This is not a stinging indictment of Black men. This is not an insidious attack on Black women. Rather, it is a warning: both Black men and Black women must free ourselves of Euro-American patriarchal thinking. If not, Thomas has shown us how we pay at the structural level. Black male-on-Black male crime shows us how we pay at the individual, daily level.
As a people, African Americans, since slavery, have been very bold and somewhat successful in forcing Euro-Americans to practice the words they wrote both in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. Despite conscious decisions by the authors of those documents to strike any reference to slavery out of the declaration, and to list Black people as only three-fifth human in the Constitution, African Americans knew the power and the meaning behind the words, "freedom," and "liberty." They, too, as builders of the world's global capitalist economy which freed Europe from a system of oppressive feudalism, wanted the ability to live in "pursuit of happiness." From David Walker to Frederick Douglass to Harriet Jacobs to Langston Hughes to Richard Wright to June Jordan to Eldridge Cleaver to Ernest J. Gaines to Martin Luther King, Jr. to Anne Moody to Malcolm X, Black Americans have cried out against tyranny of white racism and the oppression of white greed.
However, since the times of Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, something has been seething within the Black community that we have NEVER adequately addressed. We have always been so watchful of the forces which are suppress us from without. Yet, we have not even attempted to remedy what is tearing us apart from within: Black people's internalization of Euro-American patriarchal thought. It is the acceptance of gender inequality, notions of masculine superiority and feminine inferiority, which threaten to destroy our communities. Young, Black men are dying on the streets every day due not only to poverty and violence, but also to how we define ourselves as gendered people.
As a Black woman, I could not be more proud of my literary ancestor, Harriet Jacobs, when she would stop telling her story in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl to say (I'm paraphrasing here), "Reader, do not judge by a white woman's standards. I am not a white woman. I have not had the life of a white woman, so do not impose society's standards of behavior and dress for white women on this Black woman's body." This stands in stark contrast to the writings of Frederick Douglass and David Walker which seem to say to their Puritanical audiences, "Yes, I too, can be a patriarch. I deserve to be given the same opportunities and judged by the same standards as a white man." So, Black women have at least attempted since slavery, to define themselves outside of Euro-American standards (Though I'm not sure if we continue to do so during modern times). It seems, though, Black men have always embraced them. One of the most poignant criticisms of this attitude came from Ruth in Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun. She patiently listens to her husband, Walter, talk about his humiliating job as a chauffeur for a white man, Mr. Arnold, then replies, "So you'd rather be Mr. Arnold than work for him." It would seem so. Walter never considers that his mother and wife work equally humiliating jobs as domestics. How might they feel? He never asks. He simply wants to be the patriarch of the family....in charge of things... in charge of his own person and his family's direction. What about his wife's dreams and desires? Does Ruth want to be anything other than a domestic? Who is she as an individual? We don't know.
Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth had public, sometimes heated, exchanges. Douglass had a disdain for Black women that we seldom learn about. Douglass essentially felt that Black women, by their refusal to simply absorb Euro-American standards of behavior, were the millstone around the neck of Black male progress. Many Black women of the time purposefully refused to become literate. Right or wrong, they felt that absorption of literature outside of the the Bible would lead to absorption of Euro-American standards, and Black women rebelled against this. Though many did stay away from public life, Sojourner Truth openly spoke in public and would challenge Black men like Frederick Douglass for their acceptance of white standards of masculinity.
As a people, we protested the system without making fundamental changes to this "system." We criticized "The Man," but simply changed the color of his face. Clarence Thomas, a Black man, was chosen when a white one would have sufficed. I honestly believe that Dr. Hill knew he'd be "The Man" in blackface, and tried to prevent that. But her quest led to something more. The Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill affair was one of those rare times when we did see Black gender differences play out nationally. It was also a prime opportunity for us to do the hard work of redefining ourselves outside of Euro-American patriarchal standards.
But, we blew it! The lashing out against Anita Hill was shameful and irrational, considering the "system" which benefited from her demise. Clarence Thomas's behavior was well-documented and the President who appointed him was a notorious conservative from a "Zero-Population Growth" family. Black man or white, Clarence Thomas is the keeper of the door of white conservatism and economic elitism: the status quo, the "system" which Black people so vehemently fought against.
From barber shop philosophers to Ivy-League academics such as Orlando Patterson, we once again blamed a Black woman for impeding the progress of Black men. Just like E. Franklin Frazier. Just like W.E.B. DuBois. Just like Frederick Douglass. Dr. Hill became a public representation of Black women who many Black males such as Richard Wright, felt were complicit with white men in psychologically/economically castrating Black men. Over 20 years after the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill affair, I can say that psychological/economic Black male castration was not Dr. Hill's intention. And after 20 years, with Black males leading for the charge for the dismissal of Shirley Sherrod, I can say that we haven't learned a damn thing from our ignorance.
The appointment of Clarence Thomas as a Supreme Court Justice, largely with the support of Black people, has cost us dearly: the weakening of affirmative action, the 2000 election of one of the worst Presidents in U.S. history, and the weakening of the ability to bring class action law suits which would curtail system-wide discrimination in huge corporations. When will we, as African Americans, learn to dialogue about gender without attacking one another? When will we begin to teach Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Maria W. Stewart, Anna Julia Cooper, and Anne Moody alongside DuBois, Wright, Malcolm X, and even Martin Luther King, Jr.? Lord knows, I do not want another The Color Purple, which turns Black men into the boogey man. I don't believe the patriarchy should be replaced by a matriarchy. What I believe is that Black men should fundamentally embrace a new definition of masculinity in the United States, because the status quo is killing us.
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