death to macho-politics!

"the Black Movement: this is the battle i have attempted to help define, and forward, as though my own life depended on its success. in truth, my life does depend on the outcome of our Black struggles for freedom to be ourselves, in self-respecting self-sufficiency. but where can you find serious Black spokesmen, or women, for the impoverished, hungry, state-dependent Black peoples among us who still amount to more than a third of our total population? and why does it continue to be the case that, when our ostensible leadership talks about the 'liberation of the Black man' that is precisely, and only, what they mean? how is it even imaginable that Black men would presume to formulate the Black Movement and the Women's movement as either/or, antithetical alternatives of focus? as a Black woman, i view such a formulation with a mixture of incredulity and grief: the irreducible majority of Black people continues to be composed of Black women. and, whereas many Black sons and daughters have never known Black fathers, or a nurturing, supportive Black man in our daily lives, all Black people have most certainly been raised, and cared for, by Black women: mothers, grandmothers, aunts. in addition, and despite the prevalent bullshit to the contrary, Black women continue to occupy the absolutely lowest pay of any group of workers, and we endure the highest rate of unemployment. if that status does not cry out for liberation, specifically as Black women, then i am hopelessly out of touch with my own pre-ordained reality."

*excerpted from "civil wars" by june jordan, pg.118