To be a Poor Black Woman in America:



To be a Poor Black Woman in America:

Race, Class, and Gender in Debra Dickerson’s An American Story

In the last several decades American Studies scholars have increasingly focused on the three related issues of race, class, and gender as a means toward understanding the complex and ever-changing social structures and cultural dynamics of American history. Yet while years of study have brought issues of cultural marginalization to the forefront of both academic and political debate, they have produced few definitive answers, most especially on the overriding question of the comparative importance of each of these three interrelated factors in influencing individuals’ opportunities and constraining their choices. It is precisely because Debra Dickerson’s An American Story deals with these issues from multiple perspectives (partly through the author’s own changing socio-political assumptions) without reaching any ultimate conclusion that it can be justifiably read as a culturally telling story of America over the last several decades. Through her progression from the abused and degraded daughter of poverty stricken former sharecroppers in Sixties St. Louis to an Air Force officer justifiably fearing rape even as she felt little official racism to a politically engaged law student attempting to understand issues of identify politics both for herself and the black middle class students’ around her, Dickerson undergoes a full range of potentially politicizing life processes uniquely relevant to and reflective of America in the late 20th century. In exploring the varying extents to which she could (and might wish to) transcend her class origins, femininity, and skin color, Dickerson acts as an effective stand in for a contemporary culture trying to collectively come to terms with a long history of often far from overt discrimination.

Acutely aware of her status as an African-American in a white society from almost the very beginning of her life, Dickerson’s early views on race were influenced both by her parents ingrained self-conceptions and her own youthful experiences in a structurally segregated educational system. Her parents long having lived a life of apolitical accommodation, viewing the best case scenario as one where Democratic governance assured that “the little man [could] have something” even if it couldn’t be “as much as the white folks naturally,” Dickerson “wasn’t raised to fight the power” (Dickerson XVI, XIV). Rather than seeking to overturn the dominant structures of her oppression Dickerson had already by the age of nine determined that her only road to personal advancement was to become a part of the white world. Wanting “that special knowledge to which only whites had access” and realizing that if she remained in her own local and overwhelming black school she could only learn “what whites wanted [her] to know,” she convinced her parents, over their objections to being bussed to a white school, to permit her to attend the gifted school where she was taught and accepted the fact that “that the black way was the wrong way” (34, 64). This view (even as it moderated in later years) would color her future interactions with many African-American’s, such as when her own refusal to identify as completely black in an Air Force establishment she viewed as racially blind meant that the other African-American airmen “wouldn’t identify with [her] if [she] ever needed backup” in a tough situation or a strong support system in a world of increasingly identified politics (95). Yet following her graduation from officer’s training and her recommitment to education, Dickerson’s views changed as she began to perceive “the black political class openly selling out the black masses for greater access to power, or, worse, to assuage their own self hatred” (189). Retrospectively grateful for having realized her earlier ‘mistakes,’ Dickerson’s experiences as a member of the Harvard Black Student’s Law Association, which she describes as populated by a group of “pampered twenty-somethings” many with “important connections” and nearly all “at least middle class,” solidified in her mind an opinion she’d held in embryo for years (246, 245). While race was clearly a contentious issue in American society, to Dickerson it was one’s class position which most determined the possibilities and influenced the actualities of people’s life.

While historical and contemporary examples of race and gender changes do exist, in mainstream American ideology it is class which can be (and is often expected to be) transcended through pluck, luck, and study. Yet for a young Dickerson the notion of material advancement was almost nonexistent, as she never received from her parent’s any “conception that the American dream could be” hers while growing up in considerable poverty made even worse following their escape from her abusive father (XIV). Whereas she’d fought with her father over his determination to purchase Veteran’s Village clothing whose distinctive smell marked her for mockery, the dearth of income brought in by her mother several years later was barely enough to cover the minimum payments on debts and provide an undifferentiated meager meal plan. Her acceptance of this life of poverty would also impact her academic pursuits, as the cost of a university and her utter unawareness of the availability of scholarships sent her to a community college where she even failed to graduate due to her inability to conceive of a future life for herself fundamentally materially different from that of her youth. It was her years in the Air Force, where advancement through the ranks was possible and mirrored in many ways upward class mobility, as well as her continued readings and political reflections, that ultimately convinced her of the importance of economics in social status. Realizing “how bad things were for working people” Dickerson shifted politically away from the Reaganite libertarianism she’d earlier espoused and toward an understanding of the structural problems which tended to keep lower class individuals of all races in their rut (137). Still the problem of black poverty weighed heavy on her mind as she contemplated involving herself in social work or political advocacy before determining that law was ultimately the only arena through which real change could be initiated. Indeed, it was only once in law school, where she realized her own elite status while consciously differentiating herself from those privileged African-American’s who “talked revolution while shopping at Saks,” that she came to fully understand the complex interactions and functional blurring of race and class in contemporary American society (276). Yet while blacks could sometimes operate in a white world provided they had sufficient material backing, the lines defined by gender remained an immutable issue.

Even more than her race or class background, Dickerson’s place as a female in a ‘traditionally’ structured male-headed household was clear to her from day one. This was most evident in the unique way her brother “the only one (besides [her] Daddy) not required to do housework” despite the fact that “it was he who thoughtlessly placed unrinsed cans” in the garbage, was treated by both her parents (27). Indeed throughout her childhood Dickerson existed in an environment where “the males lounged while the females cooked and cleaned with babies on their hip,” and her brother reprimanded and suspiciously gazed upon by her father for any act as innocent as lifting a dishrag (28). This awareness of a double standard was further solidified by her years in the Air Force, especially in the treatment she received from male higher ups following her rape. Indeed, there was no more “unit education on acquaintance rape or irresponsible drinking or sexual harassment” after her assault then there had been before, while many supervisors even joked about the incident and suggested, as is often the case in such instances, that it was in fact her fault (128). But it is her personal reaction to the event which is most interesting and problematic from a gendered perspective. Dickerson states that her post-rape character “makeover also included” her becoming “a glamour queen” and taking a much more active interest in her own appearance, even coming to appreciate and expect the “rude taunts” she’d receive while running (129). Yet even years after her assault Dickerson continued to feel as if she “had a target on [her] pelvis” refusing to go out at night alone in order to “live [her] life unmolested,” her ultimate definition of feminism (201). Indeed, from her youthful beatings and beratings to her adult assault and its aftermath, it was her position as a woman in a sexist society that she could never alter.

Debra Dickerson’s personal saga can serve as a paradigmatic American story because of the complex ways in which her own experiences and opinions act as a mirror on the larger culture and the changes it has undergone since the Sixties. Firstly, the persistence of her youthfully ingrained opinions regarding her social position, as a poor black female, in spite of her subsequent upward economic mobility and her shifting feelings of alienation and acceptance toward other African-Americans, suggest the lasting cultural effects which inherited beliefs can hold even long after those who espoused them have passed on. Secondly, through her changing conceptions of the causes and solutions to poverty and other social ills, one can discern multiple strains of contemporary political thought ranging from neo-conservative hyper-individualism to structurally critical social liberalism. Yet it is in attempting to clearly discern (which she never quite can) and deal with the omnipresent issues of race, class, and gender that Dickerson makes her most interesting commentaries and useful contributions toward understanding America today.

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