RACE, REVOLUTION AND WOMEN

BY SHIRLEY CHISHOLM
SHHILEY C H I S O L M is an announced candidate for represents the 12th District (Bedford-Stuyvesant),
President of the United States for 1972. Long a New York, and is a member of the House Com-
fighter for black and women's rights, she became mittee for Veterans' Affairs. Miss Chisholm's
the first black woman in the history of this coun- article "Racism and Anti-Feminism" appeared in
try to be elected to the Congress of the United the January-February, 1971 issue of TH E BLACK
States, with her victory of November 1968. She SCHOLAR.
E
VERYWHERE WE TURN today we are confronted with a revolution of some kind.
Slogans that range from "You've come a long way, baby" to "All power to
the people" have become jaded chants that dribble from the mouths of jaded
TV announcers.
There is an almost paranoid fear eating at the guts of all Americans. Black-
White, Male-Female, Young-Old represent schisms between us. Racial Polari-
zation, the Generation Gap and Virginia Slims are all brand names for products
that may become lethal.
The Doomsday Criers are amongst us chanting their wares and bemoaning
their fate. Vietnam and the Middle East are no longer powder kegs; they are
instead sputtering fuses. The campuses and the ghettoes are eruptions of revo-
lutionary acne.
The President circles the globe seemingly handing out carte-blanche mili-
tary commitment credit cards and scientists in Houston dissect dusty rocks in
search of other life-forms while humans starve to death physically, mentally
and spiritually at home and abroad.
The author of Soul On Ice, Eldridge Cleaver, has become a soul on the run
an unwilling refugee from his heritage and his mission a latter-day man
without a country.
The King is dead and so are the Kermedy Princes of Politics victims all
of hot lead spit out by paranoia, collective guilt and their destructive hand-
maidens hate and fear. Deaths purchased, some say, by modem-day robber
barons immersed in the cement coffin of the status quo.
And here gather we, in this quiet retreat, to debate the possibility that
there may be no future. Tomorrow we leave for our homes and our separate
battlefields. What is it that we must find here that will sustain and strengthen
us in the days, weeks and years ahead?
Communion, understanding, and agape certainly are on the list but there
is one other I might point out Commitment.
Most women in America have never had the opportunity to fully measure
the extent of their own personal commitment to ending poverty, to ending racial
discrimination, and to ending social and political injustice.
THE BLACK SCHOLAR DBCBMBBR, 1971
Page 31
Many of us are old enough to remember the Second World War. In that
war, women in many foreign countries learned first-hand what was necessary to
maintain life under the most adverse conditions. While they were begging,
stealing, fighting and even killing for bits and morsels of food to feed themselves
and their families, we continued to enjoy a high standard of living, good jobs
and a night's sleep uninterrupted by rifle and artillery fire.
I am not saying that any one of us escaped unscathed by the war and its
surrounding horror. But I am saying that the flames in which our steel was forged
was not hot enough, cruel enough, or close enough to produce an exceptionally
high quality steel.
WE ABE PEBCHED on the precipise of internal holocaust that may well
be only the trigger for the the world-wide one. And perched there, many of us
continue to give the easiest things to give the most detachable extensions of
ourselves money and sympathy.
There are revolutions going on. It is true that some of them are false,
designed to build the ego, cleverly camoflauged in order to sell a product that in
the final analysis is harmful to the purchaser's health.
Some of them are revolts by people who are refusing to accept age-wom
patterns of doing things and who are therefore carving new ways that are
more satisfactory to their needs.
And finally some of them are revolutions in deadly earnest designed to
strike off the shackles of oppressed people throughout the world.
Both the so-called Black Revolution and the Woman's Liberation Move-
ments fall into the last two categories. Black people are in deadly earnest about
freedom from oppression and women are refusing to accept traditional and
stereotyped roles.
Because I am both black and a woman, I will make some comments and
observations about both.
First, the Black Revolution is not solely black. I say that what Black
people in America are doing, is participating in a world-wide rebellion that
encompasses all aspects of human life.
HEN WE TALK ABOUT the Black Revolution, therefore, we immediately
attempt to limit the goals of the black man, attempt to strip black revolutionaries
of the right to be idealistic, attempt to strip the black man of the right to feel
that what he wants is not just freedom for himself, but a totally new, totally
free world.
When we separate the so-called Black Revolution in America from the
other revolutions in literature, in the church, in the arts, in education and
throughout the world we attempt to maintain our own peculiar form of slavery.
One of the most noted and most quoted black revolutionaries in this country
was Malcolm X. While Malcolm was on a trip through the Holy Land he sent
back a letter that read in part:
Page 32 THE BIACK SCHOLAR DECEMBER, 1971
Yo u may be sho cked by these wo rds co ining fro m me, bu t I have always been
a man who tries to face facts and to accept the reality o f life as new experiences and
kno wledge u nfo ld it. The experiences o f this might have tau ght me mu ch and each
ho u r in the Ho ly Land o pens my eyes even mo re . . . I have eaten from the same
plate with peo ple who se eyes are the blu est o f blu e, who se hair was the blo ndest of
blo nd, and who se skin was the whitest o f white . . . and I felt the same sincerity in
the wo rds and the deeds o f these 'white' Mu slims that I felt amo ng the African
Mu slims o f Nigeria, Su dan and Ghana.
A.S ELDBIDGE CLEAVEB SO aptly pointed out, there were many blacks who were
outraged and felt that Malcolm had betrayed them with that statement. It may
very well have been Malcolm's signature on his own death warrant, but the
point that I want you to bear in mind is that it is exactly that type of personal
courage and integrity that marks the true revolutionary.
Malcolm X was certainly aware that as an established black leader who
had consistently, constantly and continually assailed the "white devil" here at
home, he was jeopardizing his position. But I think that Malcolm also knew,
instinctively, what a Roman slave Epictetus had in mind when he said: "No
man is free until he is master of his own mind."
White women, must realize that black people in America are not yet free
and know that they are not yet free. That is true also for a great number of
dark-skinned people throughout the world. But I do not find it astonishing that
there are so many people who are aware that they are not yet free. What I do
find astonishing is that so many of the nonhomogenous grouping that we call
"white western" think of themselves as free. The master does not escape slavery
simply because he thinks of himself as free as the master. Neither do the brother
and sister of the master escape slavery when they stand idly by and watch their
brother enslave their brother. The master is inseparably bound to the slaves and
so is white America inseparably bound to black America.
A. FEW MONTHS AGO while testifying before the Office of Federal Contract
Compliance, I noted that anti-feminism, like every form of discrimination, is
destructive both to those who perpetrate it and its victims; that males, with their
anti-feminism, maim both themselves and their women. Bear in mind that that
is also true in terms of black and white race relations.
No one in America has escaped the wounds imposed by racism and anti-
feminism. In Soul On Ice Eldridge Cleaver pointed out in great detail how the
stereotypes were supposed to work. Whether his insight is correct or not, it
bears closer examination.
Speaking of the white woman in the passage "The Primeval Mitosis,"
Cleaver describes her stereotype thusly, " . . . she is required to possess and
project an image that is in sharp contrast to his (the white man), so that the
effeminate image of her man can still, by virtue of the sharp contrast in the
degrees of feminity, be perceived as masculine. Therefore she becomes "ultra-
feminine."
Isn't this an essential part of what the Women's Liberation Movements are
all about? Women, especially in the upper classes, have been expected to be
nothing more than dangling, decorative ornaments non-thinking and virtually
non-functional.
In other places in the passage. Cleaver describes the other stereotypes
that white western society has accepted in the place of reality. He states at
BIACK SC HO IAR DECEMBER, 1971 Page 33
the black male is expected to supply the society with its source of brute power
through his role as the "supermasculine menial" all body and no brain.
The white male has assigned himself the role of the "omnipotent adminis-
trator" all brain and no body, because that could be seen as the clearly superior
role. The black female was assigned the role of "subfeminine" or Amazon.
What the roles and the strange interplay between them have meant to
America, Cleaver goes on to point out quite well. There is only one thing that
I want to point out. Because of the bizarre aspects of the roles and the strange
influence that non-traditional contact between them has on the general society,
blacks and whites, males and females must operate almost independently of each
other in order to escape from the quicksands of psychological slavery. Each
black male and black female white female and white male must escape first
from his or her own historical traps before they can be truly effective in helping
others to free themselves.
The goal must clearly be freedom integration is not yet feasible as a
goal. It is not feasible because integration depends on mutual concepts of
freedom and equality.
Cleaver stripped from some of our eyes for all time, the wool that we tried
so desperately to hold over them.
Black women and white women have been for the most part, the opposite
sides of the same coin, as have been black men and white men. Our society has
always required that those coins come up head and head or tails and tails for
all kinds of spurious reasoning. But no matter what the reasoning, it is part of
the reason why white women are not now and never have been truly accepted
working in the ghetto.
OF THE QUESTIONS that I am most often asked by white women these
days is "What can we do?"
In many ways it is a strange question strange because the phrase: "to
help you people" is only implied. It is strange because of the implied assumption
that they are free to help and strange because of the implied assumption that
they are in a position to help.
I have responded to that question in many ways, pointing out the political
arena, education and many other things. But I have always left only the impli-
cation of the real answer, the one thing that they not only might do the
only thing that they must do.
Today I must state it. Free yourselves! And in order to do that you must
first free yourselves of the assumption that you are now free.
I have pointed out time and time again that the harshest discrimination
that I have encountered in the political arena is anti-feminism from both
males and brainwashed "Uncle Tom" females.
When I first announced for the United States Congress last year, both
males and females advised me, as they had when I ran for the New York
Assembly, to go back to teaching, a woman's vocation, and leave politics to men.
I did not go back then and I will not go back as long as there exists a
need to change the politics of this country.
Like the colleagues that I had in Albany, many of my fellow members in.
the House treat me with a deference that is patronizing.
On May 20 of this year I introduced legislation concerning the equal employ-
ment opportunities of women. At that time I pointed out that there were three
JUS BLACK SCHOLAR DECEMBER, 1971
and one-half million more women than men in America but that women held only
two percent of the managerial positions; that no women sit on the AFL-GIO
Gouncil or the Supreme Gourt; that only two women had ever held Gabinet rank
and that there were at that time only two women of ambassadorial rank in the
diplomatic corps. In the Congress there were only ten representatives and only
one senator. I stated then as I do now that this situation is outrageous.
I would like to quote an excerpt from the speech that I made on the
Floor that day:
It is true that part of the problem has been that women have not been aggressive
in demanding their rights. This was also true of the black population for many years.
They submitted to oppression and even cooperated with it. Women have done the
same thing. But now there is an awareness of this situation, particularly among the
younger segpoient of the population.
As in the field of equal rights for blacks, Spanish-Americans, Indians and other
groups, laws will not change such deep-seated problems overnight. They can be used
to provide protection for those who are most abused, and begin the process of evolu-
tionary change by compelling the insensitive majority to re-examine its unconscious
attitudes.
WoOMEN m THIS COUNTRY must become revolutionaries. We must refuse to
accept the old the traditional roles and stereotypes.
Because of the present situation the tactics for black women must be
slightly different than the tactics for white women but the goal can be the same.
The tactics of revolution used by the white liberal community must be,
as they will be, slightly different than the tactics used by the black ghetto
community but the goal can be the same.
The goal, though, must be more than political freedom. It must be more
than ecomonic freedom. It must be total freedom to build a world-wide society
predicated on the positive values of all human life.
It must be freedom from the waste and ravages of all natural resources
including human resources.
Women must do more than sacrifice husbands and sons in the present
Social Revolution. They must also sacrifice themselves. And for many women,
black and white, those who will call first for that sacrifice will be their own
sons their own husbands.
MUST STABT IN OUR own homes, our own schools and our own churches.
This does not mean talk about integrated schools, churches or marriage when the
kind of integration one is talking about is black with white.
We must work for fight for the iritegration of male and female human
and human. Franz Fanon pointed out in Black Skins, White Masks that the
anti-Semitic was eventually the anti-Negro. I want to point out that both are
eventually the Anti-Feminist. Furthermore I want to point out that all discrimi-
nation is eventually the same thing anti-humanism.
Oxir task will not be easy. It will be hard but it must be done. Perhaps
the greatest power for social change, for a successful Social Revolution, lies
in our hands. But it is not an unlimited power nor is it an invincible power. The
use of power will always cause a reaction, therefore we must use our power
well and we must use it wisely. Godspeed our success.
THE BUCK SCHOUR DBCEMBR. 1971 Page 35
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