If Hispanic men and Asian men are around Black women more often, would the three groups be more united?
Would more minority men overall support equal rights if it wasn't called feminism?
For five straight months, I warned five men in my condo association that our (now-prior) property management company wasn’t paying our bills. I’d been the prior condo board president and still knew how to verify balances even after not being on the board. And I was growing aggravated and frustrated at escalating balances — without much explanation of why.
I damn sure wasn’t going to pay this company who wasn’t paying bills, so I started using my condo assessments to pay the electricity company, gas company and water company directly. (When the power went out in the building after our electricity company warned this property manager that they would have to be paid by the end of the day, the property management company lied and claimed it was an electricity issue. I then forwarded the notification demanding payment to several other owners to prove this was nowhere near a simple power outage.)
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By the time the balance totaled $12,017.60 and a bright orange gas sign was on one of the four front-entrance doors, finally other owners started listening. I was dumbfounded. Some men (Black, White and Brown) complete ignored me — one insisted “big companies don’t cheat people” and another repeatedly threatened to send me to collections for bypassing the condo board to pay bills directly. Meanwhile, I couldn’t help but notice that there were a select few men of minority descent (one Hispanic, two Asian) who not only acknowledged my complaints but defended them (and me).
Luckily, we parted ways with that company, but I was still shaking my head at how the same people (minus the collections maniac who is still an eternal enemy who I have not spoken to in over a year) who weren’t listening to me suddenly had open ears and eyes when male condo owners said the same thing about the same company. Even with paperwork to prove my points, it was like I was Charlie Brown’s teacher. They could only hear and respect people with prostates.
A quote just kept coming to mind:
“The most disrespected person in America is the Black woman,” said activist and icon Malcolm X. “The most unprotected person in America is the Black woman. The most neglected person in America is the Black woman.”
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And the neglected cycle continues
Lately, the behavior of these men has been on my mind. What makes some men have zero interest in listening to Black women (or women at all) while others are as receptive to hearing Black women as they are men? Could this be as simple as some men being “feminists” or following their politics? Maybe, maybe not.
Is the feminism movement getting in the way of making Black men support equal rights?
Feminist White women activist Susan B. Anthony and the American Equal Rights Association didn’t do Black women any favors by ignoring my demographic as voters. Anthony also created friction with Black men by stating she “will cut off this right arm of mine before I will ever work for or demand the ballot for the Negro and not the woman."
For Black women who constantly have to choose between race and gender in some conflicts, the last thing we need is to be at odds with Black men.