ERASING MARIA W STEWART

Maria Stewart is forgotten as a part of black history more often than not. 

And when black historians do remember her, most leave out her feminism because they are likely just as unaware of how affected they are by male supremacy as white people are unaware of how affected they are by white supremacy.

But male supremacy (patriarchy) is as important a limitation to achieving equality for black people as white supremacy is.

As Stewart suggested nearly 200 years ago, black women's contributions were being held back. Holding back half the race's contributions means progress toward freeing ourselves from slavery was held back.

The sad thing is that Maria Stewart receded back into the background of battling for equality when she was hammered again and again for...

not knowing her place as a woman.

That's kinda funny if you think about it.  Women were held back for not acting like traditional women but only Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman and other black women like Stewart who ignored the limitations of traditional womanhood (such as wringing hands, weeping, and praying that the men do something...as they did in Nate Parker's BIRTH OF A NATION) are women who are remembered now.

More than fifty years later, not so long after slavery, during her anti-lynching campaign Ida B Wells would face fierce opposition from white men and black men for not knowing her place too. When she was supported by black men that support was often lackluster. Frederick Douglass failed to completely have her back more than once if you read between the lines of history books that give black women's contributions equal time. Yet she pushed men and white women out of her way and continued the her fight against lynching 

...a campaign that focused on that which mostly affected black men.

And lynching mostly affected black men the way police shootings mostly affect men because part of white supremacy is a toxic masculinity contest.

The outer symbols of being a successful male in America involve competition. And it starts in childhood with sports. In other to be a successful boy or man, a man has to do the following:

1) Win at sports, beat other boys 

2) Win at fights, beat other boys 

3) Win at holding out against emotional pain, cry last or cry never. 

( The movie MANCHESTER BY THE SEA can be viewed as being entirely about a man unable to cry and therefore recover his life after an accident.)

4) Win at any competition having to do with beating girls 

5) Win at getting more girls and sex than other men 

6) Win at getting more money than other men 

7) Win at getting more power than other men 

8) Win at getting more income than your wife (a.k.a Be the provider)

And in this world making the most money in the house mean you are the boss in the house even if you're not necessarily the brains of the house.

I just saw a depressed looking Mexican woman on the television news, sitting silently in a house in the path of Hurricane Harvey. Her husband, his son moving to board up windows in the background, is telling the interviewer how everybody else in the neighborhood evacuated when told. But he decided his family would stay, despite his wife's objections. 

The entire time I was watching his interview, I was wondering if she would blame her husband if she wound up watching her son die in the flood waters.    

* * * * * 

And that story made me remember that Syrian man who took off from Turkey in a tiny boat and headed out to sea with a wife and child, both of which wound up drowning. He was the only one to survive. 

It's possible his wife had 50% buy-in as far as the idea of going to sea in a tiny, barely lake-worthy boat when they had food and shelter enough to survive in a refugee camp. It's possible she'd have done the same thing without a husband at all. But it seems much more likely in my mind that she was just like the Mexican woman, being obedient* and hoping for the best 

....when her husband's main motivation was "a better life" and getting that better life right now as "the provider".  

Men are too emotional and more than a little too short-sited when they feel like they are failing at being "a real man."  

*= if you aren't earning any wages in a non-equal relationship/partnership then "obedience" is the only choice. In an equal relationship everybody's contribution to the household counts, wage-earning or not. 

That society-planted provider "instinct" in men can be deadly all by itself, much less when its combined with "I'm the boss because I'm the man."    

A woman who cannot stand up for herself and be counted as an adult can wind up dead more easily than one who can decide, with or without  a partner, where she will plant her flag and stand her ground. In my opinion a girls should be taught that when they are in a relationship with a man, she should always seek the checks and balances required between adult members of a household. Checks and balances are not just needed between Congress, the Supreme Court, and the White House or any corporation that plans on being successful long term. It's needed in the home too.

* * * * * 

Since men have 80% of the power in society (measures used being: who's in control of government, businesses, churches, military, healthcare, and even provider status in the home) they are the ones able to dominate the conversation. And men have used domination of the conversation to say items 1 - 8 are logic based instead of emotion based. 

And supremacy is always emotion-based, white supremacy, male supremacy, class supremacy, all or them. People love to feel superior and they feel hate when that supremacy is challenged.  One way men have try to prevent challenge is by deeming themselves more logical.  Assuming that they are less emotional because it is not socially acceptable for them to express emotions outwardly (or even admit they have them inwardly) they claim to have "good reason" for keeping themselves in charge most of the time.

These attitudes aren't good for anybody, least of all men. But that's not the focus here. 

The point here is that all men, including black men, expend a lot of their energy trying to compete their way into feeling masculine, feeling like men. And when they are "successful" they hold women back.

And I'm certain that black men cannot afford this kind of success. Black people need everybody, not half of everybody, performing at their very best, bringing all they have to the table.

So my questions are these: 

A) How many black women, unlike Maria Stewart (temporarily), Sojourner Truth, Ida Wells, Diane Nash, Daisy Bates, did obey the hard gender role rules as set out by male supremacy (patriarchy) and did not give their intellectual and emotional best to  

-- Abolition (Anti-Slavery)?  

--The Civil Rights Movement? 

-- Black Lives Matter?

B) How much further along would the leading edge (black people) of our anti-ethnoracist movement be if we'd dropped the dead weight of toxic masculinity like Barack and Michelle Obama did in their household?  

To be continued