Mistreatment Of Women

In Darlene Clark Hine’s essay, “Rape and the Inner Lives of Black Women in the Middle West,” she focuses on the struggles black women experienced in hope to live a better life for themselves and their children. These women dealt with the miserable combination of rape, domestic violence, and economic oppression and this influenced them to migrate to the Midwest in order to escape these mistreatments. They hope to gain a more comfortable life filled with opportunities; however, the mistreatment they endured in the South haunts them because they still experienced great discrimination in America. Although migrating grants them greater opportunity and freedom, black women’s continuous mistreatment of rape (or the threat of rape), domestic violence,
However, black women were limited and restricted to jobs and opportunities. Hines emphasizes that: “Black women faced greater economic discrimination and had fewer employment opportunities than did Black men,” as well as “receiving less than white women for the same work” (913). Even so, they held similar domestic service jobs like they did in the South. This just proves the black women are mistreated in economics and labor because they are getting paid less than white women for similar roles and they are limited to a fewer job opportunities. In addition, their economic oppression drives them to develop the culture of secrecy as a defensive mechanism to battle oppression in the labor field. Essentially, Hines includes: “Their secrecy or ‘invisibility’ contributed to the development of an atmosphere inimical to realizing equal opportunities or a place of respect in larger society” (915). He implies that these women distorted to a culture of secrecy because they deserve to have equal opportunity and a chance to earn a decent living. This allowed black women the chance to obtain resources in their struggle for advancement against the struggle of inequality. Black women use this secrecy and isolation to accomplish equality in economics and labor fields, however, they are able to take advantage on this opportunity to focus on their own work and success as they independently move in silence. Even so, in Lena Wright Myer’s text, “A Broken Silence: Voices of African American Women in the Academy,” she proves that black women’s mistreatment in America, especially in economic and labor fields, drives them to a culture of silence to prove that they are competent. Myers analyzes the experience of multiple black women in America and how they are negatively affected by economic oppression when she