Gender Vs. Race Issues – Where Do We Stand? (Jan.14, 2007)
    
Last November, NBC Nightly News extensively covered in a special 5 part series, " African-American Women: Where They Stand" The series, though much too brief, was rare among national media – devoting this much national airtime to the concerns of black women, and we applaud NBC Nightly News for their sensitivity in presenting this series. These nightly news segments, skillfully narrated by Rehema Ellis, a colleague of BCW’s friend and colleague, Marquita Pool Eckert, (formerly Associate Producer of CBS Sunday Morning) covered some of the major issues confronting black women today, at all levels of the economic strata, including: relationships, health, education, politics and the economy. Facts, all too familiar to us, were presented:
    
Nearly two-thirds of African-American undergraduates are women. At black colleges, the ratio of women to men is 7 to 1. And that is leading to a growing disparity in the number of African-American women with college degrees who marry. In the past fifty years, the percentage of African-American women between 25-54 who have never been married has doubled from 20% to 40%. (Compared to just 16% of white women who have never been married today). Mortality rates for African-American women are higher than any other racial or ethnic group for nearly every major cause of death, including breast cancer. Black women with breast cancer are nearly 30% more likely to die from it than white women. Pre-menopausal black women are more than twice as likely to get a more aggressive form of the disease. And, not only are African-American women more likely to die from breast cancer, but they're less likely to get life-saving treatments. Even more frightening is the statistic that African-American women are 85% more likely to get diabetes, a major complication for heart disease. And, like breast cancer, more black women die from heart disease than white women.
    
In the political arena, the series focused on the Presidential primaries and South Carolina -- the first southern primary state to ask the question : Will race trump gender or gender trump race? In South Carolina, black women made up nearly 30 percent of all democratic primary voters in 2004. This year, polls show a significant number are undecided, torn between choosing the first African-American or first female Presidential candidate. The last show covered interracial dating -- a growing trend in the African - American community. And a panel discussion on whether hip hop lyrics and videos positively or negatively affect black women. and how these portrayals are affecting relationships between black women and black men. An Essence.com poll found that 81% of participants approved of black women dating non- black men. According to a U.S. Census Bureau report in 2000, 95,000 black women were married to white men. In 2005, that number increased to 134,000.
    
These statistics and their impact on black women, our families, our well-being and our way of life are seismic. Certainly there are far more issues, no less important, that could have been discussed, including historical workplace disparities in our hiring and promotions, the miseducation of our children in dysfunctional public schools and the violence among our pistol-packing, black male youth that are ultimately placing our neighborhoods, our families and relationships at deadly risk, daily.
   
Black women live with these realities everyday. We are pleased that some of our concerns have gotten national attention through the media. But we need to find ways to sustain them on the national political agenda. We pray about these issues at church. We talk and talk and talk about these issues with our men, our families, at the beauty shop, in our clubs and organizations. . We join protest walks and marathons and support groups and contribute money for programs, services and scholarships to help ourselves and our families struggle through this long list of inequities. But until those who want our votes speak forthrightly and passionately about alleviating some of these prevailing structural disparities and inequities that we face, no one dare take our vote for granted.
   
So, as we are increasingly bombarded with the political promises of Presidential hopefuls, and their allies, let’s keep these stats in mind. Let’s listen with great care to the messages and the promises. The real war is not in Iraq. It’s the war waged everyday in our communities, in our educational systems and in our workplaces, in our quest to survive and to realize the American dream. Let’s not be bamboozled by minor distractions about race that drown out more substantive matters. Let’s see who is not afraid to cite the statistics about us and claim us as an important constituency. Let’s look for outspoken messages of concern and concrete, sustainable strategies for change. To advocate for us is to deny others nothing.
   
Let this be the year when no one who is a serious candidate for the presidency of the United States, will dare to be as oblivious to our concerns as then Vice Presidential candidate, Dick Cheney was, when asked about aids among black women, in the last nationally televised election debates. His ignorance was appalling. Let’s us be clear – remembering the words of President John F. Kennedy, “no permanent friends, only permanent interests.”   
    
Washington, DC LET'S say a word about the girls. The young women with the musical names.

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