The best exercise for the heart:Bend down and pick someone up...Tim Russert Black. Female. Accomplished. Attacked.By Sophia A. NelsonSunday, July 20, 2008; B01There she is -- no, not Miss America, but theAngela-Davis-Afro-wearing, machine-gun-toting, angry, unpatrioticMichelle Obama, greeting her husband with a fist bump instead of a kisson the cheek.It was supposed to be satire, but the caricature of Barack Obama andhis wife that appeared on the cover of the New Yorker last week rightlycaused a major flap. And among black professional women like me andman y of my sisters in the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, who happened tobe gathered last week in Washington for our 100th anniversarycelebration, the mischaracterization of Michelle hit the rawest ofnerves.Welcome to our world.We've watched with a mixture of pride and trepidation as the wife ofthe first serious African American presidential contender has weatheredrecent campaign travails -- being called unpatriotic for a singleoffhand remark, dubbed a black radical because of something she wrotemore than 20 years ago and plastered with the crowning stereotype:"angry black woman." And then being forced to undergo a politicallymandated "makeover" to soften her image and make her more palatable tomainstream America.Sad to say, but what Obama has undergone, though it's on a nationalstage and on a much more prominent scale, is nothing new toprofessional African American women. We endure this type of labelingall the time. We're endlessly familiar with the problem Michelle Obamais confronting -- being looked at, as black women, through a differentlens from our white counterparts, who are portrayed as kinder, gentlersouls who somehow deserve to be loved and valued more than we do. Somany of us are hoping that Michelle -- as an elegant and elusivecombination of successful career w oman, supportive wife and lovingmother -- can change that."Ain't I a woman?" Sojourner Truth famously asked 157 years ago. Herringing question, demanding why black women weren't accorded the sameprivileges as their white counterparts, still sums up the African American woman's dilemma today: How are we viewed as women and where do we fit into American life?"Thanks to the hip-hop industry," one prominent black femalejournalist recently said to me, all black women are "deemed 'sexuallypromiscuous video vixens' not worthy of consideration. If other blackwomen speak up, we're considered angry black women who complain. Thissociety can't even see a woman like Michelle Obama. All it sees is ablack woman and attaches stereotypes."Black women have been mischaracterized and stereotyped since the daysof slavery and minstrel shows. In more recent times, they've beenportrayed onscreen and in popular culture as either sexually availablebed wenches in such shows as the 2000 docudrama "Sally Hemings: AnAmerican Scandal," ignorant and foolish servants such as Prissy from"Gone With the Wind" or ever-smiling housekeepers, workhorses who nevercomplain and never tire, like the popular figure of Aunt Jemima.Even in the 21st century, bla ck women are still bombarded with mediaand Internet images that portray us as loud, aggressive, violent andoften grossly obese and unattractive. Think of the movies "Norbit" or"Big Momma's House," or of the only two black female characters in"Enchanted," an overweight, aggressive traffic cop and an angrydivorcée amid all the white princesses.On the other hand, when was the last time you saw a smart,accomplished black professional woman portrayed on mainstreamtelevision or in the movies? If Claire Huxtable on "The Cosby Show"comes to mind, remember that she left the scene 16 years ago.The reality is that in just a generation, many black women -- whowere mostly domestics, schoolteachers or nurses in the post-slavery JimCrow era -- have become astronauts, corporate executives, doctors,lawyers, engineers and PhDs. You name it, and black women have achievedit. The most popular woman on daytime television is Oprah Winfrey.Condoleezza Rice is secretary of state.And yet my generation of African American women -- we're called, infact, the Claire Huxtable generation -- hasn't managed to becomesuccessfully integrated into American popular culture. We're stilllooking for respect in the workplace, where, more than anything else,black women feel invisible. It's a term that comes up agai n and again."In my profession, white men mentor young whites on how to succeed," afinancial executive told me, but "they're either indifferent to ordogmatically document the mistakes black women make. Their indifferenceis the worst, because it means we're invisible."As someone who recently left a large law firm to work in thecorporate sector, I have to agree. I liked my firm, but I always feltthat I had to sink or swim on my own. I didn't get the kind ofmentoring that I saw white colleagues, male and female, getting allaround me. The firm was actually one of the better ones when it came todiversity, and yet of 600 partners, only five were black women.A 2007 American Bar Association report titled "Visible Invisibility"describes how black women in the legal profession face the "doubleburden" of being both black and female, meaning that they enjoy none ofthe advantages that black men gain from being male, or that white womengain from being white.Invisibility isn't the only problem. I run an organization dedicatedto supporting African American professional women and often runempowerment workshops at various conferences. At a recent suchworkshop, I asked the participants to list some words that woulddescribe how they believe they're viewed in the workplace and th eculture at large. These are the kinds of words that came back: "loud,""angry," "intimidating," "mean," "opinionated," "aggressive," "hard."All painful words. Yet asked to describe themselves, the same womenoffered gentler terms: "strong," "loving," "dependable,""compassionate."Where does the disconnect come from? Possibly from the way blackwomen have been forced into roles of strength for decades. "Black womenare the original multitaskers of necessity," says one nonprofitexecutive. "We've perfected it because we've been doing it for so long.But people don't appreciate the skill it requires, and they don'trecognize the toll it takes on us as human beings."For all our success in the professional world, we have paid asignificant price in our private and emotional lives. A life ofpreordained singleness (by chance, not by choice) is fast becoming theplight of alarming numbers of professional black women in America. Thefact is that the more money and education a black woman has, the lesslikely she is to marry and have a family.Consider these stunning statistics: As of 2007, according to the NewYork Times, 70 percent of professional black women were unmarried.Black women are five times more likely than white women to be single atage 40. In 2003, Newsweek reported that there are more black women thanblack men (24 percent to 17 percent) in the professional-managerialclass. According to Department of Education statistics cited by theJournal of Blacks in Higher Education, black women earn 67 percent ofall bachelor's degrees awarded to blacks, as well as 71 percent of allmaster's degrees and 65 percent of all doctoral degrees.With all the challenges facing professional black women today, wehope that Michelle Obama will defy the negative stereotypes about us.And that, now that a strong professional black woman is center stage,she'll bring to light what we already know: that an accomplished blackwoman can be a loyal and supportive wife and a good mother and stillfulfill her own dreams. The fact that her husband clearly adoresMichelle is both refreshing and reassuring to many of us who long tofind a good man who will love and appreciate us.Recently, a friend who's a married professional mother of three girlswrote to me: "I think one of the most interesting things about MichelleObama is that what she and her husband are doing is prettyrevolutionary these days -- and I don't mean running for president. Fora black man and woman in the U.S. to be happily married, with children,and working as partners to build a life -- let alone a life of serviceto others -- all while rearing their children together is downrightrevolutionary."It's how so many black professional women feel. And our hope is thatif Michelle Obama becomes first lady, the revolution will come to us atlast.snelson@iaskinc..orgSophia A. Nelson is a corporate attorney and president of iask, Inc.,an organization for African American professional women.
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