The confirmation hearings of Ketanji Brown Jackson were evidence of America’s present and historical treatment of Black women.
The expectation is that they remain silent and humble no matter the disrespect and that any sign of anger would mean automatic disqualification for any prospective gain.
This is nothing new for Black women, America has always been thus for her. Since she arrived on American shores, her role was to produce the labor that built this country. Laws were changed to subjugate Black women to perpetual submission, Partum Sequitur Ventrem made the rape of Black women legal and voided any responsibility of the fathers, particularly the white ones for the care of the children. It made the children of enslaved Black women slaves for the entirety of their lives. America made this law which differed from the British Empire which was the model for our Constitution.
America Never Was America to the Black Woman
The Constitution itself laid the groundwork for Black women to produce children on demand; whether the product of forced breeding or rape. The Constitution planned to possibly end the International Slave Trade after twenty years. Not as a precursor to the end of enslavement, but as a protectionist measure to reduce competition from offshore and raise the price of domestic-bred enslaved people. The man who implemented the end of the International Slave Trade hailed it as preventing human rights violations when it did anything but.
“I congratulate you, fellow-citizens, on the approach of the period at which you may interpose your authority constitutionally, to withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further participation in those violations of human rights which have been so long continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, and which the morality, the reputation, and the best interests of our country, have long been eager to proscribe.” Thomas Jefferson
He was more honest in a letter he wrote to George Washington when he outlined the financial benefit of a Black woman producing a child every two years.
“I consider a woman who brings a child every two years as more profitable than the best man of the farm, what she produces is an addition to the capital, while his labors disappear in mere consumption.” Thomas Jefferson
America Never Was America to the Black Woman
When the Civil War ended and enslaved people were allegedly freed, the Black woman saw little relief. The Thirteenth Amendment provided freedom with one exception, those incarcerated for crimes. Former slave states enacted first the Black Codes and then Jim Crow. Violating the Black codes could mean being sent back to the very plantations they once worked on. Black women were left to raise their families if they themselves were not incarcerated. Mass incarceration wasn’t invented by Bill Clinton along with Republicans in the 1970s but in the 1860s after the Civil War. What passed for “freedom” was only made possible by the federal troops who supposedly protected Black people from the Klan and vindictive plantation owners. Those troops often became their new rapists with little or no recourse available to Black women.
America Never Was America to the Black Woman
During the suffrage movement, Black women allied with white women to secure the vote. White women proved to be unreliable allies, caring nothing for the desire of Black leaders like Ida B. Wells to address the lynching of Black people at the same time. Black women including Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth worked alongside white women until their organizations splintered because white women felt the need to cater to Southern necessities. Mary Church Terrell believed if white women could pass the Nineteenth Amendment without including Black women, they would.
America Never Was America to the Black Woman
During the Civil Rights movement, Black women protested alongside Black women and white allies, they were beaten and sometimes killed. Harry T. Moore is labeled as the first martyr of the Civil Rights Movement yet his wife Harriette Moore, a civil rights leader in her own right, died during the same Christmas Day bombing on their 25th Anniversary. Black women have always loved America though America rarely loved them back.
America Never Was America to the Black Woman
Langston Hughes wrote a famous poem, “Let America be America Again.” It speaks to the ways America has failed the Black man, the Native American, and the immigrant. He never mentioned the Black woman and the confirmation hearings of Ketanji Brown Jackson was a reminder that Black women are a part of America too, though America has never lived up to its promise for them.
Let America Be America Again by Langston Hughes
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed —
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek —
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean —
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today — O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home —
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”The free?
Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay —
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.O, let America be America again —
The land that never has been yet —
And yet must be — the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine — the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME —
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.Sure, call me any ugly name you choose —
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath —
America will be!Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain —
All, all the stretch of these great green states —
And make America again!
The confirmation hearings gave us white men and women trying to force Judge Jackson to reinforce all the things done to Black women and men in the past.
They wanted her to adopt the premise of “originalism,” where the Constitution was to be interpreted in the way the Founders intended. Most of those Founders enslaved people themselves, the rest acquiesced and permitted its existence. They wanted her to be “tough on crime” which translates to furthering mass incarceration. They implied she had no right to be there, that the selection of a Black woman despite all that Black women have done for America was wrong. They couldn’t attack her record, so they attacked her character.
Judge Jackson was treated with disdain, constantly interrupted, spoken down to, and completely disrespected.
America Proved Not to Be America to Her
Yet there was a shining moment, two actually, involving Senator Cory Booker celebrating her and all Black women. He said, “Don’t let them steal your joy!” He showed it was possible to celebrate the achievement and power of a Black woman in America in a country that has steadfastly refused to do so. Throughout all Black women have endured in this country, they only get stronger, smarter, and more driven. Black women voters change the outcomes of elections. Suppress them, and they turn out more. Republicans try to suppress them, and Democrats don’t deserve them. The choice is sometimes between two evils.
America has yet to be America for Black women. America never will be America and all it is supposed to stand for until it does right by Black women. It will take more than hopes and prayers but action and trustworthy allies, including Black men, to make it so. America never was America to the Black woman, but it will one day, or it will never become America.
I was told as a young girl I had to be careful how I dressed because I was more voluptuous than a white woman. I had to be careful how I spoke because raising my voice brought up the stereotypical mad black woman. I have to press or use chemicals on my hair because my natural hair or braids wasn't professional. I was raised by my mother who was white and my father who was black. I was told coming up I was too black to be white and too white to be black. As an adult I proudly claim I am a black woman and I will roar for all my sisters who were raised by society to believe being our authentic selves is too much that we need to tone it down. No I will be the stereotypical mad black woman because we have always saved America and we are the mother of the human race. White women are not who we should be compared to we are beautiful in our natural form.
This is so powerful. Your words, and Langston Hughes’ poem. Our history of White Power has brought me to despair and the belief that human nature is rotten to the core. I am so ready for some Black Woman Power to restore my faith in humanity. Hope springs eternal!