Is Washington Post Focus on Black Women Superficial?

In a blog entry at ColorLines, Akiba Solomon examines the recent Washington Post series, "Black Women in America," saying it skims the surface. It doesn't cover issues such as structural racism or why reductive ideas about black womanhood have been created. Suggested Reading The Real Tea Behind Tina Knowles, Mathew Divorce Suge Knight Claims Tupac’s…

In a blog entry at ColorLines, Akiba Solomon examines the recent Washington Post series, "Black Women in America," saying it skims the surface. It doesn't cover issues such as structural racism or why reductive ideas about black womanhood have been created.

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โ€ฆ While the article briefly covers underemployment, tokenism and the stereotype of the โ€œwelfare queen,โ€ it doesnโ€™t dig into structural racism past or present. We donโ€™t get how and why reductive ideas of black womanhood have been created, manipulated and consistently sold by mass media. This is an article about black women and stereotypes that doesnโ€™t mention pesky ills like slavery, Jim Crow, reproductive injustice and mass incarceration but name-checks โ€œBasketball Wives.โ€ Without proper context, the black women respondents become self-sacrificing victims who havenโ€™t learned to define themselves, shadowboxing with mysterious ghosts.

In 2012, that tact is at best naive and at worst a damn lie. Black women have been defining ourselves since before Sojourner Truth made her infamous 1851 โ€œAinโ€™t I a Womanโ€ speech. Over and over and over and over and over and over and over and overย again, black women tell, no scream, about our humanity, complexity, legacy, pride, sisterhood, spirituality, money problems, romantic desires, bone-deep sadness, moral conflicts, sexuality and joy. Some of us are dying for a โ€œSunday Kind of Love.โ€ Some of us think weโ€™re cute and โ€œCleva.โ€ Some of us arenโ€™t that damn deep. The problem isnโ€™t that black women havenโ€™t defined ourselves for ourselves. Itโ€™s that mainstream media DONโ€™T LISTEN.

And when media donโ€™t listen, they publish black-women centered surveys that compare our responses to those of white women, black men and white men, as if there are no other groups of people in this damn country who help shape our collective experiences. They ask by-the-numbers questions about fundamental aspects of human life through the lens of race without interrogating why one would even need to ask these questionsโ€ฆ

Read Akiba Solomon's entire blog entry at ColorLines.

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