Black Working Women: The System Takes its Toll

by Sharon Broussard

Black women have been prominent in the labor force since the days of slavery, when many were forced to work in fields alongside their men. After slavery, black working women labored as domestics to help support their families. The only other fields open to black women were traditional female professions such as nursing, teaching, and social work.

However, in the late 60's, educated black women began to move into white male dominated professions such as law, business, and medicine, mainly as a result of Affirmative Action programs. This phenomenon has sent many researchers and scholars alike scrambling for data to determine the implications of such sudden career mobility.

Dr. Robert Staples, an associate professor in sociology at San Francisico State and author of "The World of Black Singles: The Changing Patters of Male-Female Relations", is one such scholar. And his conclusions have made him a controversial figure in the black community.

In a lecture last month on the careers and professional relationships of black professional women, given at the four-day-long Black Working Women's Conference sponsored byt the Women's Center here, Staples said that black women are twice as likely as black men to graduate from college and continue their education on the graduate level.

"Black women are in the ascendancy, " he told an audience of approximately 50 people, mostly women, gathered in the Women's Center Lounge. "Womend o better in schools. Men get trapped in the manhood hustle--they believe they'll be basketball stars."

These women are often rewarded with lucrative careers, continued Staples, but they pay a high personal price if they are searching for black marriage partners with similar educational backgrounds and career opportunities. "That's where the rub comes in. There's a numbers problem," said Staples, as he shuffled his yellow legal-sized notes in front of him.

For example, Staples points out there were 150,000 more black women than black men enrolled in college in 1979. In contrast about one million more white males than females were enrolled in college, he said. Unless black women consider "marrying down," marrying working-class men with little education, they may find themselves opthing for alternative relationships ranging from singlehood to lesbianism, concluded Staples.

Staples' lecture was met with hostility and indignation by his audience who accused him of ignoring the general economic status of black women. And rightly so. Only a minority of black women enjoy the material success that Staples described. Economist Julianne Malveaux, an assistant professor at the New School for Social Research in New York, castigated Staples for neglecting to discuss the under-employment and unemployment of black women.

In a later lecture at the conference, Malveaux said that approximately 60% of working black women are in traditional low-paying female clerical and service jobs. "Occupationally, the polsiiton of black women has been worse than other groups." she said.

But few women in the audience objected to Staples's contention that black women outnumber black males in college and higher income professions, although the accuracy of Staples's views would affirm the matriarchy myth, the idea that black women dominate their males in the home and job market. They know that in appearances, at least, black women have made gigantic strides in the marketplace, seemingly moving by leaps and bounds out o fthe white man's kitchen and into elite schools and professions once closed to all blacks, such as law, business, and engineering. But in their wake, more myths have sprung up about black women.

One such myth is that black women are eagerly sought after by employers because they satisfy both race and sex Affirmative Action quotas. However, in acutality, black women are usually counted in one category--race. And despite Affirmative Action gains accrued by a few women, black women with education are less less likely than uneducated or black males to earn more than $20,000.

In addition to these myths, however, there are very real problems of black professional women who are single and complaining. Many o fthem have been groomed by parents for middle-class lifestyle. They have been urged since grade school to excel academically and to forego marriage until after they begin their careers. When school finally ends, they begin to consider marriage--to those who reflect their upbringing and values. Many of them are quickly convinced that single black professional men are practically non-existent.

And that belief is not far from the truth because the middle-class itself is a fragile institution maintained by two working marriage partners and heavily dependent on government employment. According to Malveaux, approximately 40% of the black middlecalass hold government jobs, jobs which may be endangered by government cutbacks.

Yet the success of the new black professional class is the bright side of an otherwise gloomy economic picture for other blacks. The economic gap is widening between whites and blacks. More importantly, high unemployment among black males and teenagers coupled with a tremendous growth in poor female-headed households may mean the perpetuation of a vicious cycle of poverty for the majority of blacks.

A closer look at the problems of professional black women exposes the inner tension of black relationships between the sexes regardless of class due to economic conditions. Both lower-class black women who are living alone and middle-class black women who are unable to establish relationships with those who are their peers have the same "male problem". They both lack mates because uneducated and unskilled black men--of which there are many--oftend on't overcome the effects of job discrimination, poverty, and educational inequality. A disproportionate number of black men are in jaiil, on drugs, or die at an early age.

On college campuses, the "male problem" is an important topic among black women, but it is discussed as though it has no relation to the economic position of black people in this country. C. Dianne Howell, a counseling psychiatrist at Cal, said that the lack of single black men is frequently a discussion topic here. "There's a concern about how to develop meaningful relationships with someone they can respect," said Howell.

Some of these women are looking elsewhere for eligible mates, she said, and considering anew interracial dating, sharing eligible men with other women, and marrying outside of their class.

But choosing alternative relationships is no solution to the economic problems which plague the black community. There is a far deadlier numbers game being played than the scarcity of professional black men and it is reflected in the dire statistics on the widespread poverty of black communities. Until the majority of black males and females have equal educational and career opportunities, then black professional women will continue to trade careers for sound relationships and remain a class apart.