African American Women Speak Out Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

African American Women Speak Out - Essay ExampleAfrican Americans in general have come a long commission from the dark days of slavery this is especially the case for women. There are so many challenges and issues that this group has faced over the year thus do it very difficult to summarize all this information in one piece. First of all, unforgiving People were struggling with the revolutionary agenda and in night club to garner support for their movement, most of the members of this party had to construct certain identities that were unique to the black person.Another issue that cropped up in this period was the fact that in that respect high levels of Sexism in the Black cougar party. This was largely depicted by the Actions of the troupes leaders-Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. In a book Published by Doubleday A perceptiveness of Power by Elaine Brown (1994), the author describes her experiences as a member of the Black Panther party. Elaine Brown was brought up in a poor Bl ack community but had the opportunity to access education.During her time in the Black Panther party, Elaine Brown, along with other women in the movement were largely interested in transforming African American welfare. These actions were the things that took up most of her time. Some of the activities that Ms. Brown foc utilise on included increasing medical attention to her community, provision of food assistance among many other aspects related to the social well being of her community. However the men in this party had a more radical approach to their coz. close of them applied as double thronged approach in the revolutionary activities there was the political dimension and the militant dimension. Leaders like Huey Newton and Bobby Seale wanted to create a defensive system for the Black people through military techniques. These ideas even permeated into the running of their daily activities.For instance, the Black Panther party used to publish a newspaper in which Elaine Bro wn was one of the editors. At one time, it happened that Brown (1994) had delayed with the newspapers production by one hour. In repartee to this action, the tough disciplinarian Booby Seale sought to find out who had caused this delay. When it was revealed that the editing took longer than required, Seale commanded his subordinates to disciple Elaine Brown. They did this by flogging her with ten lashes on her back. Brown (1994) explains that magical spell going through the beating, she was burning with rage at the actions of her leader Seale who seemed to be applying double standards in the administration of justice within this party. Within the Black Panther movement, women were expected to silently obey the words of the male leaders. Even the manner in which codes of practice were established in the Black Panther Party reflected this deep engrained Sexism. No one was expected to vote or contribute to the rules governing the party. Instead, women were to listen and abide by the decisions made by their male counterparts. It is also interest to note that within this party, there were no female leaders as all of them were predominantly male. This goes to show that women were almost invisible. To the men in top positions, women were seen as instruments that could be used to implement the party goals and nothing more.However, despite this seeming mistrust, on cannot overlook the fact that some women in the Black Panther Party contributed towards Black empowerment in their own silent guidance. One such case is the latter mentioned author who chose to change her society in whichever little way she could.Cleaver (1968) in his book Soul on Ice brings in a totally different dimension to the sentiments and feelings