Black women wage-earners faced assault from both white and black men.

Evidence

We poor colored women wage-earners in the South are fighting a terrible battle…. On the one hand, we are assailed by white men, and, on the other hand, we are assailed by black men, who should be our natural protectors; and whether in the cook kitchen, at the washtub, over the sewing machine, behind the baby carriage, or at the ironing board, we are but little more than pack horses, beasts of burden, slaves! In the distant future, it may be, centuries and centuries hence, a monument of brass or stone will be erected to the Old Black Mammies of the South, but what we need is present help, present sympathy, better wages, better hours, more protection, and a chance to breathe for once while alive as free women. — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 183

Categorization

• XREF: This dual assault (white and black men) echoes the tensions hooks will later develop in her critique of black male sexism. — connects to: White men mocked black women who most resembled white ladies. — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 174; White male brutality toward Black women stemmed from patriarchal misogyny, not racism alone — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 99

Related

• Black women’s employment is framed as harming black men, unlike white women’s (similarity 0.86)
• White men mocked black women who most resembled white ladies. (similarity 0.83)
• Employer-employee relations made white ‘common oppression’ rhetoric offensive to black women (similarity 0.82)
• Enslaved women absorbed anti-woman violence that white women otherwise faced (similarity 0.82)
• White male brutality toward Black women stemmed from patriarchal misogyny, not racism alone (similarity 0.82)
• Black men asserted dominance over women to compensate for losing to white men (similarity 0.82)
• White women allied with white men on shared racism against Black women (similarity 0.81)
• Sexism and racism together intensified black women’s oppression beyond black men’s. (similarity 0.81)
• White women feared black women’s perceived immorality threatened their own status (similarity 0.81)
• White feminists dismissed black women’s attention to racial difference (similarity 0.81)
• White women, not white men, were slavery’s most direct beneficiaries (similarity 0.81)
• Capitalist patriarchy channels men’s dehumanized work rage into violence against women. (similarity 0.81)
• Black women’s anger at unemployed black men reflected their own embrace of patriarchy (similarity 0.81)
• White women’s racism targeted black women more intensely than black men (similarity 0.80)
• Black women faced pressure from both whites and blacks to separate racism from sexism (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• White male brutality toward Black women stemmed from patriarchal misogyny, not racism alone #expands (0.75) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 99