Social Justice Event

For my first Social Justice Event I attended a talk hosted by the African Studies program. The title of the talk was "The Damnation of Black Women Critically Analyzing Policy's Treatment of Black Women", the speaker was Dr. Jordan-Zachery the Director of Black Studies at Providence College. This was such an informative talk. Her main focus was on how Black Women were disappearing from the academia and society itself. This talk of disappearance was also brought up by Rich when it came to Lesbians and this is what lead to Lesbian Existence. The fact that the academia is so selective with what they portray and allow others to learn is ridiculous. Lorde also discussed this problem and stated, "The same evasion of responsibility, the same copout, that keeps Black women's art out of women's exhibitions, Black women's work out of most feminist publications". She began with the incarceration of Black Women and the statistics, in 2001 1-19 black women are incarcerated, while 1-45 for Hispanic Women and 1-118 for White Women. As of 2001 Black Women were incarcerated 2.5 times the rate of white women. Most of these Black Women were in jail in regards to drugs and did the mandatory minimum. From this there's a chain reaction the black women does what she does to keep food on the table for her children but this then leads to her being incarcerated and her children in foster care; about half of the children in foster care are black. She then discussed pay equity, unemployment. One thing that stuck to me the most was that a Black Women whom is a High School graduate earns $30,450 while a White Male High School Dropout of 9th grade or less earns $32,675. This seemed ridiculous but accurate not only are we females we are black females which is the lowest of the low. Not even with more schooling do we get some sort of "equality". This brought me back to the article about the Land of Limitations which is true even with a High School degree she is still limited because of social class and the color of her skin.  In regards to us disappearing she talked about a study in which they showed pictures of different colored people and the black woman's face was not recognizable/remembered afterwards. For example they should a picture of a white girl a hispanic girl then a black girl in some order. They could list all but the black girl's face. According to this talk we are only visible when it comes to poverty, black people have the highest rate of poverty 25.1. Overall this was an eye-opening talk in which I left realizing how unjust our society really is (although I already knew this). I must fight or my own rights and for all the other Black Women. This is why I considered myself a black feminist.

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