The Pedestal for The Oppressed - 20020002

It goes without saying that Black people suffered great losses and pain at the hands of racism during the period of slavery in America (and still do even today to some extent). Black women, however, had an even greater struggle to endure during slavery because not only were they fighting for emancipation under a racist system, they were fighting under a patriarchal system as well. Angela Davis writes about a rather ironic emergence of the image of the Black women as a matriarch in her book The Black Woman’s Role in the Community of Slaves. She writes about how this image of the matriarch came about for the Black woman. For the white slave owner, the main point of concern was to extract as much work from his slaves as possible. Slave families were often torn apart, with the father being separated from the family unit, leaving only the mother behind who would be “the only legitimate parent of her child”, who would also be separated from her child once it was old enough to be branded and worked. Slave families that were able to live under the same roof were only able to do so at the mercy of the master, who would do so if there was perceived benefit in it. 

In a typical slave household, the woman was in charge of household affairs like cooking, cleaning, washing and so on. Given the context of the setup between the master and the slave, every ounce of labor extracted from the slaves was for the direct benefit of the master, every ounce, except for the labor the Black woman did off the plantation of her master. The labor she did in her home was for the direct benefit of herself and her family, who all happened to be slaves. This self-serving labor is one of the factors that contributed to the formation of the matriarch image. 

Apart from that, another aspect was the Black woman’s labor for the White slave owner. In order to extract labor from female slaves, the master had to let go of traditional ideas of femininity for Black women, only to have them reserved for White women. This helped further helped in the creation of the image of a matriarch as Black women were now seen as “strong” and “suitable” for physical labor. The ideas of traditional femininity could only have been let go if the master saw the Black woman as the matriarch in her family.

This example highlighted by Angela Davis goes to show how systems of oppression are able to bend and morph the perception of the oppressed according to the convenience of the oppressor. Examples of similar nature can even be observed today when women, especially in our local context, are placed on this “pedestal” of sorts and shown to be this “embodiment” of all things related to modesty and decency. They are given respect, almost in a compensatory manner, which comes out in little practices like, letting them cut queues, holding the door for them and so on. “Mothers” are glorified for all the labor they do without questioning male authority figures. Criticism on the patriarchal setup of affairs is met with “what more do they want? Our society especially respects women. Just take the high status given to our mothers for example”. A quote from The Combahee River Collective Statement (dated April 1977) sums up perfectly the response to these pedestals given by the oppressor to the oppressed:

“We reject pedestals, queenhood, and walking ten paces behind. To be recognized as human, levelly human, is enough.”