Black Vaginas

This week I finished reading Eve Ensler’s A Memory, A Monologue, a Rant, and a Prayer: Writings to Stop Violence Against Women and Girls. Ensler is the creator of the Vagina Monologues as well as the V-Day movement that works to raise awareness surrounding any type of violence against women all over the world. This book is a collection of writings from various authors featured at a festival held in 2006 called “Until the Violence Stops.” There is a piece in the “Rant” section by Kimberle Crenshaw, a scholar at the forefront of Critical Race Theory, titled “Respect.” Crenshaw covers many injustices towards black women in this piece, but for the purpose of this entry I will highlight her focus on the history of America’s economy:

“It wasn’t the Declaration of Independence,

the Constitution,

or the Stars and the Stripes that gave birth to America.

It was the black vagina that laid the golden egg,

or rather, the chattel slave.

That’s right — during America’s formative years, the most

valuable property it produced,

the property that the entire economy was based on,

the property that was mortgaged to build America

was property in slaves.

Twelve billion dollars’ worth.

One can’t begin to fathom it in today’s dollars. And where did

it all come from? Whose vaginas passed this twelve billion

dollars?

Whose vaginas were capitalized, colonized, and amortized all

to give birth to America?” (114)

Crenshaw is absolutely correct. If you look at it from a reproductive standpoint, America’s growth and progress was based on the ability for black women to have children. Their reproductive system was essential. During slavery, they had to give birth, raise children, and do the same work as men. During the Civil Rights Movement, they also held an essential part of the economy. bell hooks writes about their role in the workforce during the Movement. Primarily, they were the ones in the black nuclear families who worked. It was easier for them to find a domestic job than it was for a man to find a good, well-paying job. Oftentimes, if the husband/father of the household could not find a good job, he would remain unemployed. Most black women had to be in the workforce, and they were not happy about it: “Much of the tension in black marriages…was caused by black females’ pressuring men to assume the breadwinner, head-of-the-household role” (hooks 92). Black women were the ones providing the majority of the funding for the family unit and they were also the ones doing their own household’s housework. When Crenshaw calls for some respect in this piece, she deserves it. So often we stereotype black women to be either prostitutes or characters like Aunt Jemima. This ignores their amazing contributions to the foundational American economy. When Crenshaw calls for some respect for black vaginas, she better get it.   

hooks, bell. Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism. Boston, MA: South End, 1981. 92.   Print.

"Respect." A Memory, a Monologue, a Rant, and a Prayer. Ed. Eve Ensler. New York: Villard,     2007. Print.