By Houston Defender
Originally appeared in Word in Black
Women’s History Month offers invaluable benefits that Black men need.
For many younger folk (millennials and Gen Zers) Women’s History Month has always been a thing. Whether commemorated fully or merely half-ass acknowledged, at least it’s always been in existence.
But for Gen Xers (like me) and older, there was a time when Women’s History Month wasn’t.
Origin of Women’s History Month
According to the National Women’s History Museum (www.womenshistory.org), Women’s History Month (WHM), the month set aside to honor women’s contributions to American history, began as a local celebration in Santa Rosa, California.
The Education Task Force of the Sonoma County (California) Commission on the Status of Women planned and executed a “Women’s History Week” celebration in 1978. The organizers selected the week of March 8 to correspond with International Women’s Day (which I mistakenly assumed was founded after WHM to extend the celebration of women beyond US shores).
The movement spread across the country as other communities initiated their own Women’s History Week celebrations the following year. And in 1980, a consortium of women’s groups and historians—led by the National Women’s History Project (now the National Women’s History Alliance)—successfully lobbied for national recognition.
In February 1980, President Jimmy Carter issued the first Presidential Proclamation declaring the Week of March 2 – 8, 1980 as National Women’s History Week. And in that proclamation, Carter said this:
“Too often the women were unsung and sometimes their contributions went unnoticed,” Carter said. “But the achievements, leadership, courage, strength and love of the women who built America was as vital as that of the men whose names we know so well.”
The Month Is Under-Valued
And many have grown to understand WHM’s sole purpose as encouraging and allowing women and girls to see themselves in building of this nation and recognize their value and power in this current moment and beyond.
But that view is selling the month short… and giving men born and raised in a sexist and misogynist society way too much credit – as if men have always recognized the inherent value of women and honored their genius, their humanness and their divinity.
Now, we know that $#!+ ain’t true. Men have exploited and abused and misused and undervalued women for centuries. And when you add in the reality that this society is racist to its absolute core, the level of disrespect hurled in the direction of Black women is multiplied exponentially.
Brothers Need Women’s History Month
At some point, whether society in general ever gets with this or not, Black men need to take the lead in realizing we need Women’s History Month as much as if not more so than our sisters.
Why? To fully honor all the women in our lives.
Why? To recognize that all of life emerged out of a woman (a reality that challenges sexist, misogynist reads of theology that swear up and down that the Creator is some male figure. Make that make sense).
Why? To help us unlearn centuries of male-centeredness and deeply embedded attitudes and beliefs (conscious and subconscious) that have us talking, thinking and acting in ways that place women on some lower social rung. Hell, right now in 2024, Black women make 60-something cents for every dollar some white man doing the same job makes.
In state legislatures across the country, rooms populated by 80 – 100% white males are acting as if they have the divine right to decide what a woman can and can’t do with their body, and enacting laws to define a woman’s agency as illegal. And these decisions impact Black women worst of all.
Every issue impacting Black people negatively, Black women experience the ugliest, yet least acknowledged part, whether you’re talking about the white/Black wealth gap, lack of access to healthcare, the over-incarceration of our people, the miseducation and mistreatment of Black K-12 students, etc.
When Black men are over-incarcerated, Black women are left feeling the ugly economic and social brunt of that blow, back at the crib. Plus, Black women make up the fast-growing demographic of the newly incarcerated.
The verified and proven biases that exist in K-12 classrooms that see Black children least likely to be recommended for scholarships, AP courses, special awards, etc., and most likely to be punished harsher and more often for the same offenses as their white peers, hit little Black girls hardest as they experience “adultification” at much higher rates than Black boys… “adultification” being teachers, administrator, law enforcement, etc. viewing our little girls as older and more “worldly” and thus more deserving of harsher punishments that their white girl classmates.
Women’s History Month also allows Black men to see the power, courage and strength of the divine working through soul sisters.
Sometimes we brothers mistake their care and compassion for weakness rather than recognizing the strength that it calls for. The unconditional love mothers offer their children offers lessons all humans can learn from. The genius and creativity of Black women laid the foundations for civilizations past and can do the same for those self-determining realities we must build for our future. And Black women are so strong they recognize the healing power of being vulnerable and letting go of the need to be so strong all the damn time so they don’t choke the life out of themselves.
Brothers walking around mean-mugging all the time, frontin’ hard, can learn a thing or two from Black women’s purposefully chosen moments of vulnerability.
We aren’t going anywhere as a people without Black women and girls who are healthy and whole and thriving in a reality that respects, honors, nurtures, protects, reveres, listens to and learns from them.
And that kind of Black reality can only come about with Black brothers (men and boys) who break free from the matrix of racist misogyny and realize that the Almighty endowed Black women with the same inner divinity and messiah potential as any other being – if not more. And it probably is more, because, yo, Black women are literally and figuratively the mother of the universe. So, brothers, let’s start acting like it.
