Is it better to be black or female?

I first became fascinated in the pull-and-push between race and gender when I read Shirley Chisholm's I'd Rather Be Black Than Female. The first line captures the main argument well:

If I said that being black is a greater handicap than being a woman, probably no one would question me. Why? Because "we all know" there is prejudice against black people in America. That there is prejudice against women is an idea that still strikes nearly all men--and, I am afraid, most women--as bizarre . . . 

Everyone recognizes racism and sees it as a problem. The same does not hold true for sexism. People seem to think it has been eradicated; or they readily accept gender determinism. People believe that the color of one's skin does not determine behavior, thought-pattern, etc. But genitalia on the other hand seems to control everything. Men are from Mars and woman are from Venus after all.

Bell Hooks' Ain't I a Woman addresses this question as well, and seems to agree. When writing of the slave trade, she makes clear the extra hardships women had to suffer and the tiny differences in treatment due to gender. For example, women were not seen as a threat on slave ships, so they were not shackled like men were (plus shackling makes rape a bit harder). While the lack of shackles may seem positive, this difference in treatment signifies a difference in perception which is sexist in its very nature. The same distinctions in treatment and perception were carried over once sold.

She even argues that the way we look at slavery is sexist:

Sexist historians and sociologists have provided the American public with a perspective on slavery in which the most cruel and de-humanizing impact of slavery on the lives of black people was that black men were stripped of their masculinity...Implicit in this assertion is that the worst that can happen to a man is that he be made to assume the social status of a woman."

She goes on to discuss the gendered separation of chores - where women worked in the house and in the fields (and were used as breeders and victims of rape), but men were only in the fields - and many other distinctions which were rendered based on gender.  And even the freedom slaves were seeking was sexist in nature: they were not challenging the status quo (of white people) they merely wanted to conform to it. Black women wanted to be like white women; black men like white men, and white society was extremely separated based on sex.

On a different note, the Introduction focuses on suffrage. Black men, as we all know, received the right to vote prior to women. Originally, black men joined white women in the fight, but it wasn't until they distanced themselves from the white women that their cause took off.

By supporting black male suffrage and denouncing white women's rights advocates, white men revealed the depths of their sexism - a sexism that was at that brief moment in American history greater than their racism.

Obviously Chisholm would argue that decades later, in the 1970s, sexism was still more rampant than racism, and I would argue that the same holds true today. I did have a small problem with this discussion. Hooks writes that white female suffragists separated from their black counterparts when it seemed like black men would get the right to vote first. Their separation is discussed more as a racist abandonment:

Prior to white male support of suffrage for black men, white women activists had believed it would further their cause to ally themselves with black political activists, but when it seemed black men might get the vote while they remained disenfranchised, political solidarity with black people was forgotten and they urged white men to allow racial solidarity to overshadow their plans to support black male suffrage.

When Hooks writes about the black male suffragists separating from their white female counterparts, she says that:

"while many black male political activists sympathized with the cause of women's rights advocates, they were not willing to lose their own chance to gain the vote. Black women were placed in a double bind; to support women's suffrage would imply that they were allying themselves with white women activists who had publicly revealed their racism."

Something struck me about this paragraph, as if the two groups committed the same act, but one was denigrated because of it while the other was excused. White women were trying to "further their cause" while black men "sympathized with the cause of women's rights". White women "forgot" about solidarity and promoted a racist agenda while black men regretfully had to separate because they "were not willing to lose their...chance." I have no doubt that both sides were in the right, and both sides were in the wrong, but this discussion seems one-sided to me.

But back to the main issue at hand, racism v. sexism. Clearly, the fight against racism is fraught with passionate emotion and public spectacle. Everyone knows the landmark cases, the catch phrases, the pros and cons, the various groups of import, and so on. The same cannot be said of sexism, and that is why, in the words of Shirley Chisholm:

How much harder will it be to eliminate the prejudice against women? I am sure it will be a longer struggle. Part of the problem is that women in America are much more brainwashed and content with their roles as second-class citizens than blacks ever were.

Absolutely. I will never forget the semester I found out that my 18-20 year old female students were sexist against their own gender. No one in class believed sexism still existed. Four girls admitted they wouldn't want Hilary Clinton (or any woman) as president because she might blow up the world if she was having a bad period (no lie, people, no lie). I was horrified, aghast, that these women were so blind to the real world.

To be clear, the opinions didn't change amongst the students depending on race. Black women and white women both seemed to think that there was equality between the genders. Crazy. Crazy. Crazy.

Anyway, back to Ain't I a Woman?. I'm really enjoying reading this - as I am sure you can surmise from the fact that I just wrote a post based on the Introduction and the first pages of Chapter 1! Big thank you to the Year of Feminist Classics for putting this on my to-read list.

Just out of curiosity, would you rather be black or female? (and yes I recognize that the question eliminates every combination outside of black man and white female, but it's how Chisholm phrased it so it's good enough for me).