Currently, there has been a lot of attention placed on African women in the media. In most instances, the attention represents yet another vicious attack on colonized African working class women by the white ruling class and, most interestingly, by petty bourgeois (middle class) African women.
While the white ruling class is overtly using prime time TV-scripted reality shows that portray black women as rabid, boisterous, backstabbing, conniving, Brazilian hair wearing, money grubbing individuals who sit at home sipping wine and gossiping; black petty bourgeois women are holding discussions on Oprah Winfrey’s channel and other media about insignificant subjects.
Recently, on an Oprah show—in a studio full of black women—the discussion was about light skin vs. dark skin, hair and interracial dating.
We recognize that there are those for whom the question of skin color and hair are the center of their preoccupation. While it makes for controversial topics that ensure high ratings, these discussions usually do not lead our people toward freedom.
They never identify white power colonialism as the origin of all of these backwards notions that black people have internalized.
These subjects keep black women entrenched in internal conflict, never having to deal with the overarching contradiction—which is capitalist colonialism.
Many of the women who participate in these discussions belong to a certain class in our community. They are part of the middle class, the black petty bourgeoisie as they are called politically.
These are people who have no faith in the ability of the poor and working class African community to overturn imperialism to end our oppression.
They cast their faith with the white ruling class and depend on them to change their conditions. They will allow themselves, intentionally or unintentionally, to be used by the white ruling class against the community.
The offensive slander and discussions are not happenstance, innocent entertainment or happening in a vacuum! Their programming serves an insidious purpose.
They represent different sides of the same coin that denigrate, trivialize, obscure, protect and divert the attention of oppressed and colonized African women from the real contradiction—imperialism’s vicious attack.
The actions of these forces provide a cover for imperialism. They are apologists for imperialism.
Imperialism is a hungry wild beast
The attack and cover-up is happening at a time when imperialism is seriously wounded. Like any wounded wild beast, it is viciously lashing out. Black women and the entire African community are catching a new level of hell than we thought was possible.
We are made homeless by ruthless land-grabbing parasites harvesting property in our community.
We make up the fastest growing prison population. We earn slave wages that are insufficient to take care of our families, and to do so, we often have to leave our children without supervision.
Young black girls in Tennessee, Mississippi, Kenya, Cameroon and other places are kept out of school, on certain days a month, because of their inability to buy sanitary napkins!
State-funded social service agencies are busy kidnapping and farming out our children to solve the economic problems of the white community.
The police are busy murdering our children in the streets all over this country.
African working class women must join organization!
Unlike the treacherous attempt to declare the main contradiction facing black women as the different shades of skin, the way we wear our hair or whether we are seeking relationships with white men; poor and working class African women are on the front lines contending against the material war being waged against the African community.
We are concerned with food, clothing and shelter. We are preoccupied with finding solutions to the many problems threatening our existence. We are looking for solutions.
Poor and working class African women must be organized in our own interest and under our own leadership. We must become makers and shapers of the history of our oppressed community.
The organization that is calling on our sisters to organize in our own interest is the African National Women’s Organization (ANWO). It’s with ANWO that African women can shape the priorities and carry out practical solutions.
Right now, we are building a national movement that will materially support black women and children who are victims of child protective services and we are poised to deepen our strategy to ensure that not one African woman is left open to the savagery of the U.S. prison system.
ANWO organizers in Occupied Azania (South Africa) are working to ensure that women have the political tools to win against settler colonial exploitation.
All of these strategies require African women to shape them based on the real conditions on the ground. ANWO is interested only in organizing African women into organization so that we can participate in our own freedom, ending our isolation and increasing our power.
Joining ANWO offers us a clear path toward a future free from the crushing burden of capitalist colonialism.
Join ANWO! Build power in the hands of the African working class!
