De nigger woman is de mule uh de world
I keep running across this theme lately. It seems black women are generally catching hell where ever I look--
Honey, de white man is de ruler of everything as fur as Ah been able tub find out. Maybe it's some place off in de ocean where de black man is in power, but we don't know nothin’ but we see. So de white man throw down de load and tell de nigger man tuh pick it up. He pick it up because he have to, but he don't tote it. He hand it to his womenfolks. De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so far as Ah can see.
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston
Stephanie's Journal
Sharon's Muse
Expat Jane
Rachel's Place
Honey, de white man is de ruler of everything as fur as Ah been able tub find out. Maybe it's some place off in de ocean where de black man is in power, but we don't know nothin’ but we see. So de white man throw down de load and tell de nigger man tuh pick it up. He pick it up because he have to, but he don't tote it. He hand it to his womenfolks. De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so far as Ah can see.
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston
Stephanie's Journal
Sharon's Muse
Expat Jane
Rachel's Place
posted by clarafiedwords at 10:58 AM
My thing is on the topic I posted about, I think it's more our internalization of the idea what black isn't beautiful than the outside world making us believe it. Those girls in the A Girl Like Me video mostly referred to their mothers as the ones foisting this belief on them. I mean I don't believe it and I'm truly shocked when others do. I'm really sad to hear about mothers laying colorism on their own daughters. That's just sick.
So we might be mules, but it seems that these days we're mules because we believe it to be true rather than the world keeping us down.
Yes, I think it's a legacy of slavery. We African Americans have a particular kind of self hate that the West capitalizes on as seen on BET or MTV. What is really sad is how eagerly we participate.
This is great, thank you! I am doing a report on blacks in India and it is so sad. Although Hurston suggests, through the character in the book, Janie's Grandmother, that the black woman is the mule of the world, I think that blacks in general are the mule of the world. Blacks are hated on all corners of the globe and why? Well, that is the million-dollar question! In India the hate is especially thick against blacks and non light peoples--the Dalit and the black untouchables bear the brunt of this hatred. The sad thing is, the white man is the one who oppressed, stole, pillaged, and destroyed so much of India--not the blacks!