities must encompass economics and life expectancy. However, gender role expectations are constructed and developed in social settings from childhood: whether through an aunt confronting glove-wearing or through the many other messages from home and school that reinforce the expectations. Yet the truth of sexualities may or may not stand in comfortable conformity with those expectations, social expectations that bend us into shapes that do not fit. For African American women, realities of sexualities must include those things which shape us, for good or ill.

African American women are judged for our sexualities when sexuality, like prayer, is personal, reflecting patterns of socialization. Yet, in a country that claims the legal protection of the privacy of its citizens, African American women's bedrooms have been under close and constant scrutiny. For African American women, both black and white communities (at minimum) contour their sexualities as a matter of public concern. Sexuality, like prayer, has become politicized by those who are white, male, and affluent. These are some of the processes of colonizing African American women's bodies, depending on a connection of race and sex that is woven into the history of the country's development.

Examples of such historical practices are seen in the recounting of one historian of the development of legislation in the colony of Virginia.

        The success of laws punishing race mixing seems clear. Hostility
        to interracial marriage and children of mixed ancestry grew
        during the eighteenth century.... By the time of the Revolution,
        Virginia effectively regulated interracial sex. Most whites
        accepted the norms, created in the seventeenth century that they
        should never marry a black. White men understood that they could
        have relations with their slave without suffering any
        penalty.... Most white women, on the other hand, understood the
        severity of penalties for a relationship with a black man. (3)

Virginia was not isolated in such legislation. The control of sexual behavior became a matter of policy. Ann Stoler details this practice across international lines: "Gender-specific sexual sanctions demarcated positions of power by refashioning middle-class conventions of respectability, which, in turn, prescribed the personal and public boundaries of race.... Ultimately inclusion or exclusion required regulating the sexual, conjugal and domestic life of both Europeans in the colonies and their colonized subjects." (4)

Such information uncovers the hidden history that underlies today's continued colonization of African American women's bodies. The colonizing process had distinct purpose in controlling the populations. Then and now, it credits black women with powers they simply do not have: to destroy black families or emasculate black men or prevent economic growth in black communities. The racialized texts of these beliefs about black women's sexualities continue, in some form, both in and outside black communities. These texts have become so embedded that black women expend enormous energy and time trying to counter, ignore, or live them.

Witness the 1965 Moynihan Report, which has not been fully discredited to this day. Daniel Moynihan, prior to becoming Senator for New York State, wrote The Negro Family: A Case for National Action. The report blamed black families for any failure of civil rights initiatives, and included discussions of a castrating "black matriarchy" as the root of evil. Womanist ethicist Traci West notes that Moynihan

      argued that black women's role in black families was responsible
      for disadvantaging the race. Under the chapter heading "The Tangle
      of Pathology," Moynihan reported that the "matriarchial structure"
      of the Negro family seriously retards the progress of the group as
      a whole, and imposes a crushing burden on the Negro male and, in
      consequence, on a great many Negro women as well." Because too
      many black families are headed by single moms they are
      "pathological" and spell doom for the progress of the race. (5)

The pressures for black women to agree with this and other negative social views of themselves are built into society, with the first pressure point on production of image. The maintenance of the correct image gets tied to appearance and, yes, black people judge each other by our looks, a fully American pastime. The pressures to conform to a certain style of dress are tremendous and self-esteem is tied to clothing. I have spoken with African American women of limited financial means who complain about the costs of maintaining these images, but continue to participate in being "dress poor." Getting hair and nails professionally done becomes part of a dress code for young black women, revolving around looks. In the United States, with televised women's mutilations/makeovers, the drive to achieve some kind of commercial look is certainly not limited to black women. Yet the judgment of the femininity of black women is tied to appearance. And when the primary commercial look is blonde, thin, and white, most black women are automatically left out.

In these processes of socialization are basic denials of self. There are also problems related to spirituality or religious life when considering what it means for a person to pray to or know the Divine. What kind of God made African American women so flawed and so imperfect that they cannot be loved? What attributes does this God have who created black women as cosmic jokes? How can African American women claim we are created in God's image if we are constantly dishonest about our "selves?" These forms of repression and denial can represent social and personal crises that flow into the religious life and create stress at that level. That a healthy spirituality does not flourish under constant stress contrasts with the masculinized view that states that crisis smashes through our complacency to make us humble before God. (6) Quite often, women, especially African American women, do not need to be reminded to be humble like "servants." As womanist theologian Jacquelyn Grant discussed, perhaps we need to learn the importance of being disciples instead of promoting the sanctity of servanthood. (7)

The perceptions which shape African American women's sexuality are forms of sexual violence. The sexual experiences of African American women are shaped by historically developed ideas that continue into the present. African American women are depicted as sexual adventurers, unable to control their libidinous drives. These ideas are so ingrained in American society that black men and women buy into them. Black feminist Tricia Rose highlighted contemporary, intensive, economic reinforcement of these sexual stereotypes.

      Since the 1990s, after black popular culture emerged as the
      defining and highly profitable element in American youth culture,
      the visual exploitation of black women in music, video and film
      skyrocketed along with black music profits. For many black women
      artists--and women artists generally--being sexually explicit in
      ways that mirror trite patriarchal sexual fantasies has remained
      the most reliably profitable motif. This explosion by black female
      performers simply represents the music and film industry's
      profiting from the long-standing sexual ideas about black
      women ... It does not represent, as some have argued, a new black
      feminism.... Many very sexually explicit artists, such as Lil'
      Kim, Trina, and Foxy Brown, reinforced both the history of black
      women's sexuality as deviant and the primary role of black women
      in male hip-hop music videos as exotic sexual playthings and
      strip-club dancers. (8)

Being defined as sexual objects is the first form of sexual violence that many African American girls and women experience. The images are reinforced through pornography, where black women are shown as beasts or slaves. One study cited black novelist/essayist Alice Walker's biting commentary: "Where white women are depicted in pornography as 'objects', Black women are depicted as animals." (9) In the same study on racism in pornography, the negative representation of other women of color or ethnicity--Asian, Jewish, and Arabic--is considered in addition to black women. The authors of that study expressed deep concern over the possibilities of changing these racist depictions. "Unfortunately ... the combination of sex and racism appears to blunt people's response to pornographic racism just as the combination of sex and violence appears to dull concern about the consequences of portraying violence in pornography." (10)

The treatment of African American women as "hoochie mamas" or whores is an extension of the belief that the women want sexual activity, which includes the related belief that rough and painful intercourse is preferred. There are some negative biological interpretations of black men as well as women in the act of rape: the men are judged such sexual animals that they could not help themselves; black women are believed to want the act, even if they clearly say "no."

      As Black women, we are twice as likely to be raped as white women
      and less likely to report it.... Rape is trivialized and ignored.
      So many women are afraid they won't be believed, and if they are,
      they'll be blamed for doing something to provoke the attack....
      But despite slavery's legacy of rape, the sad and ugly truth is
      that it is not only the white man whom we need to fear. More often
      than not, it is Black men who rape Black women. The rapist may be
      our father, husband, date, or stranger, but in eight of every ten
      rapes of Black women, the rapist's face will be Black. (11)

The sexual image of African American women is encouraged and supported today by African American men. Strip clubs have become very popular forms of entertainment for African American men, surprisingly for young men in particular. (12)

The original aim of my writing was to consider black women's love relationships within the context of spirituality and healing. However, I discovered in many words and works as well as on a Brooklyn sidewalk that the issues involved in matters of the heart are beyond the construction of gender roles. Intimate relationships will reflect structures of approved sexuality, thus everything from the political sex history to strip clubs needs consideration. A chapter in the book easily became two and could have grown into a volume by itself. Two matters particularly demonstrate some ways that the above issues are expressed in black women's lives. These two can even be named sin: sexism and homophobia.

Sexism in black communities damages African American psyches: what does it mean to be a whole human being in this world? Black feminist anthropologist Cheryl Rodriguez stated, "I realize that while growing up, I witnessed Black women enduring many forms of oppression within the Black community. Sexist beliefs and practices were as common as rain and often appeared to be the natural order of life." (13) Any street corner, living room, or pulpit may find some black group advocating race-based sexism. The race-based sexism is not limited to marriage relationships. African American community members often expect the men to "take care" of the women. This taking-care does not always translate into the same kind of patriarchy, with full power, money, and control that white men can more readily access. Instead, many African American women will decry the lack of men, and very financially independent black women will complain that they are tired of "taking the man's role." Black feminist bell hooks stated:

      Contrary to popular belief, black folks have always upheld the
      primacy of patriarchy if only symbolically. Whether males have
      been present in black families in the United States or not, many
      black females in their roles as heads of households assumed an
      authoritarian, symbolically patriarchal stance.... [M]ost black
      women validated the superiority of maleness, the importance of the
      male role even as they may also have critiqued black men for not
      assuming that role. (14)

In these thought patterns, connections to racism are present: black families never had the opportunities or the access to wealth that has maintained white families--and white women--across generations into their present comfortable niches. This may be one of the most pressing reasons for black women to avoid any involvement with movements for women's justice that use the name "feminist." Most white women have taken for granted the privileges they have received and their political interests are often woven into fabrics of some feminist movements. The history of feminist movements tells unfortunate stories of African American women's exclusion or alienation. The aims of many white feminists still do not address African American women's concerns or, in the twenty-first century, presume that the needs of both groups are the same. Sometimes the "liberation" that black women seek is to have the privileges of white women which they have been denied. To many African American women, the lives of many white women look like luxury in the face of their own. It is difficult to align with a cause where lunch meetings are held in clubs that you cannot afford.

Yet there are black women who bring liberation home to African American communities, of whom womanist theologian Delores Williams is one. She wrote of distinctions between the goals of black and white American women:

      White feminists struggle for women's liberation from male
      domination with regard for such priority issues as rape, domestic
      violence, women's work, female bonding, inclusive language, the
      gender of God, economic autonomy for women, and heterosexism.
      Black women liberators would perhaps consider women's liberation
      and family liberation from white-male-white-female domination with
      regard for such priority issues as physical survival and spiritual
      salvation of the family (with equality between males and females);
      the re-distribution of goods and services in the society (so that
      white families no longer get the lion's share of the economic,
      educational, political, and vocational resources available in
      every social class); encountering God as family (masculine and
      feminine, father, mother, and child); ending white supremacy, male
      supremacy (or any gender supremacy), and upperclass supremacy in
      all American institutions. (15)

Her words powerfully set out the realities of black women's gendered life: it is not merely problems with men, but with the embedded inequities in American social structures, that create havoc in perceptions of our colonized sexualities. Enacting sexuality through sex partners and acts, in this framework, serves as a border separating the colonized/natives (black) from the colonizers/rulers (white). Therefore, acts of sex become borders that need policing and thereby maintain the privileged status of white Americans. When African Americans accept these ideas as normal and begin patrolling the borders, the initial motivation may be protecting black communities from cruelty, but the end result is that whiteness is secured in its position of dominance.

If heterosexism totalizes the correctness and normality of male-female relationships, homophobia produces a climate in black communities of the total fear of same sex relationships. Like all phobias, homophobia is not rational. People who are in same sex relationships have not ended the world, a heterosexual cannot "catch" same sex preference, and discussing homosexuality will not cause anyone's hair to fall out. Instead, the phobia insists that same sex relationships be wrapped in religiosity, hammered with scriptural verse, and condemned, to the total denial of biological or psychological facts. Homophobia exists throughout the United States, among all races and classes. In African American communities, homophobia is also wrapped in racial terms.

On one hand, African American homophobia is tied to heterosexism: "authentic" black men and women prefer love relationships with only the opposite sex, with the underlying message, "we are different from those perverse white people." Yet this does not tell the whole story, for certainly there are and have been individuals in African American communities who are not interested in the opposite sex for love relationships. Some black gay men are recognized and given an uncomfortable place in the community: stereotypes of hairdressers, choir directors, and other artistic persons are shrugged off and grudgingly accepted. African American people involved in illegal enterprises are often sexually distrusted as "bad" influences. Performers and artists are also under suspicion. People in these fields are seen as those for whom anything goes sexually, and are contrasted with the "good," i.e. sexually moral (and therefore heterosexual), African Americans in Christian churches. The worlds on the edge of the "good" black world provide some safe, if stereotypical, space for black lesbian, gay, and bisexual people.

By living in a climate of denial and secrecy, African American women and men experience astronomical rates of AIDS/HIV. But there are no statistics to locate the damage to black sexuality created by homophobia which, as womanist theologian Kelly Brown Douglas states so clearly, is a continuation of a history of white sexual assault.

      Homophobia does not reflect merely a close-minded sexual bigotry
      by Black men and women. This is a phobia and prejudice nurtured in
      large part by a history of White sexual exploitation. The case
      supporting homophobia in the Black community reveals homophobia
      almost as a misguided strategy for protecting Black lives and the
      integrity of Black sexuality, as a necessary position to safeguard
      Black life and freedom. Homosexuality is seen as threatening Black
      well-being. (16)

As homophobia is affected by race in African American communities, so is it gendered. Black lesbians create even more discomfort among African Americans. The case of Sakia Gunn, a fifteen-year-old black lesbian who was murdered in Newark, New Jersey on May 11, 2003 is evidence. Gunn and her friends, clearly lesbians and not interested in other than same sex relationships, were approached by men whom they turned down; the men attacked. One of the men, Richard McCullough, stabbed Sakia Gunn to death. The murder galvanized black lesbian communities around the country, and multiple conversations are taking place across the Internet about this death. One woman wrote: "I know what it is like to be young and gay and scared, and full of bravado, wondering, always wondering if someone will try to hurt me. More than 20 years later, I know what it is like to see my sisters, my daughters, walk the same streets I did, trying to find their way home." (17)

The fear of lesbians in black communities is real and is also used to control the behavior of African American women: Who would want to be called a lesbian? And so the phobia spirals and embeds itself even more firmly. Womanist scholar Renita J. Weems exposes this aspect of homophobia and the different responses that might buy into or resist the pressure to conform.

      In light of the mindless homophobia (exacerbated by the hysteria
      surrounding AIDS) that exists in the Black community, the
      accusation of being a lesbian is most often a ploy to castrate a
      woman, to silence her, to scare her into obedience, to undermine
      her effectiveness before her peers and clients, and to remind her
      of her place. In some instances, it has been effective. For I've
      seen friendships terminate; I've seen women denounce other women
      to win male affection; and I've seen women turn in their placard
      and withdraw from a movement for fear of being labeled a
      lesbian. (18)

Kelly Brown Douglas has begun a discussion of the problems and complexities of sexism in black communities. Her work is groundbreaking, bringing these discussions into the dimensions of black church life. Simply put, how can the black Christian community continue to implicitly or explicitly uphold sexism? The answers to that question are not simple. Douglas grounds the reasons for these problems in the deep and dividing legacy of white sexual assault on black people, a form of colonization. She stated: "A history of having their sexuality exploited and used as a weapon to support their oppression has discouraged the Black community from freely engaging sexual concerns." (19)

The need to name our realities, in light of history and stereotypes, will further expose the ways that African American sexuality is misnamed in the United States. We must recognize that there is a cultural bias in preferred American family and marriage structures and gender constructions. That bias is for white, middle class, physically able, nuclear families with the matching heterosexual gender role constructions: these are established as normative. Any other possibilities are construed as deviant. We must recognize that there is also religious bias in preferred American family and marriage structures and gender role constructions. The white Anglo-Saxon Protestant views of marriage, family and gender are blessed and fused to the cultural biases, creating religious mythology about what a good and, by implication, godly family and its members look like. As soon as African American families and marriages do not meet these surface descriptions, they are considered ungodly. While all societies define their norms as part of processes of socialization, yet African Americans were not consulted when the norms were constructed. During the creation of these normative views, African Americans were, first, enslaved, and later captured under legalized segregation. The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision of the Supreme Court that declared separate but equal an impossibility could not magically erase different social structures and values, divergent political views, or distinct religious perspectives. The Great Society programs of the 1960s, anti-poverty programs, and affirmative action did not reach far enough to create such substantive changes as to erase the gulf between black and white Americans.

One present challenge for African Americans is to locate ways to develop sex education that is appropriate for our children and families. Serious conversations about sex are needed in black communities. Churches may or may not take the lead, but they should not hinder the discussions.

Naming African American realities including social structures and institutions, telling our stories about sexuality, and researching the history that led to the stories are but beginnings of a longer process. They are markers of hope in the middle of the multiple health hazards that sexualities bring to African Americans. So as the title of this essay asks, what's love got to do? Because, clearly, love alone is not enough. As the title obviously references a work by the singer Tina Turner, moving away from abusive relationships is a step. Yet it is not enough for individual black women to resolve their own love lives--it will not be enough to prevent the next generation from becoming victimized or colonized. Neither is wrapping these issues in religious language adequate to their resolution.

Instead, the sacredness of black women's bodies and selves must be recognized: imaging God and mother with black women's faces. Imaging beauty in black women's bodies. Recognizing homes made by brown work-hardened hands. Finding love in all these places is only a beginning.

* Portions of this essay are taken from African American Women Tapping Power and Spiritual Wellness, forthcoming from The Pilgrim Press. Used by permission of The Pilgrim Press, Cleveland, OH.

Notes

1. U.S. Census Bureau, "Income 2001: Table 1, Median Income of Households by Selected Characteristics, Race, and Hispanic Origin of Householder," www.census.gov/hhes/income.

2. National Center for Health Statistics, United States, 2002 with Chartbook on Trends in the Health of Americans. Hyattsville, Maryland: 2002.

3. Paul Finkleman, "Crimes of Love, Misdemeanors of Passion" in The Devil's Lane: Sex and Race in the Early South, edited by Catherine Clinton and Michele Gillespie (N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 1997), 131.

4. Ann L. Stoler, "Making Empire Respectable: The Politics of Race and Sexual Morality in Twentieth-Century Colonial Cultures" in Situated Lives: Gender and Culture in Everyday Life, edited by Louise Lamphere, Helen Ragon, and Patricia Zavella (N.Y.: Routledge, 1997), 374. 373-399.

5. Traci C. West, Wounds of the Spirit: Black Women, Violence, and Resistance Ethics (N.Y.: New York University Press, 1999), 135.

6. This view has been prevalent in spirituality studies, developed by authors such as Daniel J. Levinson and Erik Erickson in their human developmental theories. For a refutation of these ideas from a feminist perspective, see Carol Gilligan, "In a Different Voice: Visions of Maturity" in Women's Spirituality: Resources for Christian Development, edited by Joan Wolski Conn (N.Y.: Paulist Press, 1986), 63-87.

7. Jacquelyn Grant, "The Sin of Servanthood and the Deliverance of Discipleship" in A Troubling in My Soul: Womanist Perspectives on Evil and Suffering, edited by Emilie M. Townes (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1993), 199-218.

8. Tricia Rose, Longing to Tell: Black Women Talk About Sexuality and Intimacy (N.Y.: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003), 390.

9. Alice Walker, "Coming Apart" in Take Back the Night edited by L. Lederer (N.Y.: William Morrow, 1980), 103. Cited in Alice Mayall and Diana E. Russell, "Racism in Pornography," Feminism and Psychology vol. 3: 2, (June 1993), 277.

10. Mayall and Russell, 280.

11. Linda Villarosa, editor, Body and Soul: The Black Woman's Guide to Physical Health and Emotional Well-Being (N.Y.: Harper Perennial, 1994), 501, 503.

12. Bakari Kitwana, The Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African-American Culture (N.Y.: BasicCivitas Books, 2002), 113, 114.

13. Cheryl Rodriguez, "A Homegirl Goes Home" in Black Feminist Anthropology: Theory, Politics, Praxis, and Poetics edited by Irma McClaurin (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2001), 239.

14. bell hooks, Killing Rage: Ending Racism (N.Y.: Henry Holt and Company, 1995), 71.

15. Delores S. Williams, "The Color of Feminism: Or Speaking the Black Woman's Tongue" in Journal of Religious Thought, 43 (1986), 54.

16. Kelly Brown Douglas, Sexuality and the Black Church, A Womanist Perspective (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1999), 105.

17. Jacquie Bishop, "In Memory of Sakia Gunn," May 16, 2003, www.keithboykin.com.

18. Renita J. Weems, I Asked for Intimacy: Stories of Blessings, Betrayals, and Birthings (San Diego: LuraMedia, 1993), 100.

19. Douglas, 68.