Ain't I a woman?
“That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud puddles, or gives me any best place, and ain’t I a woman? … I have plowed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me — and ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man (when I could get it), and bear the lash as well — and ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children and seen most all sold off to slavery and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me — and ain’t I woman?”
- Sojourner Truth
To be a black woman in America in the 18th century meant being thrice disadvantaged: black, woman, slave. Still, Sojourner Truth was able to say these words and achieve a lot more throughout her life. Read more about her remarkable journey here.
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Tololy, I wonder what Sojourner would think of today’s America.<br /><br />Back in Canada, my Computer Networking Instructor was Jamaican (and black). He always complained how the American police harassed him whenever he travelled to the US (particularily in the south), and that while the Canadian police where somewhat better, they still harassed him too.<br /><br />I was in his class when the planes hit the towers, and when it was suggested a group of Arabs did it. I said to him Nels, now we’re going to know what it is like being black in America.<br /><br />So now, Arab Women in America are already more disadvantaged than a black woman in today’s America. (although certainly not as disadvantaged as Sojourner was back then).<br />