'Becky and Me': Can black women and white women be true friends? - Note for a Discussion, "E Pluribus Unum? What Keeps the United States United."

Candid conversations about identity in 21st-century America

via email from The Washington Post

Kim McLarin freelance writer

In the scene from “Roots” I most remember, Missy Anne informs Kizzy that she is to become her property.

Missy Anne (the name itself is black shorthand for a white woman, a forerunner of “Becky”) and Kizzy have grown up together. Missy Anne has even secretly taught Kizzy to write and read. She is delighted at the prospect of becoming the legal owner of her friend.

Kizzy is less so: Among other things, she doesn’t want to leave her family. But she knows enough not to voice her displeasure; she feints and feigns until Missy Anne demands an answer.

“Kizzy, don’t you want to be my slave?” the white woman pouts. “Aren’t you my friend?”

Generally speaking, it’s not that I dislike white women. Generally speaking, it’s that I do not trust them. Generally speaking, most black women don’t.

That’s a big statement, impossible to either prove or disprove. I make it based upon a lifetime of observation and study, and also a highly unscientific survey of friends and friends of friends, ranging in age from 20 to “well over 60.”

Maya Angelou and Gloria Steinem on their way to the March on Washington on August 27, 1983.  (James M. Thresher/The Washington Post)

Among the findings: This distrust — or, more precisely, this absence of trust — seems to hold true whether or not the black woman has lived and worked mostly in predominantly white environments, whether or not she actually has any white female friends, whether or not she feels this absence as a loss.

When I ask black women why they have so few white female friends their answers range — “Too much trouble,” “They don’t see me,” “Seems like something about us just sticks in their craw” — but seem to cluster around two major themes: power and invisibility.

Put simply, white women have power they will not share and to which they mostly will not admit, even when wielding it. Think about all the white women calling the police on black women and men for capital crimes such as grilling near a lake, driving through a neighborhood, bumping a leg on an overcrowded plane.

White women sit at the right hand of power, leaning in, not down. There have been 41 white female governors (and two Latina and one South Asian governors) but not a single black female one. In fact, black women represent just 4.5 percent of all female statewide elected officials. Twenty-one of the 25 female U.S. senators are white, as are the vast majority of female members of Congress.

White women hold only 4.4 percent of CEO positions, but black women hold a mere 0.2 percent. Every “Equal Pay Day,” white feminists decry that women average 80 percent of a man’s salary, but rarely mention that the figure applies mostly to white women: Latinas average 54 cents for every dollar, black women average 68 cents, American Indian and Alaskan Native women make 58 cents.

Far more concerning is the wealth gap: the wealth of white women swamps that of black women — regardless of age, marital status or education level.

Yet rarely do white feminists take up the greater cause of black female inequity. White women are among the most vocal and vociferous opponents of affirmative action, despite being equal, if not greater, beneficiaries.

This is what black women know: When push comes to shove, white women choose race over gender: Every. Single. Time.

That white women do not want to relinquish their spot on the second rung is to be expected. “Power concedes nothing without a demand,” wrote Frederick Douglass. “Never has, never will.”

It’s the pretense that’s maddening.

Adapted from McLarin's new book, "Womanish: A Grown Black Woman Speaks on Love and Life." Keep reading this essay.