Moore, Caitlin

Equality For All?

Both gender equality and racial equality has been fighting to have equal rights for centuries, though, each of their struggles were quite different. During the 20^th century we saw a rise in the Women’s Suffrage movement to gain the right for women to vote. However, often this movement was more centered around white women and often left women of color out. Now, this is not the first time we witness women having similar struggles as a gender and put a white woman’s needs before a black woman’s.

Women were treated horribly for centuries being raped even more often than now with no repercussions whatsoever to the rapist and being treated as a man’s property. This was even the case for white women during the same time as slavery, though, black women endured the same hardships as well as a lot more. The main difference between the two was fear, the daily fear of being hurt, killed, raped, or captured because of their skin color. This fear is what related black people closer to each other regardless of their gender, it related black women closer to black men rather than white women because it is a fear that no one else could understand.

During the time of slavery white women were still being largely controlled by their husbands, which was unfair, but they were not being legally considered as property. Black men and women were considered to be property of their owners. Black women, as discussed in previous lectures, were not even legally allowed to be married and considered a wife or a mother even if she had a partner and children. Even though they would not be considered mothers, when buying women owners would often times pick a slave that had promise of having children to create more slave labor for the buyer.

Sadly, these women were also raped consistently by their slave owners in order to dehumanize and degrade them to remind them that they are nothing more than property, as also talked about in previous lectures. What is often a huge issue with rape culture still happening today and with harassment today, these types of men feel as though they own women’s bodies and are entitled to do whatever they want with them. These are primarily problems that often only occurred for black women as opposed to black men.

Nonetheless, both black men and women we subjected to degradation to remind them that they were property, they were not legally people. They were beaten consistently, even if they had not done anything considered “wrong”, they would still be brutally beaten to keep them in line, make an example, and remind them of what they were to their owners. Sometimes they would be beaten so badly to the point of death, but their owners would lose money if they died so that was rarer than being hurt badly. Also, they were forced to work every day in terrible conditions and were not even given good living quarters or fed properly. To their owners a slave was a slave, both genders were treated awfully and were just there for different uses to them.

Although, we have come a long way since slavery, we still have not ended the oppression against people of color. With too many black men and women, like George Floyd, being killed at the hands of police brutality, it is clear that we still have a long way to go before righting all our wrongs. Intersectionality is the key to understanding that black women still have significantly more struggles today than white women do or black men, they share the burdens of both.

They teach us when we are young

About the horrors of slavery

But I heard them from a white man’s tongue

Not realizing how unsavory

He sounded

Talking with such obsession

About the men who founded

This country built upon oppression

Then we continued onto the Civil Rights movement

Talking like since then, racism no longer existed

And there was no need for improvement

That man had had it so twisted

In a small town with very little diversity

A mindset like that created such adversity

Causing students of color to fall flat

Once I got into the real world, I thought things would be different

And sometimes they are

Making that small town feel so insignificant

But sometimes those things you learned are burned into your mind like a scar

Difficult to get rid of

Difficult to unlearn

Wondering if there was a man above

Why would he not allow us to adjourn

From such ignorant ideals

That one person is less than another

Because it appeals

To the “superior” skin color

We act as though oppression ended with the slaves

And that is what we are taught not to disagree

But oppression comes in waves

And always finds a way to keep someone’s neck under its knee

So how do we fix a system that was never broken

But built this way

With racism as the currency and a black man as a token

We still have some debts we need to repay

For all the damage our ancestors have done

We must stand

With every brother and sister, mother, and son

And take each hand

When it comes to change, we all have an obligation

And when we all stand together, we will create a better nation

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