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Sheila Evans

Reality For Black Women Often Called “Situation of Struggles”

By Rosaland Tyler
Associate Editor
New Journal and Guide

     Sheila Evans was pretty much fed up with women’s church groups, eight years ago when she joined the women’s ministry at Morning Star United Holy Churches of America.
      Still, she stepped outside of her comfort zone, reaching out to other women to give and to receive support. Similar to how Oprah Winfrey started a girl’s leadership academy in South Africa—or how two large women’s groups organized the National Association of Colored Women’s Club in 1896, Evans said reaching out for support made her feel better.
     “I’d had bad, run-ins in the past with women,” Evans said, explaining how she’d quit one church then joined another. However, she refused to let a bad experience isolate her. “In the real world, you feel like it’s me, myself and I. Nobody else will help me. Nobody cares. But, that’s the trick. That’s how it is in the wild. The isolated animal gets killed first.”
      So, is it time to move out of familiar but restrictive comfort zones, as the nation celebrates another Women’s History Month? More likely to be unmarried, to head a household, and to live in poverty, the African American woman pays a high price for being black, according to a growing number of studies.
       But suffering in silence can be fatal, according to a study on 334 midlife black women. The first report to link hardening of the arteries to chronic mistreatment, the 2003 Health Psychology study found that black women who pointed to racism as a source of stress in their lives, developed slightly more plaque in their carotid arteries, than those who did not.
       One of more than 100 studies to document the effects of racial discrimination on the body since 2000, growing evidence suggests that chronic mistreatment literally hurts the body, in other words.

     It leads to stress which can lead to heart disease, the No. 1 killer of African American women, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
But it’s not just the racism.
     “Look at what’s involved in trying to make it in today’s society,” said the Rev. Mary W. Colden, elder of the ministry of congregational spirituality, at Norfolk’s Second Calvary Baptist.
      There are children, jobs, parents, spouses or significant others, and mounting pressures. However, “black women have traditionally created safe havens from hostile environments,” adds Dr. Beverlyn Lundy Allen, in A Re-articulation of Black Female Community Leadership, 1997.

Posted March 26, 2008

    
     “Black women formulate ideas and models that express the reality of their own experiences while opposing the ideology of domination.” In other words, black females hook up to focus on survival. They see a problem, then a form a group to solve it.
     “The black woman’s reality is a situation of struggles,” noted Allen, a sociologist. “Black female networks are dynamic and interrelated entities that form a matrix of reinforcements that hold the black community together while developing leadership for a better future.”
      Yes, it is a struggle to survive in “two contradictory worlds simultaneously—in other words—one white, privileged, and oppressive, the other black, exploited, and oppressed,” Allen said. But what’s the alternative?
      When a woman reaches out to other women, she finds “she is not the only one going through it,” said Colden, who teaches a noon Bible study each week at Second Calvary. The class is predominately female.
     “I hear people say they really enjoy Bible study because it allows them to share their story,” said Colden, who retired in August as an audiologist from the Virginia Beach Public schools system. “The class is growing. All of us are blessed when different people share their stories.”
      “Recently, we’ve been talking about what we believe (from a Baptist perspective) about family, social justice, the church, community and other issues. Affirmation and encouragement, that is what you will find in my noon Bible study classes.”
      Vulnerable to assaults at work, on the street, and at home—black women usually hook up for three major reasons. First, to exchange goods and services, Allen said. Second, to contribute to one another’s fortitude and resilience. Third, to strengthen the fabric of the community.
      A black woman (simply) learns to become independent and self-reliant, Allen said. She is socialized to fend for herself in many cases. If this means the strong black woman is actually a myth—a fairy tale filled with hushed tales of betrayal, and paralyzing disappointments too horrid to tell—then should more women re-open and re-examine such myths?

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