IS MISOGYNOIR KILLING BLACK WOMEN?
Just a few short weeks ago, a white man came up to me as I walked down 6th street — the city of Austin’s notorious late night club and bar district. His beady, drunken eyes very slowly and ominously gazed up and down my body, then he audibly pushed air out of his nose and cracked an eerie smile before leaning in and attempting to put his dirty fingers in my hair. That evening, I happened to have my naturally kinky coils stretched out into an afro — which I suppose gave him the impression that I desired both his gaze and his touch.
I methodically dodged his touch before his hand could find its way to my hair and scalp. This upset him greatly and he ran off, but not before calling me various expletives and loudly proclaiming “I should be lucky someone ‘like him’ was interested in someone ‘like me’”.
This wasn’t the first time. Or the second. Or even the fifteenth time a white person has come up to me with the sole intention of studying my hair and skin as if I were some sort of zoo animal, present only for their personal enjoyment. This modern obsession with black bodies and black culture is rampant throughout American popular culture and with the advent of social media, it makes some people feel as if they are entitled to black women’s space and to our time.
However, that is not the case.
Sure, you may be reading this and feeling as if there was nothing wrong with a “harmless” touch. You may not understand why this account, and the countless other similar encounters I have had, are so irritating. You may not understand just how serious instances like these are and how we routinely internalize everyday occurrences of misogynoir.
Misogynoir — a term coined in 2008 by black queer feminist scholar Moya Bailey at Northeastern University — is a portmanteau that establishes a direct connection between “misogyny” and “noir”. Misogyny is the hatred of or distrust of women and the resulting issues that are uniquely experienced by women in a male-dominated society; while noir is simply the french word for “black”. Therefore, misogynoir is the summation of these negative experiences that are unique to members of the black community who suffer from both racist and sexist stereotyping and policy-making.
This word very specifically refers to the convergence of anti-black ideology and misogyny and as a result, cannot — and should not be — applied to non-black women of color or white women. The pure intersectionality of the term makes it very clear as to what sorts of situations it is and is not appropriate to be used in.
Developmental psychologists use the term “gene-environment interaction” to describe what happens when genetic predispositions and environmental factors combine to produce the unique experiences of an individual. This is a broad spectrum of complex interactions that combine the genetic make-up and environmental or societal agents that the person is exposed to. This can be divided into two categories: experience-expectant, which are experiences that are shared by all humans, and experience-dependent, which are experiences only a specific subset of the human race undergo. This emerging field of social science looks at how personality is shaped as we grow and learn in society and how that resulting personality also shapes the way in which people treat us and what opportunities we are presented with. Scholars from the University of Kentucky have already published research that conclusively determined that black women face distinct contextual factors that put them at risk for adverse mental and physical health conditions.
In the world famous “doll test” study published by Doctors Kenneth and Mamie Clark, multiple black children between the ages of three and seven were given a task. Look at the four identical dolls (only difference was the skin tone) and establish which doll they prefer and which characteristics that doll possessed. Across the board, the children preferred the white doll and only assigned “good” qualities to it while giving the negative or undesirable qualities to the black dolls. They concluded that prejudice and discrimination at every level of American society created a feeling of shame, weakness and inadequacy in the minds of those young black boys and girls. This low self-esteem can be traced through generations upon generations of black men and women born in this hostile society and despite being a huge factor in quality of life for those citizens, its effects are often forgotten about or marginalized.
The intersection between gender and race offers differences in employment opportunities and outcomes that lead to differing economic hardships. The average white woman makes 79 cents for every dollar the white man makes. At the same time, the average black woman makes only 63 cents for every dollar the white man makes. When you contextualize the fact that most black women are children or grandchildren of those directly inhibited by racially based laws that prohibited them from earning, saving or investing — this gap seems a whole lot wider. The lack of familial savings and generational wealth is a key factor in the economics of misogynoir and the effects can be seen in many other realms that are directly intertwined with economics — including medical care.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, black women are nearly four times more likely to die while giving birth than white women. In a report, they also stated that high blood pressure and heart disease are some of the most common causes of maternal death. In a New York Times article published in April of this year, journalists followed a black woman’s pregnancy journey and noted that multiple times, she reported to her medical team that she felt ill and was experiencing symptoms that indicated she may be suffering from pre-eclampsia — a very seriously life-threatening medical condition for expectant mothers. In the article she recalls how her doctor told her to “calm down” before warning her that he was going out of town soon and could deliver the baby by C-section six weeks early if she wished. She said it seemed as if he were attempting to rush her medical decision due to his own scheduling and added that he appeared visibly inconvenienced due to her suffering from this condition. Some time later, she looked into her medical records and realized her doctor did not even bother to document her condition — it was as if he were indifferent to her troubles, despite being her doctor.
This may seem like a very specific, very isolated “bad” doctor — but this level of apathy is one that has been recounted by expectant black mothers time and time again, all across the nation. This issue has been pushed under the rug for so many years by the US government that in 2014, Monica Simpson (director of SisterSong — an organization solely dedicated to maintaining reproductive rights for women of color) testified in Geneva before the United Nations. In her testimony, she claimed that the United States’s failure to acknowledge the crisis in black maternal and infant mortality was a direct violation of international human rights treaties on racial discrimination. The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination then ruled that the US must take steps to eliminate racial disparities in the field of sexual health and to address the causes of those disparities. Despite Monica Simpson’s incredible dedication and effort, the US still has yet to even begin to identify and eliminate the crisis of black maternal death and near-death.
In a study published by researcher Danelle Stevens-Watkins and associates at the University of Kentucky, a direct association was established between deteriorated health of black women and stressful life events stemming from racism and sexism. As a concept, misogynoir affects nearly all black women, living all over the world and it even transcends social and economic classes. Beyonce Giselle Knowles-Carter, the second highest ranking female Grammy awardee in history, was recently named the world’s most powerful woman in the music industry by BBC News. Serena Williams, tennis superstar, is hailed by many as the greatest female athlete of any sport that has ever walked on this earth. Oprah Winfrey, news anchor turned multi-billion-dollar industry tycoon, is one of the most well respected international journalists and talk show hosts in the world. All of these women are well spoken, creative, dynamic, interesting and give the world something special that is unique only to them. They are businesswomen dominating fields that have historically excluded both black people and women. Despite all odds, these women are succeeding at rates unimaginable by the average Joe on the street. However, these women — despite their heightened public presence and international fame — have recently experienced traumatic events that can be attributed to the permanence of misogyny in many countries and cultures around the world.
By looking at the larger picture, it’s somewhat easy to disregard this simple fact as the experiences of a few women. However, when one dives deeper into the issues and listens to the stories of those most heavily silenced and ignored, it becomes much harder to trust in the system that claims “equality for all”. If it purposefully fails so many of our citizens, how can we even begin to believe that our government is working for all of us? How can we expect some women to hide parts of themselves in order to appear less angry, less hurt even though they are often victims of both direct and indirect violence? We, as a country, need to begin to take concrete steps towards making space for black women at the table.
Then, and only then, can we progress into the future.
