Yanick St. Jean - Double burden: Black women and everyday racism

The women interviewed in Double Burden share bitter, important home truths as well as personal triumphs. Their accounts of what its like to be black and female in America just might open some tightly shut eyes. Although many whites wishfully conceive of slavery as an awful, but surely very distant, chapter in U.S. history, Yannick St. Jean and Joe R. Feagin show how powerfully its legacy has continued to play out in outright segregation and the insidious undercutting of negative characterizations. Fueled by a collective memory of brutality and frequent reminders that racism still thrives, the well-educated, middle-class women quoted in the book recall being given denigrating social messages about their beauty, self-worth, sexuality, intelligence, and drive. Their pride in being resourceful and willing to stand up for themselves rings through. One woman says she keeps white men at work from bothering her by threatening legal action: Now, what do you own besides that pickup truck and that big hat and those boots you got on? she asks. Because its going to be mine if you keep fooling with me. Double Burden dips into a deep well of anger and suspicion, and though its message may be hard to bear, it lobs a necessarily explosive charge that blasts through the barriers built up by everyday, often unconscious acts of racism. --Francesca Coltrera