Black History Month Events 27th October 2014
Women of Colour Day
"Is Feminism a Euro-Centric
Concept?"
SO.13, Social Sciences
28th October, 2014
Screening of The Colour Purple,
Warwick Student Cinema, 7.30pm,
L3, Science Concourse
Jim Crow (1876-­‐1965) Chicago map by race
Red = White, Blue = Black, Yellow = Asian
Chapter II “The Negro American Family”
At the heart of the deterioration of the fabric of Negro society is the deterioration of the
Negro family […] The white family has achieved a high degree of stability and is maintaining
that stability. By contrast, the family structure of lower class Negroes is highly unstable, and in
many urban centers is approaching complete breakdown. […] In essence, the Negro community
has been forced into a matriarchal structure which, because it is to out of line with the rest of
the American society, seriously retards the progress of the group as a whole, and imposes a
crushing burden on the Negro male and, in consequence, on a great many Negro women as
well. […]
Chapter IV “The Tangle of Pathology”
In 1 out of 4 Negro families where the husband is present, is an earner, and someone else in the
family works, the husband is not the principal earner. More important, it is clear that Negro
females have established a strong position for themselves in white collar and professional
employment, precisely the areas of the economy which are growing most rapidly, and to which
the highest prestige is accorded. […] Negro youth grow up with little knowledge of their
fathers, less of their fathers' occupations, still less of family occupational traditions.
Negro children without fathers flounder -- and fail.
-The Negro Family: The Case for National Action
(aka the Moynihan Report 1965)
“It was by destroying the Negro family under
slavery that white America broke the will of the
Negro people. Although that will has reasserted
itself in our time, it is a resurgence doomed to
frustration unless the viability of the Negro family
is restored.”
“Whatever the risk of confronting the reader with what
must be immediately incomprehensible in that simple,
declarative, authoritative sentence, the risk of unsettling
him or her, I determined to take it. Because the in-mediasres opening that I am so committed to is here excessively
demanding. It is abrupt and should appear so. No native
informant here. The reader is snatched, yanked, thrown
into an environment completely foreign, and I want it as
the first stroke of the shared experience that might be
possible between the reader and the noel’s population.
Snatched just as the slaves were from one place to another, from any
place to another, without preparation and without defense. No lobby,
no door, no entrance – a gangplank, perhaps (but a very short
one)” (161)