1970. Black TV Explores The Relationship Between Black Men & Women

[00:00:01]As a reporter for the Chicago Daily Defender and as a black woman married to a black man, I become deeply aware of the effects of this new black revolution on the relationship between black man and black woman.

[00:00:15]I see it among my own friends and I also see it in my home.

[00:00:18]But the most revealing and the most vocal statements about what the new black man expects from the new black woman came when I met with a group of young unmarried friends one Saturday afternoon.

[00:00:31]>> I think that what's happening in America as far as black men and black women is concerned is that there's a revolution within a revolution.

[00:00:39]We are fighting our own woman. Our woman will not allow us to emerge as black men. No. But our black women who has been put in this role of aiding white America, white structure and castrating the black male has continued doing this.

[00:00:51]She cannot live with us. It's not that we can't live with her.

[00:00:54]>> Are you blaming us? Are you saying that it's our fault that this happened?

[00:00:57]>> No, I'm not blaming black American women. I just say that I'm blaming the system. They are victims of the system like the black male.

[00:01:04]>> Well, why do you say that we are castrating you? You say that you want to be the leaders. Okay. Well, what about the black professional woman?

[00:01:17]Are you saying that there should be no black professional woman? Are you trying to deny black women the right to be creative, the right to function?

[00:01:24]>> We not asking for you to take it back.

[00:01:26]See, we saying that you have got to be astute enough and can view the situation well enough where you just automatically know what your role is and step back.

[00:01:36]And whenever you want to have that aggressive thing, this is the thing that the young black man today is not going to tolerate. My old man tolerated because he was his old man tolerated and came up for years and years and years.

[00:01:48]But today, the young black man is not going to take it. He's going to be out there as the leader.

[00:01:53]>> White America has used black women to keep the black male in his place. And you're still aiding them by saying, "Well, we are qualified. We want to work. We can help."

[00:02:03]>> Okay, how are you going to reprogram men so that they don't let us take over what's supposed to be their responsibility? The men that I have had dealings with, they are perfectly willing to sit back and let us do anything we want to.

[00:02:18]>> I I don't think you have to reprogram men.

[00:02:22]I think you have TO REPROGRAM WOMEN.

[00:02:24]>> NO, YOU HAVE TO REPROGRAM THE MAN SO THAT HE will forcefully take what belongs to him because you know women, as long as we can get, we going get. And it's it's it's it's part of our being.

[00:02:35]We're going to do anything to you that you let us, whether we want to or not.

[00:02:39]>> You don't want to live on the level of income that I can afford you and love me on the basis of that. You want to to always be aspiring to have all those things that's a part of the great middle-class white American society. And and because I can't deliver these things to you, you say that you are not a man.

[00:02:56]>> I don't measure a man by how much money he can bring home. I measure a man by how he treats me.

[00:03:03]Whether when I'm tired and I'm sick and I'm scared, he's there.

[00:03:08]>> For these women, the men are there. But with the feeling of racial pride has come new conflicts and new problems.

[00:03:16]Across America, they meet to discuss what black awareness means to their families and to them as black women of today.

[00:03:23]>> You know, there've been a lot of myths created about the black family. We all recognize that. And one of the most pernicious myths is the myth of the black matriarch, you know, and this whole concept. And I think this is one of the reasons that the black community reacted so negatively to the Moynihan report because we know that that's not true.

[00:03:43]>> It was not like >> The black woman has not been a matriarch in the sense that it has been defined thus far. And thank God research, and I hope black research is being done now uh to to reverse that kind of thing. In fact, the black woman has been a woman at the head of a household not by choice, but by necessity. And more often than not, she is often than not she is not a strong matriarchal aggressive domineering figure. She is a woman in search of a man, but this story has not been told.

[00:04:18]>> The prejudiced society created what we have now.

[00:04:23]So, that's what we were. Okay, we have a revolution going on.

[00:04:28]>> We're in a what kind of a revolution?

[00:04:30]>> We're in a revolution. I think the revolution is yet to come.

[00:04:33]>> Well, this thing this thing will keep on the word revolution around lightly.

[00:04:39]Lightly. Everybody >> Actress Val Ward performs the works of our black poets and dramatists.

[00:04:46]For her, black awareness is not revolutionary, but the very foundation of her marriage.

[00:04:52]Val's husband, Francis Ward, talks of the struggles of the black family in the past and the obstacles that lie ahead.

[00:04:59]>> Uh it's extremely important for black history and culture to be transmitted from generation to generation. And the best way the most effective way that this has always been done is through the family acting as the primary unit of social organization.

[00:05:13]And I think one reason why it has not been done with black people is because of the destruction done to our family life. So, this certainly has to be one function of the black marriage to begin the re-emphasize and to pick up the thread of African-American history and culture that has been left off generations ago when Africans were bought sold into slavery, when the family unit was purposely destroyed.

[00:05:41]Part of the the the obligation of being black is to make absolutely certain that whoever has any kind of control or jurisdiction over your kid, you know, is not bringing him into conflict with the kinds of things we teach here. We We try to instill in them here in the home.

[00:05:58]>> Most middle-class homes, quote middle-class homes, like I don't even get caught up in that bag. You go into will have some copy of um anybody, any white artist. I don't even have to name anybody.

[00:06:11]Um instead of the works of black artists. I think it starts. Especially that identity part. The books, the kinds of books. All of these things start in the home rather than complaining about them being in the schools at this point.

[00:06:25]>> Unless we're absolutely certain of how that teacher is handling them, then we may have to assume that whole responsibility. We may have to pull them out of school ourselves, you know, and do the all the educating ourselves.

[00:06:36]>> Say for instance, when they say to my child to draw uh last year one of the painted Abraham Lincoln brown and she was put in the corner, you know.

[00:06:46]We had to go up to the school and deal with that. They must be respectable to their peers in school. And what we do, we handle that. We don't say you jump up. You curse that teacher out or you say it doesn't exist. But they see us at that school knocking on the door. You have to be in there either with going to control you know, their minds here or at least give them a choice.

[00:07:07]>> A lot of this is new to us and a lot of these things we're grappling with and we don't want to give anybody the impression that we have the answer to everything.

[00:07:14]>> No, no, let me cut you off again.

[00:07:17]You know, people go around talking about hate. We really don't have time to hate because you know, it goose up the back.

[00:07:24]We're loving ourselves.

[00:07:25]>> Mhm.

[00:07:25]>> This might bring around a lot of other different things.

[00:07:28]>> To be black means to love. It's got nothing to do with having to hate anybody.

[00:07:30]>> It does determine the Francis and has nothing to do with hate again. It's love.

[00:07:35]That we might have to do have to do certain things to protect that love.

[00:07:38]>> It may bring us into conflict with somebody.

[00:07:40]>> necessary to protect that love.

[00:07:43]>> Finally, I asked Francis about the standards of today's black man as compared with those of 20 years ago.

[00:07:49]>> standards which white society had projected.

[00:07:52]I think these standards were that he had to become successful according to the white mode. He had to get a good job. He had to buy a good car. He had to move to the suburbs. He had to rear a good family. They went to church every Sunday. They did everything that the typical good American family was supposed to do.

[00:08:08]And I don't think the black man necessarily is addicted to that notion.

[00:08:12]I think he sees the falsity of it. I think he sees the total hypocrisy of it.

[00:08:16]I think he wants to rear a tight-knit family, but not for the purposes that white society says.

[00:08:21]Uh he doesn't want to rear a a family for any sham purposes, just to fulfill some false ethic. But he wants to rear a good family in order to have his children strong, reared in his own image perhaps, and to transmit, most importantly, to transmit the values which he has learned to his children and to try to ensure as best he can that his children will transmit those same values to their children and, you know, have the um the same transmission repeated from generation to generation.

[00:08:56]>> Listen to me.

[00:08:59]I am a woman.

[00:09:02]Black that is.

[00:09:04]And there is but one thing which brings tears to my eyes.

[00:09:09]And that is to hear man, woman, or child stand up with strength and say, "I'm proud.

[00:09:20]I'm black."