US Elections

DSK and black women in reconstruction-era America

By Jonathan Bradley in Newcastle, Australia

19 May 2011

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In the wake of Dominique Strauss-Kahn's arrest on sexual assault charges, Ta-Nehisi Coates considers the safe work practices of hotel staff, as discussed in this New York Times article:

Ignorant as always, I really had no idea why housekeeper's generally keep the doors open while cleaning. Moreover, it's only in considering the nature of working at a hotel work, that I got some picture of how vulnerable a woman could be. I spend a lot of time traveling, and the sheer artificial quiet and long corridors, make a lot of hotels creepy, even for me.

Like TNC, I'd never considered the vulnerability of women in these kinds of professions. But that post reminded me that, then until I'd studied an African American history course last year at the University of Washington, I'd never considered a similar vulnerability black women were subject to in post-reconstruction America. See, in those days, few jobs were available to black woman, and one of the worst of these was to work as a housekeeper or nanny. In Upbuilding Black Durham (p.233), Leslie Brown explains why:

[D]omestic service was arranged on an individual basis, it offered ess flexibility than factory work and the hours were unpredictable. Household laborers worked on demand, from early morning, before the white family rose, until late evenings after the family's dinner. Full time positions provided little time off, perhaps ony Thursdays and every other Sunday. Day work, temporary household employment accepted by those who could find no permanent position, posed an even more precarious situation. All black domestics encountered greater risk of sexual abuse from white men in the isolated private setting of white homes.

Until I'd read this passage, it had never occured to me the quite ghastly position in which the collision of race, gender, and poverty could put a woman. Unsurprisingly, black women tended to flee housekeeping work the first chance they got. Also unsurprisingly, this created a sense of pride among black middle class families in which women did not have to work. At a time when societal expectations of femininity encouraged women to stay at home, and the demands of poverty encouraged black people of both genders to seek employment, for African American women of the early 20th century, there was a certain liberation in being wealthy enough to be just a housewife for one's own home.

Tags: Dominique Strausskahn, Dsk, Durham, Gender, History, Leslie Brown, North Carolina, Postreconstruction America, Race, The South, Upbuilding Black Durham, Women

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