Damned if you do, damned if you don't

This week, I really enjoyed reading the two online articles. For my post, I will focus on Echols' article. An important point that stood out to me while she was discussing the height of "the Movement" and juxtaposing both sexual and racial tensions at the time was the issue of black men sleeping with white women. All facets of this phenomena were interesting to consider; that is, the black male's perspective, the white female's perspective and last, but not least, the black female's perspective.

Echols claims that black men slept, or rather "used white women in an effort to reclaim their manhood." (30) I think what is inferred here is that sleeping with a white woman was more of an accomplishment that sleeping with another black woman because at the time they were recognized still as a higher class with dare I say it, more power. If a black man, therefore, were to sleep with lots of white women, which seemed to be happening quite often, then they would establish a feeling of conquest. Because it gave these men so much confidence, it become a mindless act to sleep with all these white women and got to a point where the men were just sleeping with the girls to, as Echols puts it, add another notch to his gun. Unfortunately, this is all to similar is today's world, with young men (of any race) trying to sleep with as many women as possible to feel successful and sometimes powerful. Have we pinpointed the initial cause of such a destructive practice that yet again sets women out to be simply objects? I think we perhaps have identified one piece in a very large puzzle.

On the other extreme, white women, Echols argues, were sleeping with these black men to "prove their liberalism or to 'expiate their guilt'." (30) This reasoning isn't much better. Echols is saying that these women were merely sleeping with the black men and using their bodies as an alternative to voicing their opinions about women's liberation. That is, rather than protesting or writing articles or hosting rallies, there were sleeping their way through cities to get their point across; that women were on the same playing field as men. Another reasoning for the promiscuity of females was the catch 22 idea that if a white woman rejected a black man's advances, she could be potentially scrutinized for racism, but if she did accept and slept with the man, they she could be labeled as a slut. This is a very interesting concept that Echols writes about that I think transcends into Colgate's "hook-up culture". The catch 22 at Colgate, albeit somewhat modified has the same resounding negative impact on the female population. If a girl rejects the sexual advances of a guy on campus, the guy will move on to another girl who will "give it up" and the former girl will be left alone. However, if a girl accepts the advances, she will similarly be labeled "loose." (30) (Can't a girl catch a break!)

The black female at this time were left to play the role of bystander. They were almost like the peanut gallery watching and forming opinions about the sexual encounters between these black men and white women. These women, on the one hand, had the upper hand because they could see how these white women were being used. The other extreme, then, is that they do not have sex with anyone because the black men are satisfied with all their white female conquests. Sadly, there was no compromise.