Double Burden: Black Women and Everyday Racism: Black Women and Everyday Racism

The women interviewed in Double Burden share bitter, important home truths as well as personal triumphs. Their accounts of what it's like to be black and female in America just might open some tightly shut eyes. Although many whites wishfully conceive of slavery as an awful, but surely very distant, chapter in U.S. history, Yannick St. Jean and Joe R. Feagin show how powerfully its legacy has continued to play out in outright segregation and the insidious undercutting of negative characterizations. Fueled by a collective memory of brutality and frequent reminders that racism still thrives, the well-educated, middle-class women quoted in the book recall being given denigrating social messages about their beauty, self-worth, sexuality, intelligence, and drive. Their pride in being resourceful and willing to stand up for themselves rings through. One woman says she keeps white men at work from "bothering" her by threatening legal action: "Now, what do you own besides that pickup truck and that big hat and those boots you got on?" she asks. "Because it's going to be mine if you keep fooling with me." Double Burden dips into a deep well of anger and suspicion, and though its message may be hard to bear, it lobs a necessarily explosive charge that blasts through the barriers built up by everyday, often unconscious acts of racism. --Francesca Coltrera Drawing On More Than 200 Interviews, This Book By Yanick St. Jean And Veteran Researcher Joe R. Feagin Examines The Complex Family, Social, And Workplace Lives Of African American Women In Several Regions Of The United States.--book Jacket. Revealed Here Are Not Only Stories Of Encounters With Obstacles, Racist Attitudes, And Prejudicial Actions And Opinions, But Also Methods That Many Have Adopted For Overcoming Barriers, Through The Development Of An Array Of Survival And Countering Strategies, Which The Authors Refer To Collectively As An Oppositional Culture, Rooted In The Family Structure And Sustained And Transmitted Via Collective Memory Through The Centuries.--book Jacket. Some Will Find The Book Depressing, Others Will Find It Uplifting, But All Will Welcome The Candor And Passion With Which These Women (and Some Men) Describe Their Lives.--book Jacket. The Lives Of Black Women: Introduction And Overview -- Harsh Representations Of Black Women -- Racial Oppression And Stigmatization Of Black Women -- Practicing Gendered Discrimination -- Racism At Work -- The Beauty Of Racism -- The Racist Past And Its Contemporary Legacies -- Fighting Back: An Oppositional Culture -- Voices Of Black Women And Men -- Black Women At Work -- Racial Discrimination At Work -- White Manipulation: Using Black Women -- Consequences Of Racism At Work: Black Families -- Black Beauty In A Whitewashed World -- Stigmatizing Black Beauty -- Contradictions And Consequences Of Stigmatization -- Fighting Back Successfully -- Beauty Standards And Black Men -- Common Myths And Media Images Of Black Women -- Myths About African American Women: Sexuality And Attractiveness -- Racial-sexual Myths And Their Origins -- Other Media Stigmatization Of Black Women -- Media Stigmatizing Of The African American Family -- Distancing White Women -- Racial Conflict In Organizations -- Friction With White Women In Other Settings -- Major Differences Across The Color Line -- Supportive White Women -- Black Families: Goals And Responses -- The Extended Family In Black America -- The Many Strengths Of Black Families -- Troubles In Families And Communities -- Black Women's Hopes And Goals For Their Families -- Motherhood And Families -- The Significance Of Motherhood -- A Sense Of Control -- Finale -- Black Women At Work -- Concepts Of Beauty -- Media Portrayals Of Black Women -- Black And White Women -- Black Families. Yanick St. Jean, Joe R. Feagin. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 215-228) And Index. Studies of contemporary black women are rare and scattered, and are often extensions of a legacy beginning in the 19th century that characterized black women as domineering matriarchs, prostitutes, or welfare queens, negative characterizations that are perpetuated by both white and non-white social scientists. Based on over 200 interviews, this book departs from these conventions in significant ways, and, using a ""collective memory"" conceptual framework, shows how black women cope with and interpret lives often limited by racial barriers not of their making