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Prerogative
October/November 1989
Take Action
by Jocelyn R. Coleman
Regardless of how you feel about the
abortion issue, you need to take action. Most
of the women in America having abortions
are the same ages as Spelman women. Afri
can-American women are having twice as
many abortions as whites.
As young African-American women, we
represent the exact majority of the women
who are directly affected by the issues sur
rounding reproductive rights. Our opinions
must be heard. The best thing to do is to
become both informed and involved. It is also
important to vote for candidates that agree
with you on the abortion issue. It is not fair for
a woman’s reproductive freedom to be totally
denied because of poverty, absence of a spouse
class structure or a brutal rape.
Knowledge is power; and the more we
know about how the Supreme Court is man
dating our choices the more ammunition we
have to fight with.
The irony of this entire debate is that the
women in the forefront are not directly af
fected like we are. Most of the leaders are not
those getting pregnant at the highest rate or
having the most abortions. Most of the lead
ers are white middle to upper class and appear
to be at middle to upper age.
Apathy is not tolorable at this point. We
need to take action. We need to start speaking
for ourselves.
And the Winner Is...
by Tayari Jones
Why is it that women represent More
house in their homecoming activities? Women
do not attend Morehouse; so how could they
possibly be qualified representatives of that
college?
If, however, a woman must be chosen to
represent a men’s college, why must the com
petition be in the form of a pageant? (In the
interest of fairness. I must note that Spelman
also indulges in this lunacy.) A woman who,
for some reason I can’t fathom, decides to
participate in a pageant should be prepared to
spend countless hours of her study time and
hundreds of her dollars. If she loses, her
money and time are spent in vain. If she wins,
her money and time are still wasted. After all,
there is no prize for the lucky winner. No
scholarship is offered. She receives a dozen
roses; but roses die.
Even graver than the financial disadvan
tages are the social implications of pageants.
Pageants focus on the superficial. After a
woman has paraded on a stage for an hour
and- a- half, the cat-calling audience is made
Racism in
“To be prepared
By Delitha L. Morrow
With all the attention and media cover
age surrounding the Virginia Beach incident,
can any of us honestly say we know what
really happened? What we can say is that the
events in Virginia Beach, Bensonhurst, How
ard Beach, etc. have a whole new topic of con
versation amongst ourselves.
The media has said it’s O.K. for us to talk
about race issues now. Hence, everybody is
talking about it.
If you’re not reading about them, watch
ing debates about them, or talking about them,
you should be. Pay close attention not only to
what’s being said, but also to who’s saying it.
In “The R.A.C.E.”on NBC, the televi
sion documentary mediated by Bryant Gum-
bel, Donald Trump the symbol of corporate
America) white, male middle-aged, success
ful, and wealthy)said he wished he could
somehow be reincarnated as a young Black
educated male. “They have the best opportu
nities for success now,’’ he reasoned.
In a similiar documentary, “ Growing Up
Black in White America”, a Black corporate
executive explained how it feels to walk down
the street and see a white woman clutch her
purse closer to her body because she spotted
a Black male. The media’s Black male who is
always using and dealing drugs, robbing
sure of one thing: what she looks like. A
defender of pageants may argue that the swim
suit competition has been abolished. So what?
The concept is the same. The only difference
is that the audience cannot make as thorough
an assessment of the contestant’s body as they
yell obscenities.
No, let’s be fair. Her talent is evaluated.
Her performing talent that is.If a contestant’s
area of aptitude is not singing, dancing or
drama, she’s just out of luck. When is her
intellect measured? During the question and
answer session, of course. (“If you could be
any animal, what would you be?”)
My friend, Askhari, has a brilliant idea.
Why not choose the representative through an
essay contest? This way the voting body Can
be sure that the representative it chooses is lit
erate, logical, focused and socially conscious.
There’s only one catch. The voters will not
know what she looks like or even her name
until after the selection process. Do you think
the men of Morehouse will abandon pag
eants, the most overt example of sexism in our
community, in favor of this new idea?
Me either.
the Media
is to be informed”
people and raping women. Trump’s state
ments about race illustrate the kind of igno
rance many whites have about racism. Un
fortunately, these same whites control what
we see, hear and read in the media.
This is why we don’t know what hap
pened in Virginia Beach. The media doesn’t
want to tell us that the National Guard and the
policemen standing in full riot gear through
out the beach area overreacted.
Instead, they^point out incidents of vio
lence from previous years to explain this
year’s crackdown - violence we heard little or
nothing about when it happened.
Like it or not, racism will continue to be
discussed in the media because it’s “the thing
to do.” We, as Black college students (re
ferred to as the “elite” by the media), can and
must be aware of racial issues.
We should not allow ourselves to be de
luded by the nurturing Black colleges that
foster our sense of self-knowlege but shield
us from reality. We must all someday leave
the cocoon to enter the mainstream, and we
must be prepared. To be prepared is to be
informed.
Thirty years ago, we couldn’t go to Lake
Lanier. Next year, we can expect to be ex
cluded from Virginia Beach.
Beverly’s Boots
by Pearl Cleage
Reprinted with permission from author,
Pearl Cleage C'72, lecturer of English at
Spelman, artistic director ofClub Zebra, editor
of Catalyst Magazine and freelance
writer. “Beverly ” is our own Dr. Beverly Guy-
Sheftall, Director of the Spelman College
Women’s Center and recent recipient of the
Coalition of 100 Black Women Candace
Award.
Sisterhood is a funny thing. It’s easy to
recognize, but it’s hard to define. It’s an
embracing circle and a 100-yard dash. It's as
familiar as a favorite pair of sneakers and as
mysterious as a cat’s eye stone. It is a lifeline
to the future and a tangible link to the past. It’s
easier to say what it feels like than to say what
it is. It's also safer to be as specific as possible.
Last month is as good a place to start as any.
Now I know March was supposed to
come in like a lion and go out like a lamb, but
nothing prepared me for what happened in
between the two. It started off like any other
month. Bills to pay. Groceries to buy. Mid
terms to monitor. But somewhere near the end
of the second week, I got a notice telling me
that Spelman College was hosting a speaker’s
series featuring Essence Editor Susan Taylor,
writer and scholar Mary Helen Washington
and poet Nikki Giovanni. Around the same
time, Sister Sue Ross, Atlanta documentary
photographer extraordinaraire, invited me to
a 50th birthday party for writer Toni Cade
Bambara at the Hammonds House, the vi
brant West End cultural center that had just
celebrated its own first birthday.
I was delighted and I tacked the invita
tions to my bulletin board, savoring the sight
of them as if they were Sunday School sweets.
I was ready to be immersed in sisterhood;
surrounded by sisterhood; consumed by sis
terhood! It had, after all, been a long, hard
winter. The election of George Bush and Dan
Quayle, after a seemingly endless campaign,
had filled D.C. with the same crowd of evilly
posturing white men who had been in charge
for the last eight years. The election had de
pressed me more than I had expected it to. I
felt adrift, frightened, marooned in a country
that was making it clear with depressing regu
larity that it had little interest in, or time for,
me and mine.
I saw the same confused look in the eyes
of many of my sisters, and I became aware of
our unspoken but undeniable movement
inward. Looking out was a little too danger
ous right now, and it was getting harder and
harder to feel like anything we did made any
difference. I felt like we should all start wear
ing whatever camouflage we could find and
bunker down to wait out the storm.
But in the Spelman invitation to a week
rich in sisterspeak, and in the joyful celebra
tion that I had no doubt would greet Toni’s
birthday, I saw an antidote, however tempo
rary, to the Bush-Quayle blues. Help, as they
say, was on the way, and I was more than
ready for it.
What I wasn’t ready for was my reaction
to that concentrated dose of sisterhood. I didn' t
know how hungry I was for a dose of black
female reality. Within a space of four days, I
listened to Mary Helen Washington talk about
the triumphant struggles of black foremoth
ers, and I was inspired by her scholarship and
energy. I heard Susan Taylor make all the
right connections between our lack of group
identity and our group’s current problems,
and I was energized by her commitment. I felt
Nikki Giovanni’s wildly individual spirit on
the campus, and I laughed at her continuing
outspoken specificity. I stood in a circle of
black women in Spelman President Johnetta
Cole’s campus living room listening to writer
Sonia Sanchez invoke the blessings of what
ever gods may be for our private and cllective
journeys, and 1 felt comforted and loved and
challenged and strong. And I stood in a
crowded room and cheered the triumphant
genius of sisterwriter Toni Cade Bambara,
and I wept and laughed and wondered if I was
finally losing my mind for real. Presidential
politics aside. I cautioned myself, you're out
of control, a dangerous stage for a Black
woman in America. Was I crazy, I wondered,
to be feeling this free? Was I forgetting who
was really in charge? All of a sudden, I felt my
blues coming back strong, and that’s when I
saw Beverly’s boots.
Right there in the middle of the party, in
the midst of the sisters serving fried potatoes
and caviar and the brothers trying to navigate
the intricacies of being outnumbered 25 to 1 in
a room full of strong black women, Beverly
was wearing a pair of wildly fringed cowboy
boots. They were silver and black or silver and
white—I don’t remember. What I do remem
ber is that they were funny and outrageous and
silly and stylish and absolutely free. Those
boots didn’t give a damn about George Bush.
They were too busy studying. They refused to
even acknowledge Dan Quayle. They were
too busy planning. And they didn’t even know
the meaning of the word cynical. They were
too busy dancing.
And suddenly, I stopped worrying. About
the Big Boys in D.C. About the home boys in
Atlanta. About insanity and politics and things
that go bump in the night. I looked at Bev
erly’s boots, and I understood that nothing
They do means we can’t go out and celebrate
our existence and confirm our struggles and
evaluate our progress and believe in our future
and laugh together at our continuing survival
and wear our cowboy boots whenever we
please.
So thanks. Beverly and Toni and Mary
Helen and Sonia and Johnetta and Susan and
Wild Nikki. I needed that. I thinkl’ve gotatrip
to the shoe store coming.