E tu, New York Times? Indeed, the grey lady is taking on gender, work, and race — all in one article.
Around the country black women are opting out of the “opt-out” debate, the often-heated exchange about the compatibility of motherhood and work. Steeped in issues like working versus staying at home, nannies versus day care, and the benefits or garish excess of $800 strollers, the discussion has become a hot topic online, in newspapers and in book publishing.
It is not that black mothers do not wrestle with some of the same considerations as white mothers. But interviews with more than two dozen women suggest that the discussions as portrayed in books and the news media often lack the nuances and complexities particular to their experience.
For professional black women, debates about self-fulfillment can seem incomprehensibly narrow against the need to build sustainable wealth and security for their families. The discussions also pale in comparison to worries about shielding sons and daughters from the perils that black children face growing up, and overlook the practical pull of extended families in need of financial support.
This article is good, but I have the same quibble with it that I have with most articles on “working women” — it constructs the “working woman” as a college-educated professional, and sidesteps the fact that women are disproportionately relegated to low-wage pink-collar jobs. But at least this article challenges the racial construction of the working woman — she isn’t always white, and many of the books and articles that claim to represent her experience simply don’t.
“It was a breath of fresh air to have a conversation that resonated with me,” said Pamela Walker, 41, a professor at Northwestern Business College in Chicago. A married mother of six, she attended a reading of “I’m Every Woman” at Sensual Steps, a shoe boutique in the predominantly black Bronzeville section on the South Side of Chicago. “My family can afford expensive things, but why would I think about spending hundreds on a stroller when I could help a cousin buy textbooks for college? That is not my world.”
Black mothers have traditionally worked in higher percentages than white women. And educated black mothers are still more likely to work than their white counterparts. According to census data from March 2005, 83.7 percent of college-educated black women with children under 18 are in the labor force, compared to 74 percent of college-educated white mothers.
The college-educated thing again. These statistics are certainly useful, but I’d love to see the stats for women in general. Is the implication that low-wage workers not really “working women?”
I can understand focusing on the college-educated, because it tends to be those women who have more of an option to “opt out.” But again, we’re leaving out the experiences of many, many women here.
The commitment of black women to work is in large part economically driven. They have lower marriage rates than white women, meaning they are more likely to be single parents. Those who are married are more likely than their white counterparts to earn more than their husbands, census figures show.
But for black middle-class women from Mary Church Terrell, a charter member of the N.A.A.C.P., to Coretta Scott King, working has also been a matter of choice. For generations black women have viewed work as a means for elevating not only their own status as women, but also as a crucial force in elevating their family, extended family and their entire race.
This is a good point, and I wish they had spent more time on the idea that black women are often saddled with the expectation to represent their race well. But they don’t — they move on to talking about Linda Hirshman and a famous book by Betty Friedan, apparently called “The Feminist Mystique.” (Way to go, Times copy editors). Then they give “working-class” women their piece:
Some white working-class and middle- class women have complained that both sides of the opt-out debate have an elitist tone. Recently members of a group called Latina Mami in Austin, Tex., vented about the lack of perspective in many of the motherhood books in bookstores.
What did they vent? What did they actually say? We don’t know, because the Times stops talking about them there.
Tension between working and stay-at-home black mothers — friction that seems less prevalent and intense than among their white peers, many women said — is often driven by a pressure for persistent racial striving. Smiling at the circle of friends gathered in her Mitchellville living room, Frances Luckett, the principal at a private, predominantly black elementary school, welcomed her guests with an exhortation. “Your journey is not just about you,” Ms. Luckett said to the two dozen women, aged 19 to 85. “It’s about adding to the journey of those who came before you and paving a way for the journeys after yours.”
There were knowing groans as Ms. O’Neal Parker read aloud from “I’m Every Woman” about “bone memory” and the specter of a weary but resolute slave woman, who “sticks a knee in my back and squares up my shoulders” when life feels unfair.
Ok, getting better.
The personal motherhood struggles that black women face are often complicated variations on more broadly voiced themes. Some professional women have mixed emotions about hiring nannies when they can recall women in their own families who cared for other women’s children and cleaned their homes.
Some of those who consider leaving jobs to raise children worry that it will be more difficult for them to resume their careers than for white peers. “As black women who still have a hard time moving up, there is a fear that opting out will be one more strike against you,” said Linda Burke, the owner of an executive search firm and a founder of a Washington group called Sistermoms that invited Ms. O’Neal Parker for a book reading last month.
While these are certainly issues that many women struggle with, this article makes a good point — the decision to hire a nanny or a housekeeper is shaded much differently when your own parent or grandparent was a nanny or housekeeper for someone else’s family.
Some concerns are more social than personal. Cheryl Roberts, a college administrator in Seattle, was the host at a private reading featuring Ms. O’Neal Parker on Martin Luther King Day. The guests at the catered affair included several federal judges and banking and aerospace executives whose successes eased worries about outcomes for their children. But as the discussion opened up, the women engaged in a passionate exchange on the lingering effects of a ballot initiative that ended the state’s affirmative action programs.
“Our discussions have to move to a socially conscious place,” said Ms. Roberts, 48. “It is part of the ethos of being an African-American woman. We understand there but for the grace of God go I.”
But the views of African-American women are still largely marginalized and sidelined from the mainstream conversation about working women.
Differences aside, the women gathered at Ms. Luckett’s home said they felt refreshed by the discussion.
“I understand and respect the issues of white mothers, I truly do,” Ms. Gaillard said. “But I also need for them to understand and respect mine.”