The Impact of Sexism on Black Women

American history is replete with slave-rooted images of African American womanhood. Often viewed as the sex object or the Jezebel, African American women have struggled to deflate images that promote sexual exploitation through the participation in feminist movements and the creation of the womanist movement. However, in contemporary American society, black women in popular culture have embraced what was once considered a curse. Their acceptance of this image, a direct example of social reproduction and internalized oppression, has resurrected a skewed vision of black womanhood. Hence, despite feminist and black womanist movements, sexism is still present in contemporary American society, especially among African American women in the form of sexual exploitation.

Within the Modern Feminist Movement, white women have been accused of focusing on oppression in terms of gender while ignoring issues of race, class and sexuality. As a result, the definition of womanism was created by the author and theorist Alice Walker. Walker defines a womanist as "...a black feminist or a feminist of color, an outrageous and audacious woman who is interested in learning and questioning all things. A womanist is a responsible woman who loves other women both sexually and non-sexually, a woman who appreciates and prefers women's culture, strength and emotional flexibility" (Walker 27). The theory of womanism is committed to the survival of and wholeness of all people, both men and women. Rather than supporting separatism, womanism promotes universalism. The term womanism also celebrates black women, recognizes a history, and validates it as being both valuable and complex. The term womanism describes an element present in the movement in the fight against the oppression of black women and women of color.

The oppression of black women was based on several factors including race, class and gender. These oppressors were interwoven into social structures and worked together to define the history of the lives of black women and women of color (Hooks 2). Because the common negative views of black women were socially reproduced, they were difficult to denounce. According to writers like Bell Hooks, the history of these cultural oppressors can be traced back to slavery. Hooks asserts that, "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 ranked third, and black women last" (53). Due to the scope of these oppressors and the long history associated with them, writers and theorist, alike, reason that black women have developed a distinct perspective that provides them with a keen sense of survival skills, including utilizing everyday strategies of resistance.

Another reason for the development of racially separate women's groups was the exclusion of black women from most white female clubs. African American women participated in the woman suffrage movement from the antebellum period through to the passage of the Nineteenth amendment. Victims of both racism and sexism and eager to fight against both, African American women were in a difficult position. "Not enfranchised along with the men of their race in the Reconstruction amendments, African American women faced a cruel dilemma when asked to wait patiently for their own enfranchisement" (Smith 136). Black women who were eager to participate in the woman suffrage movement often found it difficult to do so, as white suffragists not only embraced racist tactics but excluded black women from membership in suffrage organizations. Hence, "Black woman resisted the many boundaries that limited their freedom in society by creating organizations and institutions that reflected their feminist concerns" (Giddings 75).

The conventional views of society hand not only dishonored the black woman's image, but had excluded them from the mainstream of the labor force and continued to make them susceptible to sexual exploitation. "In addition to the practical things that needed to be done to assure progress, black women had to confront and redefine morality and assess its relationship to 'true womanhood'" (Giddings 85). Black women were faced with the myth of black promiscuity and the notion that women themselves were wholly responsible for their own victimization. Black women of the period went to many lengths to debase such views. However, black women in contemporary society face a new breed of systematic exploitation. It can also be said that the strategies of resistance that once existed in black female culture has turned into acceptance and personification of the slave-rooted images.

African-American women have struggled for centuries to defeat Eurocentric standards of beauty and womanhood. While today it is increasingly more common for women of African descent to appear on the cover of magazines, the battle for positive representations of African-American womanhood is still ongoing. Events in the not-so-distant past may suggest that the mainstream success of the new generation of African-American female rappers, models and actresses as a sign of progress when evaluating how African-American womanhood has been viewed historically by American society. For example, in 1984, sixty-three years after the founding of the Miss America Pageant, Vanessa Williams was named the first African-American Miss America. In what was later called the "Mess America" pageant, officials for the contest forced Williams to resign after a series of nude photographs of her appeared in Penthouse magazine. The publisher remarked, "Vanessa Williams was a fraud on the American people--a fraud certainly on her own people" (Collins 7). This statement leads to two conclusions: First, Williams is decidedly a "fraud," an impostor or something other than a legitimate Miss America. Second, a distinction is made between "American people" and "her own people," which signifies a clear racial divide in America and the view that African-Americans are a separate entity, or the "Other." Thus, the overwhelming success of the new generation, due in large part to their unrestrained sexual expression, is indeed progress. However, for many African-American women, the success of this new generation is eclipsed by a history of myths and stereotypes created to justify centuries of oppression and sexual exploitation. Moreover, Black women are reinforcing these myths and stereotypes through their new form of sexual expression.

For many, the images of the new generation of African American female rappers, actresses and models is myth personified. Today, the mythical image of Jezebel impacts the treatment of African- American women in American society and the manner in which