The Tribune

By DR IAN BETHELL-BENNETT

In a country where women make up over 50 per cent of the population, where women are the primary breadwinners in many households, where more women than men graduate from high school and college – the latter at an astounding 8:2 ratio on the extremely conservative side – women are amazingly silent.

Is it not ironic that women suffer massive amounts of discrimination because they are women?

They are not allowed to pass on their citizenship to their children if they are married to non-Bahamian men; they cannot pass on their citizenship to their husbands if they choose to marry non-Bahamians and they are told by leading politicians that should they choose to do so, then they should go to their husbands’ countries.

It sounds almost like ‘get thee gone from these parts if you choose to exercise your rights to be an individual’.

Interestingly, many women have no problem with this kind of second-class citizenship. But black Bahamians in general are treated as if they were second-class citizens and they accept it. They are told that they cannot gamble in casinos because they cannot control themselves and may lose all their money, which they believe. They are also told that the country is theirs, but they are going to have to pay more to live here, to buy land here than a foreigner.

Historically, black female pride has been hard fought against. Similar to black masculinity, it posed problems to those in charge and was beaten out of enslaved subjects. They were condemned for stealing white men from their wives; these men were usually rapists populating the world with slaves from women who were their property.

They taught black women that they were unacceptable and they were the ugliest things since dirt. This continued through Victorian colonialism, which honed its talents at creating an underclass through mental control and indoctrination. This was the only way enslaved peoples and emancipated blacks could be mentally controlled and made to accept their role in the world. Colonial subjects were taught that the colonisers were their superiors. Moreover, control was maintained through breaking up communities, by creating distrust and through creating a hierarchy where those of lighter skin were worth more than darker-skinned Negroes. This lesson has been amazingly well learned and ingrained.

African American feminists like Alice Walker and bell hooks, for example, were doubly marginalised because they were black and female. They both discuss this. In fact, letting their hair go natural in the civil rights era was also a challenge to that establishment that refused to see them as worthy.

The supreme court had many hard fought cases to ‘end’ segregation but they did not end racism nor discrimination. Reading feminist theory and colonial history shows us how much we were taught to hate ourselves especially if we were darker and to use whatever colour we had to distance ourselves from those who were darker than us. Blacks would comb lie through their hair to tame it into a submissive and acceptable head of hair. Those who did not have to kill their hair with lie were lucky. They would be admired for their beauty. If they were sufficiently ‘white-looking’ they were encouraged to pass.

Many people doctored documents to say they had no black blood in them. They effectively denied all their ancestors, except white ones. They were taught to hate themselves. Women were easier to pass off as white because they could marry out of blackness. They were sellable. This enslaved mentality remains a scar on the black psyche, and our discredit of black women also remains. We are taught and we teach that black women are worth less, cannot open an account on their own, need men in their lives, cannot tie their tubes alone, are denied loans without men signing on their behalf. The world, beyond The Bahamas has moved on from this bigoted, colonial patriarchal mindset. We have chosen to stay. We actually celebrate our traditions and our history, no matter how much it destroys and negates blacks. We tell our daughters that they should be happy to be beaten by a man who says he loves them and they must accept not being able to pass on their passport to their non-Bahamian husbands because they are less than men, meanwhile black men are treated almost as badly as black women, in some places worse because they face the full wrath of the anti-black law and legal system. We continue to teach our girls that they must submit, and our boys that they must be submitted to! Neither of them is good enough in their God-given bodies in this Christian nation.

We have paid scant attention to women’s rights or the lack thereof. We have also paid little attention to human rights. It is only when we discuss the 2002 referendum and its failure and the pending constitutional referendum that we even acknowledge how great the inequities and inequalities are in our small country.

Notwithstanding the majority being women, nor that they are more educated than most of their male counterparts, they are inherently unequal. Yet all working-class black Bahamians are unequal; they have less voice in the running and governance of the country than do a small elite, (who lead the former to believe that their vote really makes a difference). The inequality is so ingrained in our society that we accept it as normal. Many women actually encourage the exploitation and abuse of women. They police the inequalities that society upholds. The principal in question last week is one of those.

In a BBC special examining the world of women in politics, the basic premise highlighted was that women in politics do not support women’s advancement. In fact, Margaret Thatcher, while she was prime minister of Great Britain, separated herself from women, from feminism, from empowering other women. Ironic, isn’t it?

Patriarchy is an interesting system that creates followers in the strangest places/subjects. Further, colonial patriarchy is even more apt to damaging those it has controlled. Research shows that women buy into patriarchal control because they feel empowered over others, and they are brainwashed into it. They then use these patriarchal weapons such as anti-female language, victimisation, othering of women, especially younger women, (who must be trained up in the way they should follow – note, not lead – follow), and they feel better than those they have disempowered with these weapons. Sadly, little do they realise that they ultimately disempower themselves. They destroy their own ability to truly succeed in life. This may never become apparent to them, but they damage their offspring by demonstrating anti-female behaviour and attitudes.

The BBC special underscored the importance that Michelle Bachelet’s presidency had in world politics. Taking office in 2006 in Chile, a deeply conservative, patriarchal and often anti-female country, she worked to change this. She did not kick away the ladder from all other women trying to progress, as many women in power do. In fact, she did her best to create a gender balance in her government. Gender balance does not mean a few powerful women, it means 50/50, where there are equally talented and qualified men and women representing their communities.

Even though we have far more educated women in the Bahamas than educated men, the system refuses to allow them to progress. Not only do they not earn the same as men, they do not have the same access to positions as men do.

Our system refuses to empower people or communities. In fact, it thrives on disempowering and exploiting people’s inequalities. By making women unequal we focus on removing rights from them, by showing them that they are worth less. We dehumanise them. Colonisation may have ended decades ago, but postcolonial demigods and goddesses use the same mechanisms more effectively.

In a country of predominantly black people, where over 50 per cent are women, it is no accident that blacks and women are almost utterly disempowered and subjugated to poor treatment and abuse by the very people they choose to represent them. They are also taught that they are ugly, and worthless by the teachers we choose to empower over them. Many women do not like women.

Many men, even though they are heterosexual, hate women. Many areas of society that see themselves as above others simply choose to teach hatred and disempowerment. One must follow the pastor, the preacher, the priest who refuses to teach access and empowerment through sharing the word, but rather distances the word from their followers. After Vatican II, the Catholic church attempted to change that way of teaching, of distancing the word from the people: it chose to take people with it. This pope has also chosen to bring people along with him. This usually means that criticism is heaped on him for being too radical. His message is one of acceptance and humanity.

In a country where women are the majority, why have women chosen to buy into misogynistic patriarchy and undermine other women?

Why does the system negate the value of women? This is especially true when women are in positions of power.

There is no reason for there not to be more black, brown, white women in power in a country where the majority are black females, nor is there any excuse for black women to be treated as if they are naturally ugly. Women must liberate themselves and stop using patriarchal weapons to destroy other women. Ultimately, they destroy themselves. By standing in the way of progress, we only serve the same people who benefit from the current situation.

In the US, the FBI’s use of black infiltrators in its fight against the Black Panthers served to undermine black empowerment on the whole, and it looks much like black women destroying other black women because the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. We have chosen to live in the master’s house. In a country where the majority are women, why are women policing and enforcing their own exploitation and mental and physical imprisonment?

Support black women, support the puff!

• bethellbennett@gmail.com