JUST INSIDE THE DOOR
Jordan, June
JUST INSIDE THE DOOR June Jordan No Chocolates for Breakfast Valentine's Day, 1989: Actually, any Valentine's Day of any year is something of a sore point for black women in white America....
...But so is he...
...I bet anybody ten cents: If Black women disappeared tomorrow, a huge retinue of self-appointed and New York 77ra?s-appoirited "experts" would have to hit the streets looking for new jobs...
...What a crock of patriarchal malar-key...
...As I wait to pay the (white) man my $2.50, I spot a Decorative Magnet ("fine porcelain enamel") featuring an absolutely leprous Aunt Jemima...
...Feelgood— and I could also use me a wife...
...Congress—this "imbalance," this de facto minority state of affairs for black women—implies "broad, harmful consequences" to anything...
...begin by calling an extremely successful black woman writer who is the sole support of two sons and who happens to be somebody I love...
...According to the information the experts selected for evaluation, 60 per cent of black students in colleges and universities are women: i.e., fewer black men currently attend institutions of higher learning than do black women...
...By ourselves, we're raising the great majority of black children...
...Seems we're generally not doing good enough or else we're doing altogether too good...
...Four dollars," he says, but then deciding, I guess, that I'm real keen to remove this lurid affront from the public realm, he tells me, "Five...
...For example, I can't think of a single black woman who has a wife...
...And I could easily fill the Manhattan yellow pages with a list of woeful, specific disadvantages summarized by that fact...
...But let me not exaggerate the debit side of things...
...We earn less than white men, white women, and black men, period...
...He eyes me carefully...
...We do not talk long even though neither of us has to excuse herself and run to the door where Western Union's staggering under a load of passionate telegrams addressed to the one-and-only dearest-treasure-in-the-world, meaning me, or my friend...
...There is a disaster, yes, and I have every reason to hope that whoever can turn it around will get started, very soon, on the straightaway, lucidly an-tiracist track that will take us, as a people, where we need to go...
...Anyway, Valentine's Day, 1989, and I June Jordan appears in this space every other month...
...I throw five dollars on top of the birthday card and slam back into the street...
...In the meantime, looking ahead to Valentine's Day, 1990: Can't you guys violate your own traditions and, just once, just for one teeny-weeny year, can't you tighten your belts, so to speak, and leave us the hell alone...
...I mean, whenever these experts find two or three black women, why, the next thing you know, there is a pathogenic This or a pathological That...
...I have never heard anybody say that the virtual monopoly of black men in the realm of public elected office, up to and including the U.S...
...And yet we work in greater numbers than our white counterparts...
...I'll stay home with Ka-mali," or "I'll get dinner together," or "I'll clean up," or, most importantly, "Why don't you just sit down...
...I'll tell you about "harmful": Harmful is the manipulation of 0.3 per cent and 1.9 per cent so that, instead of uniting to demand a more than ludicrous degree of representation as a people, we descend into internecine gender wars at our collective expense...
...We do have "experts...
...And, none of us has a wife...
...I know of a prestigious West Coast university feverishly trying to hire not one but three black women on its faculty, all at once: Imbalanced...
...How much," I ask the (white) man behind the counter, "how much is that particular little obscenity over there...
...That black women are falling behind somewhat more slowly in a single arena of our national life is not disastrous...
...Flowers and wine by candlelight have always been pretty scarce items in the housing projects and tenements or raggedy shacks where most of us live, if we have someplace, indoors, to sleep and keep a hard-won semblance of a family alive...
...I have never heard anybody bemoan the fact that Jesse Jackson is not female...
...Silently, we assess each other...
...Two Sundays ago, front page, they laid out this pseudoscientific headline with all their usual pomp: Experts Foresee a Social Gap Between Sexes Among Blacks...
...Or, to paraphrase an Aretha Franklin classic: Don't Send Me No Experts: I Need a Man Name Dr...
...This will have "broad, harmful consequences not only on campuses, but throughout American society...
...This imbalance among blacks," the experts proceed to explain, "will have broad, harmful consequences not only on campuses but throughout American society...
...Have you...
...Black men constitute 1.9 per cent of that total faculty while black women amount to a pitiful 0.3 per cent...
...Can anyone doubt that this is a calamity...
...I can feel this homicidal rush of blood to my face...
...Her latest books, published by Virago Press in London, are: "Lyrical Campaigns: Selected Poems," and "Moving Towards Home: Selected Political Essays...
...The point is not about black boys versus black girls: The point is that, as of 1988, 49 per cent of black children, six-years-old or younger, "live" below the poverty line...
...I'm serious...
...Have you...
...And besides, there's a whole lot of catching up that's got to happen...
...Immediately afterwards I go into the local stationers and I choose the prettiest, the most delicate and obviously hand-made birthday card to send to my friend, whose name-day's coming up fast...
...We head more households...
...Not one of us has somebody devoted and programmed to say amazing things like, "That's all right, honey, I'll take care of the laundry—and the garbage," or "Don't worry about it...
...They've been scarce, as, oh—let's say—scarce as sweet-talking lovers who stick around, hands-on, to mitigate the Monday-morning blues...
...But, meanwhile, we've been managing, you know, entirely without chocolates for breakfast...
...It seems we can't be beat for blame...
...No telegram is one thing, but Aunt Jemima on my Valentine's Day...
...But I'm cool...
...That's about as gratuitous, as malevolent, and as bedeviling as The New York Times...
...Is it God-given that men of whatever description "should" know more, earn more, wield more power than women...
...Either way, me and my sistren, we apparently function as the hopeless carriers, if not the causative agents, of bad news...
Vol. 53 • April 1989 • No. 4
