Salvation: Black People and Love by bell hooks

Author:bell hooks [hooks, bell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Ethnic Studies, American, African American & Black Studies, popular culture, Family & Relationships, Interpersonal Relations
ISBN: 9780060959494
Google: t4K36C_Lm5sC
Publisher: Harper Collins
Published: 2001-12-18T00:33:16.286566+00:00

Seven

Cherishing Single Mothers

THROUGHOUT THE UNITED States there are more single-parent households than ever before in the nation’s history. Yet black women remain the one group of single parents who are consistently attacked. Assailed on all sides by a white supremacist culture that stereotypes black females as “welfare queens,” by black men who claim they are the victims of these castrating breeders who would rather live off welfare than have a good man support them, and by the shaming judgment of a nation that castigates unmarried poor women who birth children, while idolizing unmarried rich and famous women who choose to parent, single black mothers are increasingly represented in the mass media as harsh, uncaring parents.

A large group of black single mothers parent alone because they are divorced. They are working mothers. Like their nonblack counterparts who receive state aid, most of them would relish being economically supported by a caring male provider. It’s a myth that black women prefer to raise children alone. Even most single professional women living alone who choose to adopt a child would prefer sharing parenting with a caring partner. Parenting alone is difficult work. No one knows this better than black women. And it is even more difficult when women are poor.

Barbara Omolade’s The Rising Song of African-American Women includes one of the most insightful discussions about black single mothers ever written, in a chapter titled “It’s a Family Affair.” Throughout this essay she draws together facts and figures to counter negative stereotypes about black single mothers. Omolade writes: “Most black single mothers are the working poor. We do domestic work, sew in factories, and are self-employed as merchants and caterers. We commute daily to city, state, and federal government agencies. As paralegals, aides, and clerks, we are the backbone of the hospital, child care, and nursing home systems. Although the wages are low and the work tedious, black women stay with city jobs for years because they offer stability and benefits.” More often than not, when the topic is black single mothers, the image evoked is one of black women on welfare. Working black single mothers tend to be ignored in this society unless they can be evoked as a means of pathologizing black family life.

For a long time working black single mothers were simply ignored. When the white supremacist, patriarchal mass media wanted to paint a portrait of pathology, it highlighted black women receiving welfare. Usually the spotlight would focus on an individual black woman with four or more children by different men who was lying to the system to receive more aid. It has never mattered to the listening public that this image is not representative. However, in recent years, as more concrete statistics about who actually receives aid and how much money recipients are actually given are made public, anyone who is not blinded by biases has to face the extent to which negative images of black women on welfare are flaunted as a way to scapegoat them and leave unquestioned issues of class, race, and imperialism when it comes to the allocation of funding.

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